Gag Me with a Wal-Mart Spot

While I've hardly watched TV for any prolonged period today, I've been overcome by dumb NASCAR people and those Wal-Mart commercials where people tell you how wonderful it is to work for the company, how all your dreams can be realized there.

I mean, the commercials are understandable. Where else can you go to work for almost minimum wage when your Ph.D. in science means nothing in the Bush economy?

I'd feel great pride in working for a company that is single handedly helping reduce American manufacturing jobs and flood the market with child and political prisoner workers because of their demand for lower and lower prices to keep the Walton family on the world's richest people list.

Wal-Mart seems to be a driving force behind making certain that health care is less available to store clerks in general and when it is, with the employees paying more and more of the cost.

One or two of the people featured seem to be living in homes that don't look like they were paid for by the kind of salaries Wal-Mart offers. Sure, not everyone is a minimum wage slave but I'd guess the largest number of employees are indeed clerks. Know many Wal-mart store clerks trading in the BMW for a Lexus or putting their kids through Yale or Harvard?

The few folks I've known who've worked at a Wal-Mart certainly did not feel the way these employees in the ad feel. They've described a company where it's hard to make enough to even begin to meet basic cost of living expenses.