Didn't Sheryl Crow get in trouble with Wal-Mart for saying something like
that in one of her songs.....years ago?

http://www.jammag.com/music/bandprof...ryl_trivia.htm

One day one of their underpaid clerks will use one of those guns and go
postal!

It just won't be in California.


Polar wrote in message
...
On Sat, 05 Apr 2003 23:31:22 -0800, Polar
wrote:

On Sun, 6 Apr 2003 00:06:55 -0500, "JNJ" wrote:

[...]

To say the least, we no longer shop Target for items like appliances,
household goods, and the like or those that might be used as gifts. For
the
main part, we do not even consider Target for any purchases anymore --
the
only time we go there is if they have some sale on a consumable (laundry
detergent for example) that is just out of sight.

Your story just bears out the trend toward megachains that couldn't
care less whether they please their customers and get repeat business.
People treasure the few remaining local businesses that respect their
customers and go out of their way to satisfy them.

It's terrible business practice for these biggies to behave so
chicken-****, but when you're dealing with a large, anonymous outfit,
staffed by low-wage clerks and "managers" who have no stake in the
enterprise except pulling a paycheck, that's what you get.

Followup:

Speaking of megachains:

I don't shop Wal-Mart on principle, because they treat their help so
rotten. But the below story about illegal gun sales really puts the
frosting on the cake:

++++++



http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...pr05005422,1,6
015640.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dfrontpage

Wal-Mart Halts Gun Sales After State Laws Broken

Violations include selling to felons. The retailer is praised
for moving to fix problems.

By Abigail Goldman and Joseph Menn
Times Staff Writers

April 5, 2003

The California attorney general's office said Friday that
Wal-Mart stores in the Central Valley committed nearly 500 violations
of the state's gun laws, including selling weapons to felons and
releasing firearms to buyers before the end of the required 10-day
waiting period.

In each of six stores audited by investigators, "there were
violations of such magnitude that we are convinced it is not an
isolated problem but a systemic, statewide problem," a spokeswoman
for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said the company agreed to
temporarily halt firearms sales in California -- the first time the
nation's largest retailer has stopped gun sales across an entire
state -- because the company is committed to correcting the problem by
retraining employees.

(Polar: Yeah,sure!)

"There have been a number of changes in firearms laws in
California over the past two years," said Wal-Mart spokesman Robert
McAdam. "All the violations are not in the nature of giving guns to
people who shouldn't have them. Most of the violations have to do with
our failure to complete the proper forms or to complete the
forms in their entirety."

In a statement released late Friday, Lockyer praised Wal-Mart
for "acting promptly and responsibly." Violations of the type found at
Wal-Mart are misdemeanors, officials said, but criminal charges will
not be filed because the company is cooperating.

Lockyer said the investigation began after firearms inspectors,
conducting routine checks at a Wal-Mart in rural Turlock on March 18,
turned up so many violations of state law -- 94 -- that they moved
the following week to other Wal-Mart stores in Merced and Los Banos.

In two weeks, the team found nearly 400 more violations in six
stores in the Central Valley and the Sacramento area. The violations,
state officials said, occurred during a period of six months to one
year. None of the stores was fully in compliance with state gun laws.

Wal-Mart employees at the Los Banos store, Lockyer said, sold a
shotgun to a man convicted of spousal abuse and a "long gun" to a
customer who had been convicted of felony drug charges. State and
federal laws prohibit selling guns to felons or to those convicted of
domestic violence.

Those guns have since been seized by law enforcement officials,
who confiscated four additional guns from the buyer with a drug
conviction and a high-powered rifle from a man previously jailed for
spousal abuse. Their names were not released, but authorities said
both face new criminal charges for possessing the weapons.

Lockyer said clerks at the Los Banos store also sold guns to
two buyers before the end of the required 10-day waiting period. Three
other times, Wal-Mart employees sold firearms after the buyers'
30-day application period had expired, he said.

The most common violations, according to Lockyer's office,
included failure to electronically scan buyers' driver's licenses,
failure to get thumbprints and selling before the end of the waiting
period, which allows authorities to check criminal records.

Wal-Mart's McAdam said many of those waiting-period violations
came because clerks started the clock the day the potential buyer came
into the store rather than the following day, as mandated by law --
often a difference of just 12 hours.

The action taken against Wal-Mart -- the nation's largest
firearm dealer -- is by far the most sweeping in recent years against
improper gun sales at stores, said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for
Lockyer's office. In the last three years, Jordan said, gun dealers'
licenses have been revoked just 10 times, and none of the dealers had
more than a few locations. Those cases, she said, generally involved
illegal weapons.

"It's not criminal intent," Jordan said of Wal-Mart's
violations. "It's poor management, poor communication and poor
training."

The news comes at a bad time for Wal-Mart as the Bentonville,
Ark.-based company embarks on a dramatic expansion across California.
Wal-Mart -- the No. 1 company in the Fortune 500, with revenue of
$247 billion -- now has 137 stores in California, 118 of which sell
firearms.

Luis Tolley, head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence, questioned whether action against Wal-Mart should be
confined to California.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "If the
Attorney general has found hundreds of violations in just six stores
in one month, how many will there be across the country? We have much
better enforcement [of gun laws] in California than most states, so
what do you think is happening in those states that don't have such
great enforcement?"

--
Polar