Two years ago, Mann says, he had never seen a pot plant. Today, he envisions weGrow becoming the "Wal-Mart of Weed", a vertically integrated chain of big-box stores perfectly positioned to cash in on California's booming marijuana industry as it moves from the shadows to the mainstream. In this "green rush" for semi-legal weed, Mann and his partner Derek Peterson, a 36-year-old investment banker, seek to be the modern equivalents of Levi Strauss and Samuel Brannan—the Gold Rush entrepreneurs who made a killing not from mining, but from selling pans, pickaxes, and victuals to the forty-niners.
posted by Joe Beese
on Jan 27, 2011 -
43 comments
The Department of Homeland Security and Wal-Mart have announced a partnership to promote the recent "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign, which urges citizens to
report "suspicious activity." At select locations, a brief DHS video message will urge shoppers to "contact local law enforcement" if they see anything out of the ordinary. Over
230 stores began playing these short videos Monday, with another 588 stores in 27 states to come on-board in the next few weeks.
[more inside]
posted by Despondent_Monkey
on Dec 7, 2010 -
189 comments
"I do math all day at Wal-Mart." From the Washington Post: "Under a program announced Thursday, employees of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club will be able to receive college credit for performing their jobs, including such tasks as loading trucks and ringing up purchases." Dilution of the meaning of higher education, or laudable way to spread credentials to people without the opportunity to attend traditional college? Or both?
posted by escabeche
on Jun 5, 2010 -
103 comments
SLJaredDiamondOp-Ed: As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I’ve also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog
on Dec 11, 2009 -
52 comments
There's been plenty of
Bullshit! on MetaFilter before, and now there's more: Boy Scouts [
1,
2,
3] (
"Duty to God ahead of country, others, and self, is the credo of suicide bombers.");
Wal-Mart Hatred (
"Wal-Mart is one of the great anti-poverty programmes in the country.");
Circumcision (
"By the end of this programme, one of these three will drop their pants and show us the restored foreskin on their penis."); and
The Best (
"Stupid? How many of you are searching for it on the web right now?").
posted by hoverboards don't work on water
on Apr 27, 2007 -
46 comments
Wal-Mart and the Light Bulb [NY Times link] - Wal-Mart officials admit their push to sell 100 million
compact fluorescent lights per year is at least partially a marketing ploy, but if successful, it would increase the number of the energy-efficient bulbs in use by 50% while "saving Americans $3 billion in electricity costs and avoiding the need to build additional power plants for the equivalent of 450,000 new homes." Wal-Mart's environmental record is
less than perfect, of course, but if they managed to pull this off it would be hard to see it as a bad thing.
posted by mrbula
on Jan 2, 2007 -
111 comments
Perhaps Wal-Mart isn't completely evil? In a move that I'm sure will stun environmentalists, Wal-Mart wants to introduce E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) to its gas stations (which could potentially more than double the national locations that offer E85 from 800 to almost 2150).
posted by SeizeTheDay
on Aug 9, 2006 -
114 comments
Wal-Mart fails in South Korea. As a student of business and a resident of Asia, I am fascinated by the examples of "foreign" businesses who either succeed or fail in Asian markets. Recently,
Vodafone failed in Japan but in a strange twist has signed a
J-V with Softbank to keep their presence in Japan.
eBay failed in Japan as did
Memoirs of a Geisha. I'd love to have a discussion on the successes AND failures of non-Asian businesses in Asian markets and what, if any, lessons can be taken away for those of us who are in Asian markets or wish to enter Asian markets. (Yes, I realize that "Asia" is too broad of a region but I don't want to limit the discussion to just one nation.)
posted by gen
on May 24, 2006 -
43 comments
This year “some people wanted the word ‘brainstorming’ replaced by ‘thought shower’ so as not to offend people with brain disorders, and they also wanted ‘deferred success’ to replace ‘failure’ so as not to embarrass those who don’t succeed.” These words and phrases are just a couple cited by
Global Language Monitor as the year’s
most politically correct words and phrases.
The phrase that topped this year’s list was ‘
misguided criminals,’ one of several terms the British Broadcasting Corp. used so as not to use the word ‘terrorist’ in describing those who carried out train and bus bombings in London this summer.
Ninth on the top 10 list were words and phrases that de-Christianize the Christian holidays – such as “Seasons Greetings” replacing “Merry Christmas” – a practice that has
upset some American Catholics, demanding that customers of Wal-Mart boycott the retail chain until they drop the phrase “Happy Holidays” and return to using “Merry Christmas.”
posted by ericb
on Nov 17, 2005 -
65 comments
Wal-Mart Institutes "availability requirement" Imagine your boss (a guy named 'Knuckles') comes to you and tells you you need to be available to work anytime between 7:00am and 11:00pm, 7 days a week. Oh, and if you can't be available, you'll be fired. This should be expected in a slave labour camp, but couldn't exist in the pride of Corporate America, could it?
Updated during preview: Whoops, perhaps the bad press caused a
flip-flop.
posted by gwenzel
on Jun 20, 2005 -
79 comments
Cleveland bloggers are organizing against a giant suburban-style shopping plaza called Steelyard Commons (to be built on the site of the city's historic steel factories), which will include an immense Wal-Mart at its core. After City Council passed legislation in February to prevent Wal-Mart from adding a grocery store (causing the Bensonville bullies to "pull out" and scuttle the project), the developer was aided and abetted
behind closed doors by Cleveland's mayor, Queen Jane. Despite the mayor's proclamation of "no public money" or tax abatements for the project, there's plenty of
evidence to the contrary.
posted by bitter-girl.com
on May 20, 2005 -
16 comments
"With 1.4 million employees worldwide, Wal-Mart's workforce is now larger than that of GM, Ford, GE, and IBM combined. At $258 billion in 2003, Wal-Mart's annual revenues are 2 percent of US GDP, and eight times the size of Microsoft's. In fact, when ranked by its revenues, Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation." The real cost belongs to the taxpayer, as this report (
PDF or
HTML through Google), by the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, makes clear. A "total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees."
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 20, 2004 -
186 comments
Wal-Mart as Leviathan. "The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?"
posted by the fire you left me
on Nov 14, 2003 -
31 comments
Wal-Mart Inc. stopped selling magazines Maxim, Stuff and FHM In the past, Wal-Mart has refused to sell CD's that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics...
Who is behind this censorship ? I can think of only one group =
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS,
every day these hypocritical monsters are taking more freedoms away from us. They think Jesus would drive a SUV but would never read a Maxim magazine. I am calling on
Canada and
France to liberate us from these monsters...
posted by bureaustyle
on May 6, 2003 -
84 comments
