Charles Platt on Working at Wal-Mart

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2009

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

Charles Platt, author and journalist, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts what it was like to apply for a job at Wal-Mart, get one, and work there. He discusses the hiring process, the training process, and the degree of autonomy Wal-Mart employees have to change prices. The conversation concludes with a discussion of attitudes toward Wal-Mart.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is June the 4th, 2009, and my guest is author and journalist
0:42.6	Charles Platt. Charles, welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you very much. Charles, you recently did
0:47.9	a very interesting experiment. You went and took a job at Walmart. Why did you do that?
0:56.4	I had finished a long-standing working for a wired magazine on an independent contractor basis,
1:03.6	but on a very regular basis, I think I contributed more features during that period to the magazine than
1:10.2	anyone else. And so I found myself with a creative vacuum, and I had read a book about a journalist,
1:18.7	a alleged adventure where she took low-paying jobs. I'm not going to mention who the journalist was
1:26.6	because she has quite enough publicity already. I think the title has coinage in it. It does. Yeah,
1:33.2	go ahead. And I was skeptical without having any evidence because I had not done what she had
1:40.6	done, so how could I challenge it? He basically said that it's impossible to live on the current working
1:48.3	wage for unskilled people, and it's a scandal, and something should be done, and he had her own
1:54.2	experience to prove it. It so happened that I was very familiar with my local Walmart because I
2:00.8	enjoy Walmart. I enjoy the fact that it's well-run, that it gives me what I want, and at least
2:08.5	at my local Walmart, the people seem happy to work there. So here was a paradox, and I wanted
2:14.4	to figure it out, and the obvious way was to get myself employed there, not entirely on a
2:21.0	deceptive basis, because as I say, I was genuinely willing to work there, and not going in there with
2:29.8	an ulterior motive to expose and discredit the company. So that was how it began.
2:36.4	And you have any, let's go back to your earlier point about shop there. Do your friends know that
	...

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