In case you needed proof that Walmart is actually the worst….

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An employee from a Canton, Ohio, Walmart store shared the above picture of a food drive being held for other employees.

Wait. What?

That is correct. Walmart is asking employees to donate food items to make sure that other employees can have a nice Thanksgiving. There are so many things that are wrong with this that I don’t even know where to start. First, let’s take a look at some of Walmart’s stats:

Stats

So, to sort of put two and two together here…

Employees from the #1 F500 company can’t afford Thanksgiving.

Walmart has long been taking criticism from those who argue that employee wages are far too low. There have even been lawsuits. Walmart’s answer seems to be to cut hours and leave wages at an astonishingly low level. According to this Huffington Post article, Walmart isn’t just #1 on the Fortune 500 list. It’s also #1 on the list of companies with the lowest paid employees.

Some employees have spoken out saying that this Walmart has been holding a food drive for years, so they’re not sure why it’s a problem now. A spokesperson for Walmart, Kory Lundberg, says that this effort demonstrates how much employees care about each other (source).

If that’s true, then it’s a good thing that the employees care about each other because this is yet another example in a very long list of why it appears that Walmart doesn’t actually care about them at all, despite what the company might say.

The Wage Problem

It has been argued — and rather loudly, at that — that Walmart would not need to hold food drives to help its employees afford Thanksgiving meals if only they paid those employees, you know, actual wages.

While Walmart claims that workers earn between $12 and $13 an hour, employees disagree. Glassdoor.com lists the company’s average wages at less than $9 an hour.

$12 and $13 isn’t great, but it’s certainly better than less than $9 an hour. So instead of giving employees their full number of hours and increasing their wages to something that’s actually going to sustain a decent way of life, Walmart would rather ask the employees making just okay wages to donate food to help those making really awful wages have a Thanksgiving meal.

I believe this is a fitting time for the expression, “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Walmart Already Proved It Didn’t Care About Employees’ Thanksgivings Anyway

In the past several years, Walmart has been seen as yet another leader: a leader in the push to start Black Friday as early as possible. This initially helped them to get a leg up on the competition and to bring in more sales to really maximize the official start of the holiday shopping season.

Or, as some would call it, greed.

This year, Walmart is pushing its official Black Friday opening up to 6pm on Thanksgiving day, causing a whole slew of other retail stores to also bump up their openings in an effort to keep up with the Waltons.

What Walmart employees (and everyone, really) should be doing on Thanksgiving: Spending time with friends and family, watching parades and football, making and eating lots of food (that they could afford on their own wages wherever possible), relaxing, and enjoying the holiday.

What many Walmart workers will actually be doing on Thanksgiving: Sleeping as much as possible to prepare (mentally and physically) to be at work all night among the infamous Walmart Black Friday crowds. This is followed by reporting to work well ahead of the 6pm opening to ready the store and prepare for the crowds. Walmart workers will likely be reporting anywhere from 4-5pm for a 6pm opening.

Sure, not every employee will be going to work then. But a lot of them will. It takes a really special kind of company to ask workers to donate food to feed other workers who will miss those meals anyway because they’ll be working for said company. So it’s not really clear when Walmart expects its employees to celebrate Thanksgiving, anyway.

What is wrong here?

Walmart seems to have us backed into a corner. For many of us, we actively choose not to shop there, citing the way the company treats its employees (including their ultra low wages) as a primary factor. If enough people boycott Walmart, that hurts sales. That’s great if you’re trying to hurt a company, but bad if you’re trying to help its employees.

One thing is for sure, though: Walmart should absolutely not be content to let its employees pick up its slack just because it doesn’t want to give actual hours or wages. That is not admirable or respectable behavior from a company of Walmart’s stature.