Candid Camera: Trove of Videos Vexes Wal-Mart
April 11th, 2008Priceless.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
For nearly 30 years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employed a video-production company here to capture footage of its top executives, sometimes in unguarded moments. Two years ago, the retailing giant stopped using the tiny company.
At first, the decision threw Flagler Productions Inc. into a panic. Now it’s Wal-Mart that’s squirming.
In recent months, Flagler has opened its trove of some 15,000 Wal-Mart tapes to the outside world, with an eye toward selling clips. The material is proving irresistible to everyone from business historians and documentary filmmakers to plaintiffs lawyers and union organizers.
Among the revealing moments: A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or dangerous use of a product sold in its stores. In 1991, founder Sam Walton describes Hillary Clinton, then a Wal-Mart director, as “one of us.”
The best part, maintains plaintiffs lawyer Gene P. Graham Jr., is that “Wal-Mart has no control over this stuff.”
Wal-Mart isn’t pleased.
I used to read about all the corruption and innocence caught on gears, and think that the world was fundamentally evil or malicious. Now, I have a more mature view, that it’s complexly absurd, just totally mad. You couldn’t make stuff like this up.
I caught a viewing of these tapes the other day on bubblevision. After watching this you’ve got to wonder how far off base Alex Jones is. In my pea-brain it is a pretty small step from mocking your employees in drag and grabbing each others ass, to the wild blood-orgies that Jones yaps on about.
Yet another in the long-running, held over by popular demand American Executives Gone Crazy show.
One can only conclude that no one knows the meaning of hubris anymore. At least, that’s my hope.
😉
cybele