The NYTimes Doesn't Like Wal-Mart People

h/t Kanye West ; )

Bill at Pundit Guy takes apart a NYTimes piece on Wal-Mart today. I want to chime in on one aspect, as I have managed people in business environments and still do.

In a confidential, internal Web site for Wal-Mart's managers, the company's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., seemed to have a rare, unscripted moment when one manager asked him why "the largest company on the planet cannot offer some type of medical retirement benefits?"

Mr. Scott first argues that the cost of such benefits would leave Wal-Mart at a competitive disadvantage but then, clearly annoyed, he suggests that the store manager is disloyal and should consider quitting.

In his response to the store manager who asked about retiree health benefits, Mr. Scott wrote: "Quite honestly, this environment isn't for everyone. There are people who would say, 'I'm sorry, but you should take the risk and take billions of dollars out of earnings and put this in retiree health benefits and let's see what happens to the company.' If you feel that way, then you as a manager should look for a company where you can do those kinds of things."

The New York Times namby pamby assessment of CEO Scott's response is laughable. To begin with, anyone who uses electronic means of communication should also know to be careful of interpreting tone - and Scott's tone was far from harsh in the first place.

That said, apparently in the faux-utopian vision of a business world the likely insulated Times writer must think exists, management employees of a company shouldn't be held accountable for their business-relevant opinions and ideas because, you know, it's all about free speech. Unless, of course, as far as the Times is concerned, it comes to some silly Mohammedan cartoons.

Businesses are not democracies. At their best and most successful, they are entities which, from senior staff on down, march consistently to a business approach and plan from on high directed at achieving a common goal. They require compliance on the part of employees, especially managers, with designated, endorsed and, generally speaking, rather rigid practices.

When a manager fails to embrace those, for him or her, pre-determined practices, or worse, when one lobbies against them, it can break the stride of the corporation and ultimately effect the course of the enterprise were such anarchy allowed to go unchecked and become widespread. And every time a Wal-Mart misses a step, a Target, or some other enterprise makes one up.

It would be irresponsible for a CEO to allow a challenge like the above from a manager to go unaddressed. When I have found myself in similar circumstances, I have a fairly straight answer if and when someone pushes back.  "Well, guy, that's why we have a front door that swings both ways. Now sit down, shut up and get to work, or use it to let yourself out"

Read more of the silly and absolutely naive analysis from the Times via Bill.

Comments

[Bullgator]

To understand the NYT position on this is you have to think like a liberal. I know, because half of my family thinks this way.

They see healthcare coverage as a constitutional right. Perhaps it is only indirectly implied in the fringe on the margin of the penumbra of somehwere... Well, it SHOULD be there and that's good enough for them!

So they will do everything they can to usher in universal coverage with the federal government as the single payor.

Their plan was temporarily thwarted in 1994 when Hillarycare failed to make it past Senator Phil Gramm. But stay tuned for the sevenfold return to the house not properly cleansed.

Until then, who should pay for healthcare? Certainly not the people! Why, of course, the evil corporations should pay from their filthy lucre!

That way the left gets to feel good that big corporations are getting screwed. And they believe that sooner or later those greedy corporations will be happy to support Hillarycare just to get the cost off their backs!

Now, if the left can only keep the rest of us distracted by Plamegate and Cheney's hunting accident and whatever Bush-bashing they can think of -- while no one addresses the healthcare crisis -- then things will get so bad that Hillarycare will seem like the only viable option!