Retail monster Amazon announced a quarterly loss yesterday, sending the stock down and causing widespread grumbling about maniacal CEO Jeff Bezos' corporate spending habits. This seems like an opportune time to hear from some Amazon employees.
Boxlike megastore Walmart is reaping a good deal of positive PR today after a gaudy event showcasing the company's intentions to spend more money on American-made products. We'd like to take this opportunity to remind you what kind of employer Walmart is.
We have brought you quite a few firsthand accounts of the misery of working for Amazon at all levels, from the corporate offices to the warehouses. Today, we bring you tales of woe from the people who answer Amazon's customer service calls.
Target, America's third largest retailer, has been the source of multiple recent leaks to us from employees at all levels detailing the company's myriad problems. Today: a detailed look at the life of a Target buyer, and how they game both vendors and the company itself.
Amazon, the Cthulhu of retail, finds itself embroiled in a spat with a major book publisher. It's gotten nasty. And, remarkably, Amazon is losing the PR battle. Why? Perhaps because Amazon—where workers are "ground into a tired heap"—deserves to have a bad reputation.
The problems afflicting crap mecca Walmart extend beyond its persecuted work force, all the way into the corporate executive suite. A new report from an outside overseer says the famously cheap company doesn't mind burning tons of money to benefit top executives.
Target is America's third-largest retailer. It is also as staunchly anti-union as they come. In 2011, we showed you the cheesy anti-union video all Target employees were shown. We now bring you the new cheesy anti-union video all Target employees must endure.
Red-tinted retail monster Target is having a hard time translating its popularity in the U.S. into foreign markets. Under the principle of kicking them while they're down, we now bring you this former Target manager's story of the "reprehensible" things he did in order to keep his job.
With dull eyes and open mouths, they crowd the streets and fill the restaurants. Some are teenagers, some are straight, some are gay, and far too many are married adults who would usually be found at home watching the television at night. They are the zombies of St. Valentine's Day, and they're just as miserable as…
In the "golden days" of this great nation, families would join together in their SUVs and journey to glorious "Big Box" stores, where they would wander for hours, lost, accumulating crap. Is America in danger of losing this hallowed socioeconomic tradition?
"Are malls becoming extinct?" I'll say! And becoming, and becoming, and becoming...
Authors: Do not lurk in bookstores to check up on your book. Just do not. Do not do this, either:
In the past week we've run quite a few true stories from Wal-Mart workers— stories that have scared the hell out of Wal-Mart itself, with good reason. We haven't requested more stories, but our mailbox is still overflowing. Here are more tales of life in retail purgatory.
Last week, we brought you some true stories from Wal-Mart workers— stories that alarmed Wal-Mart so much that they (unsuccessfully) begged their employees to send us positive stories to balance them out. Since then, we've received many more, both good and bad. Here are some.
In the past, we have brought you several volumes of true stories from Wal-Mart workers, describing what life is like as an employee of the biggest retailer on earth. Union-busting and heartless corporate behavior stories abounded. Today, we bring you a few more plaintive wails from inside the Walton empire.
The must-read capitalist profile of the week is BloombergBusinessweek's look at Costco and its CEO, Craig Jelinek. Costco is the second-largest retailer in America, after Wal-Mart. Their business practices could hardly be more different.
In the olden days, if you wanted to buy some pants, you'd go to the clothing store (which was the same as the hardware store, and the pharmacy) and pick out some god damn pants, and buy them, and take them home. Now, thanks to wonders of technology, we live in a time when it is possible to go to the clothing store,…
Crap purveyor Wal-Mart has been trying for years to build itself a store in New York City, one of the few places in America that doesn't already have 666 Wal-Mart locations. The company's had a surprisingly hard time of it, what with all the angry union members and grumbling liberals around here.
Have you ever shopped at a "Fresh & Easy?" No, me neither. (If you said "yes," you are an outlier, you are not representative, do not answer any more rhetorical questions.) You probably haven't shopped there because Fresh & Easy has "a novel store format that is bigger than a convenience store but smaller than a…
