Dubbins Hardware and WalMart

My nephew works at WalMart, and loves his job there. He came to be with us around 2:00 yesterday afternoon, and left to go to work by 3:00. He views this as a career. I hope so, and I hope he gets his GED one day. He has been told he is on a track to be promoted at WalMart despite that. Okay.

I understand the need to staff, ... and worked every weekend and every holiday my first three years in Respiratory Therapy in college, beginning in 1970, and on at least half of them for the next four decades. It was an honor to be with my patients, who had no choice but to be in the hospital and were in need of care. WalMart, Macy's, and other retailers who opened yesterday HAD a choice. Their shelves will be empty by Christmas day no matter what they chose to do. Opening on Thanksgiving was an insult to the last and perhaps most honorable national holiday for our families to be together. While Macy's was holding their parade in NYC, their workers were hustling to get ready to man their stores. "Miracle on 34th Street" won't seem quite so miraculous this year to many Americans.

Retailing is a matter of good will, trust and respect, ... or was. I worked at a hardware store much like Dubbins Brothers Hardware in Delhi, NY as a kid. We had to work the Sunday before Thanksgiving each year to ready for Christmas. We decorated, brought tons of stock to all three floors from our warehouse beneath the shopping center. They fed us, there was music that whole day, and when I was almost old enough, Tina Rubbo would share some of the wine his family had made that year, with all of us. Delicious! The only Christmas bonus I remember, came from my boss, Cordy Scartozzi, the owner of the Hardware Center in Paoli, PA around the corner from our house. I will remember that gift all my life. He handed it to me personally, and thanked me for my work over the years I had worked for him. The money was a great help with college expenses, but the handshake was the true gift. He handed me a gold-plated Cross pen, for college, he said. That is the experience I wish my nephew could have. And the experience our customers had there in those Holiday Seasons, is what all Americans deserve. Instead we settle for cheap hustles, and retailers make us fight for "bargains".We stab one another in parking lots for the chance to grab a spot.

WalMart is cheap, ... no question. Whatever they sell that is priced higher than Dubbins, will be discounted at the register to match or beat Dubbins' price. But the staff at Dubbins will remember the paint color they mixed for you, and make and rework the key they cut for you, again and again, until it works, or fix it another way. That is their life, and has been for generations. The Hardware Center http://ww3.truevalue.com/hardwarecenter/ will do the same thing. That is the nature of the Dubber and Scartozzi families, and everyone who has ever worked for them. You know, ... guys like me who could guess a pound of nails with their hands, ... to the ounce, and who buffed the keys to make certain they would work on your locks when you went home. The world changes, of course. A scanner will match the color of paint you used in the kitchen in 1985 now. (Sure you want that?)

But 80% of  WalMart associates reportedly participate in SNAP food stamp benefits to feed their families. That amounts to $4.7 Billion in taxes every year. We tax payers have no stock in WalMart to show for what we provide their workers, to make up for what they do not pay them. All the savings in salaries, go to the Walton Family, who possess more wealth than any other in this nation.We went from Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Rothschilds, to the Waltons of Benton, Arkansas. Good on Sam for the biggest scam, I suppose.

We all have the right to shop where we prefer. And WalMart has provided goods at a price point below any other retailer in America. They did that by paying manufacturers in China less, to do what Americans did before them. The Chinese are still Commuinists, of course, and own a share in most factories. I have no problem with that except for the abuses, and so much for any flag waving. Chinese workers are paid 3rd world wages to make virtually everything Sam Walton's Family puts on their shelves. So the only jobs the Walton's leave to Americans are ones which promise promotion, but pay wages so low their families require food stamps to subsist. When the wages here in America match the wages paid in China, plus the costs to ship the goods, factories will open up again here in this country. And the Waltons will own them, ... and pay our grandchildren what the Chinese government pays their workers now.

Sorry to go on, but the truth is the truth. If this were simple. We'd all be doing our Christmas shopping at Dubbins and the Hardware Center, I suppose. The crowds, however, are at WalMart. Shoppers, picketers, cops and news crews.

Something is changing in America. I wish I could pretend it was for the better. It had already changed long ago when the Hardware Center closed its Western most store on the edge of West Chester, and when it closed its middle store, dedicated to the memory of a daughter of the family.

For my part, I'm glad I worked for Cordy, and have shopped at Dubbins, really glad. My kids will never sadly know that experience, and neither will yours. 

And if there is a wish I hold in my heart, it is that they will have that experience, before the wonderful essence of retailing dies in America, and is handed over to Families who are wealthier than Big Oil and Big Railroads, and swill champagne while our kids go to work every Holiday. That's what I wish!