I Hate Walmart, So I Love This Story

I detest Walmart anyway, utterly reprehensible in my opinion for so many considerations. I refuse to shop there despite lowest prices every day and always, even for some of them thar mostest fantastic of sales. That's why I find such delight in stories such as this, one more item on my list of whys and wherefores my boycotting.

From some Walmart Supercenter in Connecticut, a local guy there bought a buttload of $10 gift cards to pass out arbitrarily to the store's Christmas shoppers as they came in, his own spin on putting into practice random acts of kindness.

Cool idea, until he was ordered by management to stop doing that after the employees noticed him handing over the cards to unwary strangers. Scary the concept of wanton holiday gifting apparently.

Barry Goldberg said he had bought them, all $1,300 worth of the gift cards, to give away as a gesture of goodwill for handing out to customers in the store's lobby.

“I figured let me see if I can’t make a difference in peoples’ lives, for the better. A lot of people couldn’t believe that there’s actually people that exist in this world that are going to share in a random act of generosity and not look for anything in return,” he said.

After only half an hour spent inside before being asked to leave, he alternately then took it outdoors to the parking lot instead. Until of course he was finally directed again by store officials to vacate the premises altogether.

A Walmart spokesman did verify the whole bother, justified even the reason for the store's actions banning Goldberg's carrying out his best of intentions because, well, it was not after all an official store promotion. Now there's some inarguable rationale for ya.

A Target store boss nearby, though, caught wind of this and contacted the guy, welcomed him to continue carrying on his giving at their store. So he swapped out the rest of his Walmart stash for Target cards and rather passed those out over there instead.