Fucking with Wal-Mart: Your Ideas:
On Monday, the Rude Pundit asked readers to send in ideas for some kind of action against Wal-Mart for its despicable attempt to take money away from brain-damaged car accident victim Deborah Shank to reimburse its health care program after Shank won a small judgment against the trucking company involved in the collision. Wal-Mart may have blinked, but rude readers did not, sending in dozens of potential protests, ranging from tossing rats (dead or alive) onto the shelves to firebombing a store, which, hey, when the revolution happens, we should barbecue the rich on the flames of a burning Wal-Mart.

Here's some of the most possible ones:

M.M. says, "Have 'customers' fill the carts to the brim with as many items as possible from all over the store (perishable items in a store that sells groceries, especially), advance to the check-out line, then 'realize' that 'Oh, shit, I left my wallet at home,' and walk out of the store. If enough people did this, it could bring them to their knees-they could never hire enough slaves to restore order." Sure, you could argue that this one only annoys the employees, who already have enough to deal with, but if they're busy putting back items (since they have to work pretty much non-stop once they arrive), the shelves don't get re-stocked, shit gets backed up, and the ripple effect could be interesting.

C.P. suggests the Reverend Billy route: "We need to organize groups from every town in America to perform an exorcism on their local Walmart." Considering the religious inclinations of many towns that have Wal-Marts, an exorcism could be quite popular. Although most of Wal-Mart's customers would rather participate in a satanic blood orgy, gutting their children as sacrifices to Beelzebub, than give up their low-priced crates of syrup-infused frozen waffles.

Several people had the idea of buying stuff and returning it, either right away or after some use. K.Z. thinks it'd be most effective to concentrate on a single item all over the United States: "You'd have to get an assload of people doing it, and get some press on it so Wal-Mart and everyone else would know what it meant to have 60,000 cans of peanuts bought and returned by individuals."

Of course, the futility of so much of this is echoed by S.V., who writes, "My mother has worked for Wal-Mart for over 20 years. One of her co-workers, who had the exact same health care experience as Mrs. Shank, is 52-years old and lives with her parents due to her injury and legal fees. When I asked my mother what would Wal-Mart have to do to make her leave, she said, 'I need my job. What Wal-Mart is doing is no different than what all the other big corporations are doing; they just get the bad publicity because of who they are.' A life-long Republican, she voted in the Democratic primary this year for the first time ever."

And, as F.B. points out, "Anything you do will likely only effect the poor chumps unlucky enough to have to depend on this monolith for their daily bread. Wal-Mart isn't new to boycotts and lawsuits; they just close down a poorly performing store or two in some wide spot in the road and move on. Any thing short of driving them to their corporate knees and out of business I fear will be futile."

Yeah, wet dream killer F.B. is probably right, but we can still have some fun. C.B. (no relation to F.B.) says, "How about filling their parking lots full of old junker cars?"

Let's keep these in the back pocket for the inevitable next time Wal-Mart acts like the capitalist cockmonger it is.