[NewChief]

My wife and I have had an up and down relationship with Wally World. We went from driving around with a "Wal-Mart SUCKS the life out of your town" sticker on our car to my wife working as a fashion designer for the corporate offices in Bentonville.

It was certainly a test of our beliefs. While we never really "bought in" to the Wal-Mart philosophy, we were forced to, at the least, justify and apologize for the place that wrote my wife's paychecks. We began shopping at Wal-Mart again. We bought in to the stock options. My wife kept the long hours and made the commute. Then she got pregnant. Thankfully she was able to quit Wal-Mart and take a job working as a designer out of our house. Slowly but surely, we've been able to filter Wal-Mart out of our lives again. We no longer shop there on a weekly basis, choosing to buy our groceries from a local, employee-owned grocery store instead. We occassionally go to Sams still for diapers and formula, but we'll likely not renew our membership once this one expires. As for the stock options, I'm still hanging onto them. Once the stock hits 55 a share again, I'll dump them as well.

I'm not going to get into the good and evils of Wal-Mart, but I'll just say that my own conscience is much clearer now that I don't shop there. I literally dreaded going to the grocery store when we shopped there. Now that we go somewhere else, it's actually a fun excursion for our family.