Shop around the clock or until you drop!

Have a craving for socks and underwear at 4 am? Well if you want to plan ahead and make a drive you can fill your nocturnal hour wishes

Wal Mart Canada is taking the Christmas shopping experience to 24 hours beginning December 1st, with 80 of their 278 locations staying open around the clock until Christmas.

In a press release issued yesterday Wal Mart's Canadian senior vice president of Operations Syvain Prud'homme suggested that "One way to get into the holiday spirit is to take the stress out of shopping," stress that apparently can be relieved by all access shopping whenever the urge strikes we assume, "We hear again and again, the single most meaningful change we can make for holiday shoppers is to deliver convenience. What's more convenient than a store open whenever you're ready to shop?"

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Cynics might answer have enough cashiers to get a customer out within 24 hours but we digress..

So far the closest that the North Coast can get to a 24 hour Wal Mart experience is the Prince George store, which begins its round the clock openings on December 1st.

Wal Mart suggests that shoppers consult their up to date list after December 5th, to see if the Terrace operation joins in on the round the clock frivolity.

So whether you're a last minute shopper, one of those procrastinating shoppers or just someone with a little too much time on your hands, there's now a Wal Mart greeter (perhaps Jack Bauer) with your cart at the ready whenever you are.

The Wal Mart Watchers!

We’ll take one part J Edgar Hoover with a splash of G Gordon Liddy, when it comes to internal security at America’s largest big box chain. The folks at Wal Mart security could probably give seminars at the CIA or FBI, if only for the reason that so many of them came from those organizations originally!

While browsing the portals of the net this morning I came across a link on The Tyee website, which featured a story by Michael Barbaro of the New York Times .

Barbaro has put together a list of reports on the no messing around investigative policies of Wal Mart and found that there are over 400 employees tasked to investigating employees who may run astray of Wal Mart’s code of ethics.

It’s a piece that features security officials listening at hotel doorjambs, a war room that featured a bank of television sets like the FBI might have and shows how far the company will go to protect its image and prosecute those that threaten the Wal Mart way.

One target of the Wal Mart security squad calls “Wal Mart the ultimate in Big Brother in America.” Which is saying quite a lot. considering what many say about the federal government and its agencies in the US some days.

It’s an interesting look at corporate security and how far a company may be prepared to go to protect what it believes is its corporate structure and code.

However, it might make you wonder the next time that the Wal Mart greeter acts so darn friendly and leave one with cause to wonder what’s happening the next time you hear a PA announcement at your local Wal Mart and they call for security!