NOT ANOTHER WAL-MART POST!

I found an interesting web article about Wal-Mart, which may or may not sway my opinion about the retail super-giant. The Wal-Mart near my parents' house in Miami didn't spring up until after I moved to NYC. I came close to visiting it during my last trip home, but didn't make it past the DVD section about twenty feet in.

Is Wal-Mart an abomination, or a godsend? All I know is, the DVD section left much to be desired. Well, if nothing else, the company contines to be a lightning rod for debate.

Click the link, or continue reading below for the abridged version: netscape.fool.com/Server/FoolPrint.asp?File=/news/mft/2005/mft05031101.htm

Is Wal-Mart Costing Us Billions?
By Selena Maranjian (TMF Selena)
March 11, 2005

What a fascinating and rich topic Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is. Love it or hate it, it rarely bores us. I myself have written a few articles on the company, such as when I questioned whether the firm was a force for good or evil and heard from many impassioned readers in response, and when I suggested some new business lines for the company. Other Fool writers have also chimed in…

…I recently read some new perspectives on the firm, though, and thought I'd offer them up as food for thought and/or discussion. (Jump into the fray on our Wal-Mart discussion board.)

First up, at Slate.com, Timothy Noah presented an interesting take on a recent speech by CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. He explained that while Scott seemed to be defending the firm's record on how it treats its employees, Scott may have been really trying to quietly reassure investors that they're not being treated that well -- that pay and benefits remain at relatively low levels.

Cynical? You bet. But some compelling data backs Noah up. For example, Scott says that "Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 an hour, nearly double the federal minimum wage." But that average is skewed somewhat by the steep salaries of those at the top. Scott's own $15 million-plus compensation package, for example, will only bring up the average. The median (or middle) wage would have been a more telling figure.

Scott also explained that "our wages are competitive with comparable retailers in each of the more than 3,500 communities we serve." Noah countered that although this may be true, Wal-Mart has likely driven down the pay rates in such communities, as competitors try to compete.

Meanwhile, in The New York Review of Books, Simon Head reviewed a bunch of books related to Wal-Mart. His article was long and full of too many points to cover here, but these two points, among others, jumped out at me:

* "The average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three." This supports Noah's claim.

* Head cites a February 2004 report by the Democratic staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. The report "assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million U.S. employees." He added that state governments are burdened by Wal-Marts, too, with California spending more than $20 million on health care for Wal-Mart employees.

So is Wal-Mart behaving criminally? Unethically? Well, perhaps not. In our capitalistic society, where such a firm has a responsibility to shareholders, is it so wrong to try to maximize profits, at any (legal) cost? If we were to punish Wal-Mart, would we then have to go after the many other firms with less-than-ideal practices? I'm afraid that I see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, I wish that the news from Wal-Mart weren't as troubling as it often is. On the other hand, with Wal-Mart's being a successful American business (in which I'm invested) that delivers low prices to many consumers, I wish it well.

Share your thoughts on our Wal-Mart discussion board, where you'll find other impassioned opinions.

Longtime Fool contributor Selena Maranjian owns shares of Wal-Mart.

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Lest I forget, a review of SECRETARY (2002), now appears on my other blog. Happy Easter, everybody!

WOULD GRAD SCHOOL BE GOOD SCHOOL FOR PHIL? PART II: GRAD SCHOOL WOULD BE GOOD SCHOOL FOR PHIL

Two days ago, City University left a message on my phone while I was visiting my uncle in Bellevue. Apparently, they were impressed enough by my grades in Speech-Language Pathology prerequisites (especially the all-important Phonetics course) that they’re admitting me conditionally for the fall. I just need to take a second Behavioral Science course (Psychology, Sociology) during the summer, and an introductory Audiology course within the next academic year. Meanwhile, tuition is dirt-cheap, and I may apply for housing at the Brookdale campus. If I get in, my dwelling and all my classes would be in the same facility. It might be the closest I’ll ever get to achieving my fantasy of living inside the STF-1!

The more important issue, however, is whether I want to enter this particular program of study. While it offers an excellent opportunity (CUNY allows for internships at some very good clinics/hospitals), I am also waiting to hear back from NYU, Boston University, among others, regarding my application for their graduate programs in Cinema Studies. Of course, no matter what happens in the next few weeks, at least my back-up plan came through. Should the world of graduate film study decide to shun me like John Landis after that "Amazing Stories" movie tragedy, I won’t be in complete limbo. I’ll just be in Brookdale.

(Oh yeah, in case anyone was wondering, I did apply to NYU's SLP program, too. But unlike CUNY, they tend to look down on undergraduate-level prerequisite courses taken five years ago. Like the mouth has evolved that much in five years!)

"LOVE LETTERS," or, "VOL LOTTA SHAKIN’ GOIN’ ON"

I don’t know what inspired us to try out the game. But we weren’t drunk on sake, which makes it all the more amazing.

An apartment in Bed-stuy. A Sunday afternoon spent secluded from the gloomy weather outside. K’s mattress on the floor of her bedroom, faded daylight tainting our great white happy through the skylight on the ceiling.

I don’t know if it was youthful ennui, the Mad Libs we had just played, the bread and cheese platter K. made for lunch, or any combination of the above. All I know is, K. broke out a pencil and paper and wrote down a name. I recognized the name instantly. After all, it was my own.
She spelled out my name and hers in capital letters, then wrote "TRUE LOVE" in big caps as well. Not across, though, but a pair of columns:

T L
R O
U V
E E

Next, she examined both her and my name, one letter at a time, counting up all the T’s, all the R’s, U’s, E’s, etc. Combined, our two names didn’t have many of the same letters as a phrase like "TRUE LOVE," so the counts came out as:

T=1 L=2
R=1 O=1
U=2 V=1
E=3 E=3

Adding each column vertically, she ended up with "7 7" This became 77; apparently, K. and I had a seventy-seven percent chance of being a true love match.

Neither of us took the results of the game seriously, of course. I wasn’t about to let some first grade playground time-waster dictate my future, especially if said time-waster was biased in favor of people with T’s, R’s, U’s, or E’s in their names. I balled up the page with the results, tossed it in a corner, then scoffed in its general direction. Five seconds later, I decided to change my name to VOLTER VOL EVERTREE, and coded those letters into their respective columns. Good news! As long as I am VOLTER VOL EVERTREE, K. and I have a 168% chance of being a true love match. Not that a stupid game means anything.

(Now, I know what you’re going to say: Phil, if the game uses a two-column system, all you need do is adopt a name composed entirely of T’s, R’s, U’s, and E’s. It need not be a long, funny-sounding name like VOLTER VOL EVERTREE. My answer: VOLTER VOL is most certainly not a funny-sounding name. The "V’s" go gliding from the lips with all the grace of springtime butterflies.

Secondarily, while a name like REVERE U. TUTU is a quick 100 points all by itself, I am trying not to make a complete mockery of this institution. It’s not marriage, after all.)

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Thanks for enduring the above post. As a reward, I am going to let you all in on a big secret: I have started a new blog exclusively for movie reviews. Rick gave me the idea.

To go to my page, just click on the link to THE SUR-REEL LIFE. My most recent reviews include the vampires vs. werewolves epic UNDERWORLD (2003), and the Japanese film NOBODY KNOWS (2004). Mangia!

"ADVENTURES IN OVER-THE-COUNTER MEDICATIONS, PART III," or, "SHAMPOO U."

I just finished washing my hair. That shouldn’t be a big deal, except, as it turns out, I haven’t cleaned it in almost two months.

The unbelievable story: Sometime in January, I realized that the generic brand of shampoo I was using just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe the cold weather played a factor, maybe it was the fact that my hair was getting long, but the bottom line: My scalp began developing a bad case of dandruff. I have long argued that I myself resemble a case of dandruff, in that I am persistent, yet flaky. Still, even I didn’t itch so much, or leave sore patches in my wake.

So I went to the local pharmacy and bought a bottle of "Head & Shoulders Dry Scalp." "Head & Shoulders" has been my brand ever since I was old enough to not need "Johnson & Johnson’s No More Tears" baby shampoo. Yeah, I was seventeen. I figured, I’m old enough to shave with a razor, so I’m probably ready to use a more grown-up shampoo.

Getting back to the story, I used the "Head & Shoulders Dry Scalp" roughly twice a week, for almost two months, hoping to cure my dandruff. While the problem didn’t get worse, no matter how much I lathered, rinsed, and repeated, my hair never seemed to get better, either. Now, during the last week/week-and-a-half, I was a little too busy to wash my hair at all. Although I didn’t have any large snowflakes to report, I did find, whilst occasionally perusing my head with my hands, more sore spots and pimples than usual. What the heck was going on in my scalp?

K., being wonderful, expressed her own concern. While I scratched my head over the matter, she suggested that I buy a medicated shampoo, such as T-Gel. Taking her advice, I walked to the pharmacy early this morning, went to the shampoo aisle, and looked for the strongest dandruff medication I could find. T-Gel seemed most appealing. However, as I examined the bottle of T-Gel, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, the wide variety of "Head & Shoulders" brand shampoos. Especially eye-catching was the "H & S Dry Scalp," which, for some strange reason, looked a lot different from the bottle in my bathroom at home.

For one thing, the bottle I was looking at had its cap on the top. The one at home, meanwhile, resembled a toothpaste bottle with a wider base. You could stand it up, and the cap would become the bottom. But no way was it anything like the bottle in the store right in front of me, which was sort of a rectangular cylinder. The radical design difference perplexed me.

Then I remembered: "Head & Shoulders" shampoo ALWAYS came in a rectangular cylinder. So why was the one at home different? Did I purchase a smaller size container? Scouring the shelves, I found an identical bottle to the one I’d been using for two months. It said "Head & Shoulders," it said "Dry Scalp." But then I noticed the word following "Dry Scalp"—"Conditioner."

I had been washing my hair with conditioner for two months.

Suddenly, it all made sense: The fact that, no matter how much elbow grease I exerted, or how much "shampoo" I applied to my head, I was never able to create anything remotely resembling a lather. The fact that, while my scalp itched and burned and stung, it was always awfully maleable, and easy to comb. Finally, it occurred to me that the phrase "Use after shampoo," which I had noticed in small green letters on the back of the bottle, might not be a typo, as I had originally suspected. After all, if you’re going to apply conditioner, it seems like highly proper strategy to apply it after shampoo.

It’s too bad the pharmacy didn’t sell over-the-counter moron relief medication, too, or I would have bought some. Oh wait, moron relief was available! Because I bought the bottle of "Head & Shoulders Dry Scalp" SHAMPOO, used it on my head, and now my scalp feels cool, smooth, and clean. I forgot how good a fresh scalp could feel. Maybe now some of those ugly welts will finally go away.

THE LEGEND OF "DORK’LATE"

I want to get the dream I just had down on paper, because it’ll probably fade away if I wait too long.

In my dream, I was the owner of a new coffee shop/bakery in Manhattan. But the establishment was what my dreaming brain apparently considered dork-themed. The walls had framed "Lord of the Rings" movie posters, as well as Spider-Man pin-ups by John Romita and Sal Buscema (Things I remember seeing in an old comic book shop). A TV hanging from the corner blared Japanese cartoons. And there was a modest shelf of paperbacks, above a table that had Rubiks cubes and that old puzzle thing that was a bunch of interconnected rings.

Though we had a working kitchen, the only thing we made fresh were chocolate chip cookies (Hence the name "Dork’late," an amalgam of "dork" and "chocolate" ). We also did not serve soda; there was coffee, tea, and cartons of milk on ice. Though I personally cannot handle milk, I would expect any establishment I owned in the vein of "Dork’late" to serve a good hot chocolate. It just seems to fit the theme. Remind me to check if "Dork'late" has hot chocolate on the menu when I go to bed tonight.

K. was hanging around my new coffee shop/cookie hut, of course. In the few minutes my dream entailed, she made such practical suggestions as having sandwiches from a nearby deli brought in every morning. "Because some customers might actually want real food," was how she rationalized it.

Apparently, she also had a hand in acquiring some of our more valuable props. When I first saw the table of Rubiks cubes and puzzles, I said, "Wow. Where did you find a retail outlet that sells brain teasers wholesale?"

"Oh, I found them all in a big box someone left on the curb," K. replied. I dropped the Rubiks cube I was holding like it bit me. Guess I thought they were brand-new. Silly me.

All in all, I think this new dream establishment is a much better idea than dream establishments in the past. Remember the film-noir-themed diner? Despite the great ambience, it was a terrible flop. Perhaps I shouldn't have featured a menu where everything was "hard-boiled." Hey, seemed like a good idea at the time.

(A final note: I swear a blood oath on this: If I ever turn out to be the proprietor of a small business like "Dork’late," all my full-time employees will receive reasonably good medical coverage. I also plan to have our brain teasers sterilized on a daily basis, and if any sick people handle them, they will be destroyed (By "they," I mean the brain teasers, not the people.))

PICKING SOMETHING UP ON THE "CUTE GIRLFRIEND" RADAR…

Around 1 pm today, K.’s plane will be touching down in Detroit, the city of Motown. She might give me a ring from there, and if she does, I will certainly be glad to hear from her.

Maybe four hours later, she’ll arrive in Laguardia. With any luck, by the evening, we’ll be seeing each other for the first time in over two weeks.

I won’t lie. I have not a little trepidation over how things will proceed between K. and myself. Now that a certain overseas barrier has been lifted out of the way, we may discover it was guilt that greased the wheels all this time. Maybe the mild tremors of regret we felt in each other’s company were what kept our relationship interesting.

But more likely, less complications will mean smooth sailing ahead. And personally, I can’t wait to get this boat moving again. Yeah, I’ll admit that two-and-a-half weeks went a long way towards making me regress to the lifestyle I had, before K. became an integral part of it. Work. School. Movies. Unnecessarily hostile blog posts.

All that should soon fade like a bitter memory, though. Just a few more hours…

WHERE ARE ALL THE NEW POSTS?

I haven’t updated my blog in over a week, due to some family issues that have, to put it mildly, been a distraction.

The family issue: My uncle Yan was sick all last week with the flu. It swelled his throat, and for a few days he could not even drink water. He put off seeing a doctor until Saturday, where he had to be rushed to the emergency room at NYU Downtown. My mom used to tell me Uncle Yan was a simple man, and perhaps that’s why he put off visiting a physician. Other members of my family, however, would substitute the word "stupid" for "simple," since Uncle Yan had blood in his stool for over a year, and never mentioned it to anyone.

After being admitted to the ICU, Uncle Yan’s internal bleeding was investigated. It should be noted that, by this time, he had a recurring nose bleed, and may have had blood dripping from the inside corner of one of his eyes. A platelet test was given, and the family, most of us gathered at the hospital either Saturday night or Sunday morning, waited for the results. We all expected something bad.

The news that he has leukemia came in around mid-day on Sunday. Uncle Yan doesn’t get medical insurance from his job, and there were real tangible fears that his family’s savings, which are modest, would be wiped out by a long stay in a hospital. Luckily, the administrators, whom Uncle Yan’s sons R. and J. met with Monday morning, seemed understanding. The bill will probably be passed on to the taxpayer. If anyone reading this doesn’t like it, go to Bellevue, where he was transferred last night, and drag him out of his sickbed. Members of my family will probably be there to beat you to death. If you visit on a weekend, there’s a good chance I’ll personally crack your skull with one of those metal step-stools every hospital room has two of.