MORGANTOWN, Penna. – The recent decline in the value of Wal-Mart stock has decimated company morale, threatened the social fabric of many small communities, and led thousands of Wal-Mart employees to seek other career opportunities. Wal-Mart shares dropped nearly 4 percent on Thursday, threatening their four-and-a-half-year low set in late April, and Wal-Mart employees are clearly in a sink-or-swim frame of mind.
“You bet I’ve been shopping my resume around,” said Jason Fennell, 19, a re-stock specialist on the third shift at the new Wal-Mart in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. “I’m expecting callbacks from the Cracker Barrel, Domino’s Pizza, and the Agway store. I can’t afford to be associated with a company like Wal-Mart, whose common stock has underperformed the broad market over the past two-and-a-half years for crying out loud.”
Fennel’s sense of guilt by association is common to Wal-Mart employees throughout the country. Like Fennel, many of them have begun to avoid old friends and familiar social routines. In a rural ex-urb like Morgantown, fifty miles and several turnpike exits west of Philadelphia, that means no Friday night card games at the beer distributor’s and less time spent at the fire company.
“I haven’t been to beef-and-beer nights down at the fire hall for weeks,” Fennel confided. “My buddies who work for the Target in Exton were raggin’ me pretty bad about the stock situation at Wal-Mart. Hell, even some dweeb in the management training program at Denny’s was giving me grief because he’s got more attractive stock options than I have. It was starting to get depressing. People who worked at Wal-Mart were the nearest thing to royalty around here. Now we’re social outcasts.”
Wal-Mart officials are aware of the talent drain caused by the company’s weak profit forecast and, to a lesser extent, the federal investigation of a former top executive and a series of lawsuits alleging discrimination against women. The more progressive stores in the Wal-Mart chain are seeking ways to deal with the negative effects of these issues.
“We’ve hired the grief counselor from Twin Pines high school to come in on weekends and talk to our people,” said Tim Luckenbill, associate manager of the Morgantown Wal-Mart. “We have to approach this situation proactively because some analysts think our stock won’t recover for years.”
Although most people in the Morgantown area have begun to look on Wal-Mart as a dead-end career option, a few risk takers see the company’s current difficulties as an opportunity in disguise. Rip Derringer is one of them. Derringer, 22, recently left a position as executive fry cook at the Windmill restaurant to work on the loading dock at Wal-Mart.
“Wal-Mart’s shares are trading at about eighteen times 2006 earnings estimates,” said Derringer. “That’s a 20 percent discount to Wal-Mart’s historical valuation. You’d be a fool not to load up on that buffet. Sure, there’s a little headline risk right now, but I can live with it.”
In other news, Wal-Mart has vigorously denied that its plans for opening several outlets in India are part of a cover operation designed to mask the eventual outsourcing of its complaints department to that country.
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