Is Wal-Mart Ruining Our Economy By Not Hiring Checkers?

© David Hartman

     A friend of mine has on a couple of occasions urged me in Facebook statii to not use the self check-out lanes at Wal-Mart because those lanes take away jobs from people who need jobs. She and I agree on a lot of things, but not this.
     At Wal-Mart and most other large corporations, a checker job is a part-time, minimum-wage job. They're not full-time jobs because the companies don't want the added investment in benefits that full-time jobs require.
     I don't know about where you live, but in my town, I can drive in any direction and in about 30 minutes collect applications from at least half a dozen fast food restaurants or businesses that are looking to hire folks willing to work part time for minimum wage. There's no shortage of those jobs. There's a shortage of those employees.
     One of the reasons I try to stay out of political and social debates is because of stereotyping. And one of my biggest pet peeve stereotypes is that everyone in America who is on public assistance is too lazy to work and would rather just milk the system and watch Maury on TV all day rather than get a job.
     In some cases, I'm sure that's true. But in a good number of cases, that's hogwash. If you're a single parent trying to provide for a child or children, a part-time, minimum-wage job does you no good, especially if you have to pay for child care. You work 30 hours a week at $7.25. That's $217.50 gross a week. Take out, say, 20 percent for taxes, and you're taking home $174 a week. I challenge you to find any reputable daycare anywhere that will watch your kids while you work those 30 hours for less than $100 or $150 a week. So what do you have to show for your 30 hours at Wal-Mart? $25-$75 a week. Try paying rent, utilities and food on that.
     Option B is to stay unemployed, get that $217.50 a week from the government and have all of that money to try to support your family, rather than giving 80 percent of it to someone for babysitting. At least now you have a fighting chance. Not a good chance, but a fighting chance. For some people, it's not always about taking the easy way. It's about doing the best they can with the options given them. Too often that gets overlooked in the partisan rhetoric.
     In the current system, you can work and still need public assistance. America doesn't need more jobs, it needs better jobs.
     It's also misguided to assume that if I don't use the self checkout at Wal-Mart, they will be forced to hire more clerks to accommodate longer lines. I've had way too many shopping experiences at Wal-Mart where I'm standing in a line 10 customers deep because only three of 15 lanes are open. There are other Wal-Mart employees meandering about the store doing other things -- stocking shelves, whatever -- but no one is yelling over the loudspeaker for those folks to hightail it up to the front and help get people on their way.
     I think retailers have calculated exactly how much money they're willing to spend on check-out staff. It's built into the business model. Hiring enough clerks so that no check-out line ever gets more than three deep in customers would cut too deeply into the profit margin. So the customer waits in line, however long that takes.
     Unless they use the self-check lanes, which don't cost Wal-Mart as much and get customers on their way much faster. And I'm all for that. After all, the sooner I get out of Wal-Mart, the more time I have to spend waiting in the line at McDonalds for my "fast" food nugget meal because the restaurant only has one cook during the lunch rush.
     Why? Because no one is filling that 25 hour a week minimum wage cook job that they've advertised for months. If they've got anyone else to support but themselves, they can't afford to.

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     One of my high school homegirls and Facebook friend Barb Sloey is for the second time experiencing the joys of having a child who is 15 1/2. That means driver's permit, and all that goes along with it.
     I feel Barb's pain, even though I don't have any teenage kids. I do have a 77-year-old mother who hasn't driven 250 miles in the last decade. But now she wants to try again. Even with the right hand that still has substantial nerve damage secondary to a broken arm suffered almost a year ago.
     So when I'm done submitting this post, we're going to go up to the college, and I'm going to let her get behind the wheel of my fairly new-to-me car -- the one that has liability only and about 17 more payments to go. If you see me at church tonight, you'll know the Geezer didn't kill us. If we're not there, dispatch fire and EMSA to OC. We'll probably be on the north side of the campus.

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     I rarely get comments on the blog itself, but I've gotten feedback from several that I appear too uncaring toward the situation in Japan in my previous rant about Americans bankrolling cleanup efforts for national disasters in other countries.
     So let me clarify.
     I am opposed to the U.S. Government sending tax money to other countries to help after disasters. And tax money is the only kind of money the federal government can send, since it's the only way they make money to begin with.
     I am not opposed to, and in fact encourage, Christian or otherwise generally benevolent Americans donating money from their own coffers for relief efforts in Japan. Churches want to take up contributions? No problem. Wanna give money to the Red Cross earmarked for Japan relief? God bless you. But if we're going to help, we need to help as Christians, not as Americans.
     The Japanese economy is one of the wealthiest and most stable in the world. If you disagree, explain to me how so many of the banks, credit companies and other major corporations in America that used to be owned by Americans are now owned by the Japanese? If we were talking Bangladesh, it might be another matter. But the Japanese government has the resources to handle this. Let them handle it.