The most frustrating thing in the world is to feel powerless. Like when you go to an auto mechanic for an oil change and they tell you you need $200 worth of repairs or you will die in a fiery accident as soon as you leave. You don’t trust the guy as far as you could throw him, but you don’t know the first thing about cars, so you pay the man. And you feel used.
Or when you see stories about how Wal-Mart sells things produced by child labor, closes stores that attempt to unionize, and doesn’t offer affordable healthcare to its (usually) poor workforce. You might not agree with these practices, but damn, those prices are cheap. If you’re like me, money’s usually tight, and you eliminating Wal-Mart from your life is simply not an option.
But you can try to shop at Target more. Yeah, they are a little more expensive, but by voting with your dollar, you are actually flexing your power. You may think Wal-Mart won’t miss your ten bucks, but Wal-Mart operates on very thin profit margins, so multiply your ten dollars by thousands of people, and Wal-Mart will miss your ten dollars. And maybe they will start to change.
And maybe sometimes it works.
This week, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, unveiled plans to make health care more affordable for employees, and vowed to be more efficient in energy use.
This could be just a PR campaign to stave off complaints of consumers groups, but it is a step. And it makes me feel better about shopping there. Not great, but better.
Especially because of what’s going on at Target.
In late September, a pharmacist at a Target store in Missouri refused to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, and referred her to another store. Hard to blame Target for the actions of a single pharmacist, but when Target was asked about the incident, they replied that Target allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions on moral or religious grounds. Fuck that. It’s a legal prescription; pharmacists should not be playing God, deciding who gets what. God forbid a rape victim’s prescription be refused because some nutty pharmacist isn’t cool with it.
Now it should be said that Wal-Mart has the same policy regarding pharmacists, but Target was supposed to be my (relative) guilt free shopping experience. Now they’ve blown that. So now I get to reward Wal-Mart with my business until Target straightens its policy out, once they do, it’s back to Target until Wal-Mart comes around.
Yeah, this is all probably meaningless, but deciding who gets to have the money you work so hard for is, sad to say, probably the most power you have over Corporate America.
BTW, if you’re a Democrat and want to know what are some “safe” places to shop, check out BuyBlue.com
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