Why are Walmart commercials always accompanied by such depressive music? Even the commercial about the salary raises at Walmart has such a sad tune playing in the background that one can’t help thinking that the music is trying to communicate something like, “. . . but nothing can help these workers at this point.”
10 responses to “Sad Walmart”
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The dissonance between the message of the commercial and music of the commercial is to create discomfort which you resolve by shopping at Walmart.
That’s what the store hopes, anyways.Or what you read as “sad music” people are supposed to read as “uplifting warm and fuzzy music”. 🙂
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No one is forcing anyone to work at — or to shop at — Walmart. When a new Walmart store opens, it usually has scores of applicants for every available position.
Liberals detest Walmart because it isn’t unionized, and can sell at lower prices than smaller “mom and pop” stores, negatively affecting their bottom line. Some “progressives” couldn’t care less that many poor families (whom the left claims to champion) would find it much harder to buy necessities if it weren’t for their local Walmart store.
Walmart is a shining example of why capitalism works, and the fantasy of socialism (and its illogical conclusion, communism) doesn’t. How can any idealist legitimately criticize its astounding success?
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“When a new Walmart store opens, it usually has scores of applicants for every available position.”
That is an indication of how weak the current labor market is, not how attractive jobs at Walmart are.
Firing women for being pregnant so they don’t have to pay for maternity leave, encouraging full time employees to go on welfare, blatant sex and race discrimination, zero sense of ethics, rampant worker abuse here and abroad. No wonder you love the company!
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“No wonder you love the company!”
Ah, Stringer Boy, for two people who have never met, you know me well. 🙂
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They don’t seem to do this at Asda (aka “British Walmart”) …
The Asda at Cribbs Causeway (outer Bristol) I believe is the largest Asda in the United Kingdom, and it suffers from a huge problem: it’s simply too huge to be enjoyable for shopping unless you arrive with a mental map of the place as well as a list of what you really need.
They don’t play horribly sad music and the signs are generally accented in bright Asda green and sombre black, which probably helps make the experience less depressing.
If I want to be depressed, I’ll pick up a few things at a pound shop and then remind myself of how much money I’m saving whilst waiting in an excessively long queue …
[besides, Asda sells Mr Kipling’s finger-sized cakes in little individually wrapped packets, with many flavours that I can’t seem to find at Tesco or Sainsbury’s …] 🙂
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Ah, Jones, if you ever travel to America, you will find a several nationwide brand-name stores that share Asda’s principal problem (huge chain stores that offer great bargains, but are like being lost in a gigantic cavern without a compass or a map. “HomeDepot” immediately comes to mind.
Being a customer with sharp, better than 20/20 distant vision for reading tiny acr0ss-store signs is a distinct advantage in this situation. So is being bold enough to search out one of the infrequent customer-service representatives wandering about and then going into your “confused lost older customer who needs help act” (works every time).
And these stores have no background music at all. Also, no long queues, because American technology allows half the check-out lines to be totally automated, so you don’t even have to eyeball any store employees to pay for your purchases.
And when it’s over, you’ve saved a great deal of money, yet the store has managed to make a profit, so everybody’s happy.Another perfect example of U.S. capitalism at work.
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““HomeDepot” immediately comes to mind.”
- I love the environment at Home Depot. It’s where I go to meditate.
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“Ah, Jones, if you ever travel to America …”
Did I mention that I’ve visited 43 of the 50 states as well as DC?
Many years ago, I bought a semi-crap car in America, armoured the sections around the locking mechanisms so they would prove to be irritating even to East London car prowlers, and set out wandering on the US Highway System.
Once I hit West Texas, that strategy went right out the window, along with a somewhat dated highway map. 🙂
Of course, I bought the aluminium sheet metal for that project at a Home Depot that wasn’t much larger than a typical location of Wickes or Homebase in the UK.
The Asda at Cribbs Causeway is considerably worse than any of that.
[… you just don’t know maaaaaan, you just don’t know …] 🙂
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“Did I mention that I’ve visited 43 of the 50 states as well as DC?”
- I would SO love to do that. I’m off to a good start, given that I lived long-term in 5 of the US states. Now I want to go on a cross-country road trip. Imagine the blogging opportunities that would arise from that.
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When I did this, there was only one mobile operator that provided US national service, and my GSM phones wouldn’t work with it.
The solution involved buying an upgraded Motorola StarTAC with cellular modem and fax reception features from a Radio Shack (remember them?), and the phone would be nearly entirely useless once I departed the US. The phone required expensive proprietary interface cables, and the cellular modem service was charged at voice call rates, which meant that I could only stay online long enough to cope with E-mail.
As for navigation, I stopped into an REI and bought a Garmin GPS and another expensive proprietary interface cable that would let it work with some map software I’d purchased. Back then, you didn’t have live satellite mapping, and the only freely available satellite imagery for the US came from the USGS.
However, it was quite cool to be able to wander around bits of theme parks with the help of a satellite map, even if it was a greyscale copy.
I wound up with a crap phone and a crap car to sell once I was done, and my crap phone was much easier to be rid of …
Doing anything online from the road now is an absolute doddle, and even the vehicles are considerably better.
The security services also don’t immediately think you might be some sort of strange-speaking terrorist just for having a crappy satellite map of a theme park, BTW, which is also considerably better. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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