
Last night as Mr. Savvy and I made an ice cream run, I snapped a picture of this sign in the parking lot of my local big box supermarket. This sign epitomizes everything that’s wrong with big box stores. It poses as a helpful public service announcement, but gives its true nature away: “Help keep your community clean,” it says. Not ours.
And this is because big box stores really aren’t a part of the community. They are designed to take away from the feeling of community; that’s why you need a car to shop there; that’s why they have only one giant entrance instead of an entrance on every side; that’s why they sacrifice customer service for volume of goods. Who has time for all that pesky conversation and walking? Less interaction between people, you see, means more Stuff sold.
Even knowing this about big box stores, I know I won’t stop shopping at them. I avoid certain stores like Wal-Mart, but I can’t avoid them all; my bank account won’t allow it. That’s how they get us. That’s why they fill the top ten slots on the Top 100 Retailers list (PDF) — we need cheap things.
It’s probably because we need to keep up our cars, since we have to drive everywhere. Driving everywhere raises taxes so we can keep the roads maintained. Higher taxes mean people move out of places that require a higher cost of living, like cities, and into the suburbs. And since we’re in the suburbs, we need cars so we can actually get to the places that sell the things we need. It’s another one of those vicious cycles.
Even in death, big box stores hurt the community. The article Big Box of Trouble: Dealing with the Coming Plague of Empty Superstores details the problems of having empty shells all over the country.
Ever the optimist, I look to what we can do: stop buying so much Stuff. Buy more from your local small businesses, or if that’s not possible, take your dollars online and shop at places like Etsy, where you can get handmade pieces from skilled artisans. But really, it’s the Stuff that will get you every time. The JibJab movie below gets it exactly right when they say, “Your everyday low prices have a price; they aren’t free.”

Big Box Mart
(This link points to a short stop-motion/partially animated music video where a caucasian male sings about shopping at “Big Box Mart.” He details working in a foreign factory where they mass produce USA globes, sings in his car in a massive Big Box Mart parking lot along with hundreds of other shoppers, and goes through aisles piled high with stuff. He talks about his “needs,” buying a lawn gnome at the same time, and tries to put an entire clothing rack in his shopping cart. He passes through the line of cash registers with a cart towering with merchandise, then brings it home and fills his house up to the point where he can’t close the door anymore and the roof is comning off. Another person in the house is smooshed up against the window because of the weight of his stuff. After this scene, we go to a factory where hundreds of other employees, all dressed in yellow construction hats, are all packed in one room. At the front of the room is a dais, backed by an American flag, where several people dressed in suits explain that the factory is outsourcing its work to “the slums of East Beijing.” Management streamlines the company’s organizational chart by linking “Management” with “Cheap Foreign Labor,” and cutting all the other facets of the chart off, literally, with a chainsaw. The next scene shows the narrator joining the back of a long line at the unemployment office. Finally, we end the movie by showing the narrator working at Big Box Mart, sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets. He walks out to the parking lot where hundreds of other Big Box Mart employees are singing, and we realize they they used to be Big Box Mart customers. The final part of the movie shows the narrator poking out of a darkened screen, asking “Paper or plastic?”)
To the tune of Oh, Susannah
[gong]
Oh, it starts with sweatshop labor in a foreign factory,
And gets back on a vessel and shipped over the sea.
It’s loaded onto trailers and it’s spread across the map,
Big Box-Mart is the place I go to buy all of my crap.
Oh Big Box-Mart, what do you have for me?
‘Cause our shopping carts are empty and we’re on a shopping spree
I come to the Big Box-Mart cause I do have lots of needs,
And they sell crap the cheapest with their discounts guaranteed.
When I’m walking through the aisles it’s like I’m hypnotized.
With a wallet full of credit cards, I never leave deprived.
Oh Big Box-Mart, thank you for serving me.
But my house is full of crap now and it used to be empty.
The next day at the factory, the news was very grim.
My job was being outsourced to the slums of East Beijing.
Management was streamlining the company org chart.
We gotta make crap cheap enough to sell to Big Box-Mart!
Oh Big Box-Mart, look what you’ve done to me he’s gotta start all over now at the age of 53.
I still go to Big Box-Mart. Yes, I’m there most all there most all the time.
These days you’ll likely find me sweeping aisle number 9.
My dreams of our retirement have gone up in a blaze,
and I’ll be scrubbing toilets till they stick me in the grave.
Oh Big Box-Mart, what have you sold to me?
We used to be your customers, now were your employees
Oh Big Box-Mart, my paycheck reminds me
Your everyday low prices have a price:
They aren’t free.
Paper or plastic?
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where that sign will serve as a reminder of what it costs every time I buy my groceries.
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