- Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is looking out
for you and me. Did you know this?
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- A friend of mine didn't know this when he went shopping
recently for camera batteries.
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- The batteries, expensive little numbers, were on sale
at the Bellingham Wal-Mart for $1 off each package.
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- My friend grabbed up five packages and headed to the
cash register. And things went smoothly until the fifth package, when the
register would not ring up the sale. "Over quantity," it said.
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- Over quantity? My friend was puzzled. That's when the
manager came over and explained there were only a certain number of battery
packages he could buy.
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- My friend decided the limit was due to the bargain price.
Stores will cap the number of items each person can buy so more people
can get the price break. It only makes sense.
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- Not so, said the manager. This was a law.
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- A law limiting battery sales? Who ever heard of such
a thing?
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- To find out, I called Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters.
Spokeswoman Danette Thompson opened a window for me on a whole new world.
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- Wal-Mart, it seems, has a master list of items for which
there are limits. And these limits are programmed right into the cash register.
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- "The list is not something that's published,"
said the spokeswoman. "I've never even seen it."
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- "Are we talking dozens of items? Hundreds?"
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- "I don't know," she said. "It's ever evolving.
Things are being added at all times."
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- So why are batteries on the list?
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- This she could answer. The camera batteries contain lithium.
It is an ingredient used in the illegal manufacture of the drug, methamphetamine,
or crystal meth.
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- The fact that addicts were cooking up their own crystal
meth became such a problem that federal officials went to Wal-Mart in 1997
asking for help.
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- The giant retailer responded by putting the batteries
in the so-called "register prompt system," or master list.
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- The limit on lithium batteries is four packages for all
Wal-Marts except those in Missouri, where the limit is three.
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- Fascinating stuff, I told the spokeswoman. She said Wal-Mart
was simply trying to do the right thing by the war on drugs.
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- For that reason there is also a limit on packages of
cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine, another common ingredient in
crystal meth.
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- In addition to limiting purchases, Wal-Mart encourages
its clerks to closely monitor people buying such items. Two years ago it
paid off.
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- An alert Wal-Mart clerk in Kentucky reported to her supervisors
a woman buying four boxes of Sudafed.
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- Police followed the woman and discovered she was a meth
cooker who had been involved in a homemade lab explosion that killed her
son. She was booked for murder.
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- Impressive. But what prevents anyone from buying the
limit on potentially dangerous items such as batteries or pseudoephedrine,
and then going to another Wal-Mart for more?
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- Or sending an accomplice inside after you've left? Or
you simply coming back an hour later?
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- The manager at the Bellingham store told my friend that
if he saw him come back in, he would refuse to sell him more batteries.
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- When I laid out the same cheating scenarios for the company
spokeswoman, she said, "We're not perfect."
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- I was curious about something else, too. Does Wal-Mart
also put limits on items related to terror?
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- "I've never had that question before," she
said.
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- "For instance, fertilizer," I continued. "You
can blow up large buildings with enough fertilizer." Timothy McVeigh
proved that in Oklahoma City.
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- "I can check that for you," she said.
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- Turns out, Wal-Mart has no limit on fertilizer.
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- That was certainly weird.
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- There's something else weird, too. In an Associated Press
story about limiting cold remedy sales, a Wal-Mart spokesperson is quoted
as saying, "It's not about sales. It's doing what's right."
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- In Wal-Mart's case, I think it's more about appearing
to do right.
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- Because if doing right really was the priority, maybe
Wal-Mart would want to spend less effort on the master list and more on,
say, worker benefits.
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- With total sales eclipsing the gross national product
of certain countries, Wal-Mart treats many of its workers like dirt.
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- Only 38 percent get health coverage, while the average
employee is paid $8.23 an hour, well below union wages for comparable jobs.
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- Doing right? Could've fooled me.
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- http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/columnists/colmoroney01222004.htm
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