Always Low Morals. Always.

Open up the New York Times today and there is this article about Wal-Mart. It seems that the $10.5 billion in pure profit they make every year is just not paying the bills and they want to do some belt tightening. Now it won't be easy, but the executives at Wal-Mart are up to the task. How will they do this you ask? Lower bonuses and stock options for the CEO and president and other VPs and execs? Oh goodness no, that would be inhumane. No they are going to go after the excessive benefit packages they give to those spoiled employees. It's going to be tough, but with enough hard work and creativity, maybe the CEO can keep all of his vacation homes. What a fucking tragedy it would be to have to decide which one to give up. I mean come on, could you choose between Aspen or Rome? Swiss Alps or Nantucket? Poor guy must know how Sophie felt, tough choices and all. But hell, why choose at all? There are much better ways to fix Wal-Mart's cash flow problem.

First of all, having health coverage for almost 45% of their employees is such a burden. So they'll have to cut benefits (because they were just waaaaay too generous) and raise the employee contribution. Hey, they're making almost $18,000 a year now, so they won't mind shelling out $2500 for out of pocket health costs. They'll get by with the $15,000 left over (before taxes) just fine. They'll just have to get another roommate in their residential hotel room. With their employee discount (except on sale items of course) they'll even be able to easily add another hotplate and double the size of their kitchen. And with Wal-Marts new bunk cots you won't even notice 8 people sharing a one room apartment. And with the extra health care cost they'll more easily qualify for food stamps. So you see, Wal-Mart is helping their employees more and more.

And what the hell is with people working there too long. Don't they understand that their yearly 25 cent raise is hurting the caddies tips at the management outings? Won't someone think of the caddies?!?! You would think with all the incentive given to associates (Wal-Mart's term for serf) to move on and get another job, from union busting to spy cameras to drug testing to sexual harassment, no one should want to work there for more than Wal-Mart's goal of a few months. Getting all employees to quit before they're due for their first raise you would think would be a pretty easy goal to achieve. But nooooo, these damn people have "rent" and "groceries" to buy. Dammit, where are these people's priorities? Selfish pricks putting food on their table without a thought of what it's doing to the shareholders. The fucking nerve of these damn people. Some poor stock owner somewhere is having second thoughts about buying the fourth Hummer because of the horrible financial straights of Wal-Mart, and these damn "workers" are only thinking of themselves.

Combined with lowering the 4% contribution to the 401(k) to 3%, weeding out these long term employees and not hiring any more fat people (except for the seniors who open the door - they've got Medicare) will help this poor, poor company hold off on raising the price of plastic laundry bins by a nickel. It gives me the shivers just to entertain the thought. Oh the humanity.