WalMart blows....

[mlee0332]

thankyou SRC

I was just about to say that. I used to buy fish from my LWM but I try not to buy them there b/c they always get sick and die. It is hard to just walkbye them though. It's like going to a pet store and seeing an emaciated kitten. How many of you would walk by it with out saving it? I would buy it!!! Same thing goes with the fish. If its savable, why not try??

 

[DB_Diana_Jack_8]

I just thought i'd pipe in(since yeah i do work at wal-mart, and like i said in my previous posts, not a perment job, i'm 18 & in college), I know how bad most wal-marts are when it comes to keeping fish. ours, isn't the best, but it isn't the worst. I have talked to one of the managers at ours and am close to persuading him that we need some one who's primary job is to clean the fish tanks and make sure they are healthy. I seriously volunteered for this job, because not only is it harming the fish ...but my arguement to him was that it also makes the store loose money because a majority of the fish are dying resulting in little profit if any. i think he bought it. I don't go back to work for a couple of days so...maybe i'll have a new job. lol. I did buy my first betta fish from wal-mart and so far it's still alive...after some minor problems...so not all fish that you get at wal-mart are bad???don't guess anyways.

 

[ThinIce]

well this ones been interesting. Just read the entire thing and thought i'd post a few thoughts.

1. The suggestion that someone has to have been around for a certain amount of time or have a certain post count for their opinion to be respected is a little illogical.

2. If you have a pov you believe is correct - thats great, other people are always swayable. The important thing is to keep people's respect. Its pointless to chew people out - if you need to state their opinion is wrong by your logic (which you often will) it should be done clinicly and with kid gloves. Whilst people will rarely appear to change their mind in front of you to save public face you can swing a lot more people to your way of thinking this way.

3. Seeing as the issues of 'facing the beast head on' was bought up I think you're right. However, companies are merely animals to make profit. If they are not stung hard when doing something a certain way - then they'll keep doing it if it makes money.

Take the Mclibel case here in the UK - where two protestors handing out leaflets about how bad the food and general approach of McDonalds was were taken to court for libel. In the end they won about 60% of the points in the case and got the European court of justice to slap the UK's bottom about our libel laws.

The main point of the whole case was that Mcdonalds spent 10 million fighting it - and it was a massive PR disaster - anyone seen those advert saying "mcnugget - now with REAL chicken breast" ? They havent persued anyone for Libel since.

However - and given the work of others such as Morgan Spurlock's Supersize me documentary you'd expect governments to have come down hard on mcdonalds for the quality of their food, and the way they market to and manipulate children.

Why this hasn't happened is demonstrative of the real problem in our society - which is that when a portion of the population disagree with the practices of a company - and the majority would too (if they only were made aware) we have little regress to actually persue the issue through a streamlined goverment process.

How this relates to the fish rescue issue

1. I don't think that the cumulative financial effect of the betta rescuers doing what they're doing or not doing it makes a blind bit of different to the books of such a large company. (Thats an opinion for which I can give no supporting facts for )

2. Its important that if you disagree with the practice(s) of a store that you don't do something that will effect like you're weekly shopping there - same goes for buying fish accessories - however, as with Tesco in the UK - I appreciate it may be very difficult for people to do this depending on the local area.

3. If you rescue fish - make sure you complain as well - loudly, and most importantly coherantly, if you can with documentary evidence such as photos or transcripts of conversations with employees.

4. Try not to do anything that'll get you dismissed as an "animal nut" - the more like an ordinary but forceful complaint it is - the less grounds there is for binning it.

5. Ultimately we must recognise that the issue is in the hands of legislators - if the process of treating fish in this way is not harmful to the company through fines or SUBSTANTIAL lost profit or PR gleem - they won't care simple as that. Whilst i'd love to go on for ages about the sort of frameworks I think need to be in place for government to sucessfully investigate public complaints about company malpractices this really isn't the place.

Is there an overall database of documented Walmart / store fish cruelty? If theres not, I think there should be and would be happy to work with interested members on producing one accessible via the Internet. Perhaps that way these regular 'approach to bad fish store / rescuing' threads can be channelled into something productive



NB - If any of the above has offended anyone - please do let me know in a calm fashion and I will be more than happy to modify the tone / explain my argument. I'm aware that some of the bits above about fish recusing could be seen as a critique of others practices, which its not - because I don't know enough about what individuals here actually do do to make comment

 

[-*-MicHAeL-*-]

my walmart doesnt even sell fish

 

[cla55y19]

do we have walmart in england

 

[OohFeeshy]

No, but Walmart owns ASDA. I hope they don't start selling fish, but luckily ASDA is more food orientated. Mainly food and clothes actually.

 

[FalconStorm]

Honestly, I do rescue fish from Wal-Mart, when I can afford to. No, I don't complain to management...yet. For one, I have trouble finding anyone to complain to, and for two...I'm a coward. Yeah, I'll admit it. I'm working on building up the courage to really throw a fit, but for the time being, I'm doing what I can. Yes, I still shop there. Aside from the fish, my Wal-Mart is not a bad store. I don't buy large fish supplies there, but if it's midnight and I need a med they carry, I'll buy it there. Frankly, if I were to boycott them, they wouldn't care. They wouldn't even really know unless I do manage to get up the courage to throw a fit. Really, they don't even care that I buy stuff there. They are simply too large to notice. It is a logistic impossibility. It's not even that they're mean or impersonal. In their place *I* wouldn't notice my own purchases or lack thereof. I'd probably do a lot better about taking care of the fish, but frankly, a manager that has had no real training in management and twenty million other demands from customers, employees and management that is above them is doing well to keep up with what they're directly responsible for, much less going out of their way to check a small department in the store on a regular basis.

Actually, I think Wal-mart just needs to stop selling live animals at all, but until they are convinced of that, I'll still do my rescues. I think I may try to talk to someone that works there to see how the direct cost of keeping the tanks running relates to the profit/loss of fish sold per store. If it can be proven that the cost of running the tanks is more than the amt gained from selling the fish and presented to Wal-Mart, they might consider discontinuing the carrying of live animals. Any thoughts on that?