Wal-mart

Dear Community,

This morning I went to Wal-mart with my mom. I'm leaving for Dublin today and was in need of underwear because I have a packing problem and always bring useless crap instead of things like socks and underwear. As in, I bought 4 pairs of running shorts (for Dublin in the middle of winter) and 2 pairs of underwear for a 10 day trip. Im an idiot.

Anyway. Here I am in the underwear isle there trying to decide if I wanted hot pink with stripes or teal with Hawaiian flowers (what happened to white?), something neat happened. All of the Wal-mart employees gathered and then some manager looking type (and by that I mean she was wearing a fake tie with her vest) started reading off Wal-mart sales information. Pharmacy was up by 14%, liquor was up by 7, floral by 3. People seemed eager to how their department had done. When manager type announced that the Miley Cirus line was up 23%, a women yelled 'I set up those displays'.

And then they did a Wal-mart cheer. As in, high school football, give me a 'W' style. That was weird.

But the meeting itself was really cool. I mean, come on, this is Wal-mart. People there probably don't think about their work as a 'career' but listening to them was a little bit inspiring. It would be easy to treat employees like 40 hour a week labor, but by making them part of the larger mission of the company, it not only motivated them, but it recognized their contribution to the success of the company. For a company that gets tons of flack for being terrible to employees, I was impressed.

Sarah