Walmart–Not Safe Anywhere

It has been a very bad week for Walmart.

First we had the tragic accident in New Jersey by a Walmart tractor trailer that critically injured comic Tracy Morgan and killed another passenger. It was reported that the truck driver hadn’t slept in about 24 hours, much longer than allowed by law. It has been reported that Walmart will stand behind the driver in any charges brought against him.

However, and this is a big however, the driver has gone on a Twitter rampage making outlandish statements that this was all blown out of proportion by the media and their cameras. One of the worst was that his profile said “Move or Get Hit #Walmart”. It seems to me that anybody who would ever write something like this should never be employed as a truck driver especially with a company like Walmart. My best advice for Walmart is for them to fire this guy once and for all and distance themselves from this criminal.

Meanwhile, a couple of days later on the west coast of Las Vegas, a couple shot 2 cops at a restaurant then went to the Walmart nearby where they shot a customer and then went to the back of the store and committed suicide after making a statement that this was the “start of the revolution”. Now while the authorities are trying to figure out, what this was all about, it brings up another concern about safety and Walmart, from a totally different perspective.

First let us take a look at the truck accident. Certainly, this could have happened with any company’s truck and any employee who fakes their logs to drive longer than legally allowed. However, being an employee of Walmart, the driver is the company. He must act in responsible manner at all times. Apparently, he either chose not to or just enjoys breaking the law anyway. Given his Twitter feed, I believe the latter is more of the answer.

What really bothers me about all this is that more and more trucks seem to be going much faster than the posted speed limits on the highways. Not only that but many of the companies no longer have the notice on the back of their trucks of “How’s My Driving? Call.”. Maybe they have had too many calls reporting too many bad drivers. I believe that there should be more of a crackdown on drivers and have more weigh stations open that would check driver’s logs and get these potentially dangerous drivers off the road.

Now as far as the store incident in Las Vegas is concerned, it is difficult to tell if this really could have been avoided. However, stores like Walmart really should have better security with people who are armed just in case such incidents like this occur. Of course, this would create a possible unsafe environment for everybody with the thought that someone is walking around a store who is armed even though they are protecting the store.

Unfortunately, I know of no store that has armed security people in them to protect the customers and other employees. Given the number of incidents in recent years, certainly the need for better security is a necessity. In future posts, I will discuss safety in much deeper detail and how bad it really is.

Overall, it is not known yet what kind of damage these 2 incidents will have on the Walmart name. Given the type of customer that Walmart attracts, I would not be surprised if they never notice the difference at all. However, to customers like me, it does give a bad impression of the company.

In the end, it may be time to bring back the commercials that Walmart had praising their employees and their company. They certainly need damage control now like never before the next tragic event happens.