Re: (Back-Talk) Kathy Lee Gifford

Ares, God of War wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:45:03 -0400, Alexandra Ceelie
> <the.netkitten@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> The title was a little misleading. They aren't charging for them...they

>> are "leasing with a refundable deposit".
> They are charging for them.....see below.
> 
>> We have a store here, Aldi I think is the name of it,  that chains the 
>> carts to each other. You insert a quarter and the link pulls free and 
>> you can use the cart. When you are done, you have the option of leaving

>> your cart and losing the quarter, or putting it back in the corral
where 
>> linking it back up will pop your quarter back out.
> We had a local store that did that, more often than not
> you ended up paying for the use of the cart since the 
> "deposit" system didn't work, more often than
> not you lost your quarter.   
> 
> BTW, that store no longer has the quarter system.
> They got rid of it years ago.
> 
>> It may be annoying and weird at first, but it's amazing how nice and 
>> cart-free their parking lot remains.  You also have to bring your own 
>> bags or boxes...and bag your own groceries. They have bags there, but 
>> you have to pay for them.  That never bothered me... I've used cloth 
>> bags for groceries for years.
> BTW, around here they have a cart "recovery" service that
> returns stray carts from the neighborhood.   
> 
> Finally i've worked for a grocery store, we had to retrieve
> carts the neighborhood.
> 

Our carts don't work when you leave the store as the mechanism stops the 
wheels from moving.

I don't mind. But it is annoying when a lot of the shopping carts have 
gone out of the store and are still locked during store use.

I have bought some things from Walmart in smaller towns when driving 
through, when nothing else is available (like sunscreen, etc). I have 
had gifts of clothes given to me from Walmart.

Their clothes suck.

The colours of the warehouse look make the eyeballs bleed and the brain 
to hermorage.

Our city fought to keep Walmart out, but other nearby cities have Walmart.

They aren't the same in Canada as they are in the US. We don't generally 
have the grocery aspect even in places where we have Walmarts.

It is hard for me to judge because most of my undergraduate cl***** 
taught us of the horrors of Walmart, so I know their story well.

My graduate cl***** taught us of the aspect of looking cheap so that you 
feel like you are getting a bargain, compared to looking expensive so 
you feel like you are shopping in your class.

Walmart is able to get products for much less than other stores. In many 
countries, Walmart has hurt many cities . Canada and the US are 
fortunate and have many options, many other countries do not.

We have the Olympics coming soon. This means that most small store have 
been squashed for a few reasons:

1) Companies like the Gap are willing to pay the extreme prices and 
loose major money on rent so that they have these "billboard" stores as 
advertising during the Olympics. This means that the rent for businesses 
is EXTREME here. I know, just a 100 foot room with or without a window 
costs close to $2000 per month in rent.

2) skytrain was put through on major routes (yay!) Although it took 
years longer than "expected" with these small stores and mom and pop 
places holding on with the roads cut off, large fences around entire 
blocks for 100 blocks in a row with no way to get through in either 
direction.. then they held on for 1 year then 2.. Construction is still 
in place, roads are still missing (entire major arteries are gone, huge 
pits in the ground).

The cruelty of it small business owners knew that they would be shut 
down for years paying high rent they would have closed down without 
going bankrupt, maybe moved on and been successful elsewhere.

However, they waited because they were told that it would only be a 
week, then 6 months, and now it is years later. They held on, they got 
deeper into debt, many are now closed down for good.

Now the larger stores: Winners, HomeDepot, etc have all moved in.

And the rest of the stores are bought/property up by Translink (our 
skytrain bus provider). How convenient for them that these companies 
went out of business because of them taking so long with construction of 
the public trans****t link.

Translink claims they are broke and had to branch off into new business 
in order to stay alive and they chose property as their new business. 
How nice of them to bring everyone down with them so they could get 
their property along the line that was to serve these same small 
diversified store owners.

How nice that every single major part of our city and surrounding city 
now looks like any other.

It is like "gas food lodging" signs all over the country.. the same.. 
over and over and over. Walmart, Home Depot, Wendy's Macdonalds, 
Winners, HomeSense...