Anyone read or heard about Wal-Mart's extensive surveillance programs? These guys are spying on their own shareholders and anti-Wal-Mart groups, but they're also monitoring email, phone calls and internet use from their own employees. Think about it -- you're a Wal-Mart company man and you're using Gmail or Hotmail and thinking that as long as I'm using a non-company email service, my emails should remain private. Not so, according to insiders at Wal-Mart. And that's just email -- employees are instructed to have no expectation of privacy while making phone calls and their state-of-the-art internet surveillance program monitors flesh tones on your computer display and automatically reports you if it displays pornography -- even if you just happen to be on the same computer network as Wal-Mart.
Now I'll admit I've bought from this place from time to time, but I've had my reservations about the place. Everyone's heard a few bad stories about their business practices or the way the treat employees. Is it right to keep buying from this place when they treat their underpaid workers like garbage and in the meantime drive out all competition in the area? Is it worth trudging through these places, which are dirtier than the K Marts of 20 years ago, to buy a $2 Chinese-made mop, all the while making the Walton family members richer than Donald Trump? Is it worth paying a few dollars less for things when they're telling us what we should and shouldn't buy? Wal-Mart doesn't like hip hop and they barely tolerate video games. And now I can't tolerate them. I'm over it.