This isn't your standard "Wal-Mart sucks" post. It's a little deeper. I have vague memories of the Wal-Mart opening in my small hometown in the late 80s. I was just a kid, but I remember my parents were happy about it. They thought it meant our little town was moving into the big time, I guess. Anyway, I shopped there with my parents for the rest of my time in that city, until I moved away in 1998. I moved to a city without a Wal-Mart. I've spent the last 16 years shopping at Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. Shortly after I moved away, my father would complain about our hometown Wal-Mart every chance he got. I though he was just becoming a bitter old man. He complained about a lot of things, so I didn't think any thing of it. It got to the point, according to my mother, that my father would just refuse to go into the store anymore. He would wait in the car while my mother did the shopping. Going somewhere else to shop wasn't really an option. The next nearest non-Wal-Mart place was a two-hour drive away. My father passed away last year, and I had to go to the old Wal-Mart for the first time since I was in high school. We needed some inflatable beds for people who would be staying with my mother for awhile. And everything my father complained about - it was all true. That place had gone downhill A LOT in those 15 years. It was dirty, unorganized, and the workers were rude. They looked dead inside - both the workers and the customers. I didn't understand the language the workers were speaking. It wasn't English or Spanish. Some third, Eastern-European language I think. I waited in line a full 20 minutes to make a $400 purchase. It was the middle of the day on a Saturday, and they had three registers open. I thought maybe it was just this one Wal-Mart that was a wreck. But I went to another one last week, during a road trip with a friend. A whole different state, a whole different time, and it was the same. I am a Conservative, and I know liberals like to bash Wal-Mart and all big business. I usually side with business. But in this case, I side with the Liberals. Wal-Mart sucks. Thanks for reading.