Who needs another chain store to buy detergent when you can make Do-It-Yourself detergent just as easily?
So, ANOTHER Dollar General. Just what we need. I have five within a three-mile radius of my house already. Is that not enough? For the record, I don’t shop at Dollar General. It just makes me sad that we’re bulldozing trees and developing more of our vacant land for another store under the guise that it is convenient and will save the consumer money.
When I was a graduate student at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., I remember when Wal-Mart made its grand entrance into the community. Like many people, I was very excited that I’d have Wal-Mart there so I could buy cheap stuff for cheap. When the locals talked about how it would devastate the local businesses. I was like, “Whatever … I can save 75 cents on some laundry detergent people. Do you really think I care about the local economy?”
Sadly, I didn’t care. At all. I didn’t feel any responsibility to support my community or the small business owners who were trying to serve it. Hellooooo … I was raised to be a consumer, not a community member.
My husband went on to spend some time in management at this new Wal-mart and shared with me how Wal-mart and other big box stores/discount stores manipulate shoppers. There is a whole science behind how our minds work when we shop and these stores make us work for them. For instance, when most people think they are going to run in and pick up a few items, Wal-mart knows the average shopper spends $80 a trip. (Note: I use Wal-mart here but you can substitute any of the big discount stores here).
That was when I began to realize that not only am I a sucker, I also waste money even in my quest to save it. Everything my hubby had told me, proved to be right. The next time I went to Wal-mart. I watched. I did have a few things on my list and I did end up with a helluva lot more stuff in the buggy when I got to the checkout line. And, of course, it was all stuff that I had convinced myself that I needed. Did I need it? No but it’s scary how easily we can justify our purchases to ourselves.
There are a lot of ways to save money but how many of us do it? Yes, I think the discount stores can be very beneficial if you’re a hardcore, coupon-clipping, stick-to-your-list kinda person, but I wasn’t that kind of person and I’m not sure the average American consumer is. I was throwing money out the window like it was nothing picking up junk that really served absolutely no purpose.
I can’t help but wonder now, how did I become so convinced I needed to go to Wal-mart? I was better off adding laundry detergent to my grocery list and spending 75 cents extra there than I was making an extra trip to a discount chain and buying 20 extra items I didn’t originally need in the first place. Not to mention, if I really wanted to save money on laundry detergent, why didn’t I just make my own? It’s not hard, it is very cheap and works just as good. Why do I need window cleaner and countertop cleaner and shower cleaner and toilet cleaner and floor cleaner and oven cleaner and so on when I can get a big ole’ bottle of chemical free, environmentally friendly white vinegar for cheap to handle a good portion of my cleaning and save our money?
Maybe back then I just wanted to spend money. After all, it’s fun to spend money. But, I don’t want to do that anymore. I see my responsibility as much bigger now — not just to save my money but to be aware of the long term impact of my consumptive habits and demands on my community. In the long run it’s that individual awareness that just might lead to more parks and community gardens instead of more pavement and unsustainable discount stores.
At least I can hope.
Tammy Stokes
Right on Tammy. Convincing my other half to use vinegar in the wash instead of fabric softener has been a struggle. Imagine that! But seriously, what exactly is the difference between shower cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, sink cleaner, window cleaner and all of the other cleaners (toxic I might add) that we’re spending ungodly amounts of money on, spraying them all over our homes and then letting our children climb all over them. There’s got to be something wrong with that.
Seriously, vinegar and borax. That’s all you need.
Whoa, what part of Spartanburg are you talking about that has so many Dollar Generals? That’s obscene!
I grew up in Roebuck, and had moved away for a while and came back a couple of years ago. When I first drove home, I was ecstatic to see that we’d finally gotten our own grocery store. No more driving 20+ minutes to pick up milk and bread at a decent price! Then when I saw the Dollar General, I thought it would be pretty convenient for the few odd things here and there that I didn’t want to drive all the way to Spartanburg for. But truth be told, I think I’ve only bought from the Dollar General about three times since it opened, and I pass it every day. And now we have a Fred’s as well within walking distance from it! And more and more fast food chains on 221 near I-26.
I expected a good number of businesses to open in Roebuck since Dorman made the move our way, but I’d hoped for smaller, possibly locally owned businesses. It would be fantastic to see one traditional Mom & Pop-type general store around here, rather than TWO “Buy Low Quality Junk You Don’t Need Here!” stores.
Also, about the vinegar: I’ve always heard that vinegar is one of those wonder-ingredients that you can do just about anything with, especially cleaning, but I’ve always been afraid of making my whole house smell like, well, vinegar. I once used it to strip wallpaper with and that smell stuck with me for weeks. Is there a way to clean with it that’s a little more nose-friendly? I’ve heard of people mixing it with lemon juice, but that seems a little too.. acidic. I’d be afraid of stripping off finishes or something.
Thanks for the link to the laundry detergent recipe! I’ve got to try that! Not only will it be a HUGE savings, but it’s definitely the “green” thing to do. All of the ingredients come in cardboard/chipboard and paper that can easily be recycled at any recycling center. Recycling plastic at my local center is kind of hit and miss on what they’ll accept, and honestly I’ve just about given up on plastic altogether.
R, I live 2 blocks from Downtown Spartanburg. (My zip code is 29306. I just put that in on the DG website and got all the locations–I have to admit that I didn’t even realize it was that bad until I did that!!)
The whole Roebuck, West Springs, Walnut Grove, Pauline, out that way area is so beautiful. We go out there to purchase local meat at the Upstate Farmers Alliance from time to time and I always leave thinking…man, what beautiful country. There are lots of working farms that honestly, I didn’t know existed until we went out there for our first meat purchase. I hope Spartanburg will cherish and protect those places!!!
As for the vinegar, I promise the smell doesn’t linger! My hubby complained at first but he’s grown to be a lover of the smell and now associates it with ‘clean.’ Some people mix their vinegar but we have a spray bottle of it straight (we’re hardcore like that!!) and we use it for everything. We have a six year old son who loves to “help” in cleaning and I have no worries with him taking the vinegar and getting to work. I mean…really…he should earn his keep!
Sometimes, though, I can’t get over how much money I used to spend on cleaning stuff. I finally accepted the fact that no matter how much I spend…I will always have to put elbow grease in the tub and shower. Some things just require me to actually scrub them…not just spray stuff and hope for the best!!
Thanks for reading and posting y’all!
t
And y’all post your tips and suggestions!! I’d love to hear what other folks are doing to save $$$ and make better choices.
I worked at the Dollar General distribution center in south-eastern Spartanburg and let me just say, under the facade of being “community leaders” and “community friendly” they are really corporate vampires that will suck the life right out of an employee.
I’ve dug ditches for under minimum wage, done roofing in extreme conditions, and worked for insane employers under hellish circumstances, and nothing was as bad as this. They’d cut breaks and lunch short, deny overtime, extremely overwork you, under pay you, tax you to death, talk down to you, and treat you like a piece of crap in general. Everyone there is miserable, hates their job, and it feels like you’re gonna be there the rest of your life, toiling away under ill conceived circumstances, working with broken equipment under threat of being fired if you dare to step out of line. I was disciplined for hurting my back!! ..and I wasn’t the only one by any means.
Thankfully, I now deliver Little Debbie snack cakes, but Wal-Mart is our cash cow. The employees there don’t seem quite as miserable, but they have just as valid complaints about so called “business ethics” practices. They speak of fearing to be fired once they reach the point of cashing in on benefits or getting close to retirement and the like. It’s just corporations in general that’s like that in overall I guess.
What’s the difference between slavery and so called “voluntary servitude” when jobs are scarce and one has to work somewhere to survive? The corporate bottom line takes into consideration profits at the expense of employees well being, no doubt. They can create a smoke screen of smiley faces and brochures about how they help the community all they want, but in reality they’re pure unadulterated slave ships, and I’m just glad I jumped overboard when I did. It was making me homicidal, with daydreams of arson. Kinda like the guy from “office space” that got his red stapler taken away.
I find it astounding when people will do anything to get a job then find any reason to hate it and quit.
It seems pushing sugar, bleached flour and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil doesn’t bother you, yet.
It didn’t take any effort what so ever to hate that job. It was a soul sucking Orwellian nightmare, plain and simple. With a turnover rate of over 95% I hung in there for a year and a half out of necessity.
I just wanted to show a different aspect of this story here, not only are these stores peddlers of cheap crap, but they are dispensers of doom and gloom employment. It’s no life to live being subjected to that kind of atmosphere and I’m glad to be the hell out of there.
Milton! That’s the guy from Office Space. I love that movie.
You can also add essential oils to your vinegar solution to help mask the smell of vinegar. Usually the smell goes away as it dries- it make have stuck around when stripping wallpaper because of a chemical or the surface on the wall?
Great article, Tammy!
Aww, everyone is always hating on Dollar General!
Nah, I don’t think I have ever even been in a Dollar General (I’m more a Dollar Tree kinda guy…just kidding, although I did used to go in the Dollar General in the mall and a few times I’ve been in the one by Target).
But I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that Dollar General as a company holds a strong presence in the Upstate business base. For those of you that don’t know, in 2004 Dollar General put a capital investment of $70 million into Union County to open a regional distribution center in Jonesville, which employs 600+ workers. Through my own work in various areas I have known several working-class families in Union and Spartanburg Counties who work there which enables them to support their families. The economy in Union is god-awful for many people and Dollar General has given people opportunities they would not otherwise have. So shopping at Dollar General is not a sin when you think that you are helping lots of people in our community have jobs to put food on their tables.
As for Dollar General opening up on Country Club Rd., well I don’t live in the area myself, but to offer my two cents I don’t think it is a big deal. It’s not like it is going to be opened up inside the Country Club of Spartanburg, who seem to be making the most complaints about it. And isn’t there already a Citgo station on the road across from where the Dollar General would be…I’ve talked to three people I know who live in Country Club of Spartanburg about this issue–all three said they have no problem whatsoever with Dollar General opening up. Frankly it’s a big subdivision set away from the Dollar General location and it’s not really that big of a deal to them. One of the guys I talked to is also a big residential developer and his take on it is that it’s not going to affect property values since the neighborhood is much more secluded then it has been made out to be.
The distribution center you mention is the one I worked at for a year and a half, and if you know anyone who works there they will quickly echo my sentiments I’m sure.
The only people who stay are the ones who desperately need a job to the point where they will put up with all the dirty handed crap they dish out. I know there is BS with most jobs, and I’ve worked a lot of those, but this, by far, takes the cake. Just ask somebody, they’ll confirm, and probably elaborate more then you’d like to hear. I’m holding back, as I could write a whole book about it.
Oh yeah, the DG distribution center in Union is horrible. I work in Union and hear they treat their employees very poorly. They come to the south because they can treat workers like crap and not be held accountable.
So, there’s even more reason to not support them.
Well that is your opinion. An ironic one at that, given what I can tell your political bent is. I’ve heard differently about what goes on at Dollar General. Ironic that you wouldn’t realize that there would be alot more people out of work in the Upstate if it wasn’t for companies like Dollar General.
And they are a Tennessee company, so they were in the south already.
In the time that it was the hardest to find a job I chose to go broke rather then stay there a minute longer, after a year and a half. That must say something at least.
Luckily I got by till I found something else, delivering little debbie snack cakes now, I love it. Now I’m not battling homicidal urges, whoo hoo! Life is a piece of cake*
Oh yeah, and the Germans took over DG earlier this year. Things got a lot worse when that happened, but it was still really bad to begin with. Of course my personal experience was in the shipping department, the hardest department with the highest turnover rate there. Maybe if I were that guy who makes sure the bar code stickers are right side up on the boxes coming down the line things would have been better. Although he was beyond retirement age and living paycheck to paycheck, he didn’t complain much. That was probably due to his accepting his fate in that hellhole long ago though. Not me though, that place can burn for all I care.
Just because a company employs people, doesn’t automatically make it good. I don’t know a thing about how Dollar General treats its employees, but just because they are an “employer” doesn’t give them an automatic pass and mean we have to like them.
And every company has their place, even Dollar General, but there are alternatives. While you’re buying your crap at the D.G., I’ll just not buy crap.
I don’t know from personal experience how DG treats their employees but I’ve been told my brother-in-law who worked there and from my students who worked there that it is horrible. Pretty much like chAng said.
I agree with JC–just because a company employs people doesn’t always mean it’s good.They make billions yet fail to pay their employees a living wage and offer crappy benefits. I prefer to not take part in that.
Now more than ever, I think we can all pretty much appreciate the idea that any job is better than no job at all. Especially those of us with a penchant for roofs and running water and such. But there are other things to consider as well. Love it or hate it, I wonder how many jobs the mafia has created. Legitimate jobs, at that. Or Planned Parenthood. Or The Mustang Ranch and the Bunny Ranch. Or black market transplants. Or drug pushers. I’m not saying that I’m for or against any of these, but they’re controversial for a reason.
The face of Dollar General that you and I see every day is a store that is convenient and cheap and nothing more. And that’s enough for some people. But it’s not quality merchandise and the company’s ethics are questionable at best.
So the next time you are considering saving nineteen cents on your toilet paper, you could also consider spending that nineteen cents at Target, which treats their employees very well, offers lots of great benefits, pays a reasonable wage, recycles all their cardboard, and donates millions to reputable charities and local schools. Perhaps if more people were willing to donate a quarter to ethics, a new Target location could open up and the 600+ DG Distribution employees could go work there instead. Also small businesses could have a chance to thrive where the DG retail stores once stood.
I’m not even going to chime in on shopping at DG or elsewhere. I don’t like DG because although they seem like a “neighborhood store,” when I asked if I could put up a poster advertising a workshop for an event I organized for local farmers, they refused. No posters for any community events, the manager told me, according to corporate rules. That says DG doesn’t really care about the communities where they do business.
Actually, that’s a rule that I pretty well understand. I used to work at Spencers in Westgate and Haywood, and people were CONSTANTLY asking us to put up posters or set out flyers for all kinds of events, usually concerts. If we let everyone do it, the entire store would be littered with ads all day, every day. And it wouldn’t be right for us to pick and choose.
But on the other hand, how many people really make that request at DG? And plus, it’s definitely true that Spencers doesn’t care about its community at all (aside from hopefully making people laugh), so if you want to make that comparison about DG…
I work in an office downtown, and we have posters from community events in our storefront window. We are not bombarded by requests; we do it as a service to the community. And as you say, Spencer’s and DG don’t care about their communities. I put up posters with some regularity in local stores who do care, and I will shop in those stores, not in DG and Spencer’s.
I will say that there’s no particular reason not to shop at Spencers; they just don’t put in any extra effort to help their community. They do recycle their cardboard from shipments, though lol.