Goodbye Walmart

When super Walmart came to town, I was in awe. One stop shopping and lower prices were among the reasons that I chose Walmart. I have shopped there for years and to be honest the experience was not all it was cracked up to be. I run 4 miles a day so walking an additional "4" miles around Walmart is over kill for me. I don't need the additional exercise. When Walmart opened I remember them talking about the strategic benches that would be placed around the store so that people could rest if they needed. I have not seen those benches in a while and I am not sure where they went. Customer service is not what it once was. The size seems to offer us endless selection and choices. Everything is bigger and as an American, bigger is naturally better. The products they offer also bigger. There is the 36 pack of toilet paper and the 64 0z jar of Ragu. Does the size of these product correlate to the ever increasing size of our homes or the fact that the largest growing segment of the housing market is storage rental units. I have also noticed that the employee mood has shifted. Everything was happy, clean and new and now things are not so clean, and well many of the employees can not answer basic questions because they do not necessarily grasp English. Was I really saving money? The price of groceries seem to be continually increasing and the amount of money I was spending every week did not suggest that I was saving money. Was I even saving time? I call Walmart the great time stealer. Once inside the store two hours can go by in the blink of an eye.



These things are all issues and pet peeves that I have been concerned with but it was not until I started reading books by Bill Mckibben that I started really thinking about where my money was going and why I was making the choices that I was making. We are big supporters of local farmers markets and grow a considerable amount of our own food in our garden. We buy milk, meat and eggs from a local dairy. We are small business owners in a local market. With my limited consumer dollars was there a better choice that I could be making? If I intentionally chose where I was shopping I decided that I would choose Fareway. They are a chain store but have local owners and they close on Sundays because of religious conviction. I can respect that! The down side was that in comparison Fareway is not even 1/4 the size of Walmart. I felt like I was limiting my choices and it was restrictive instead of freeing.



It took me several weeks but this morning I did my normal weekly shopping at Fareway. I have not had such a pleasant experience grocery shopping in years. The store was clean! The employees were kind and polite! It took me less than an hour from start to finish. I was in and then I was out. They walked my groceries to the car for me. I was not limited in my selection. They had everything I normally would have bought although they did not have the larger sizes. So I bought two bottles of barbecue sauce instead of one. The price must have been comparable because I spent at a minimum sixty dollars less than I normally spend on average at Walmart. I gained an hour and sixty dollars! I am feeling really positive about this change and hopeful that next week will be as equally as pleasant.