Drew Magary: How the pandemic made me hate Amazon and love Walmart - SFGate

You already know that Amazon is evil, but it’s only recently that they’ve become both evil AND useless. My family went into a soft boycott of Amazon back when the pandemic started, because of their nasty habit of treating their employees like yard clippings, and because Jeff Bezos is the grand poobah of clueless rich dickheads. But my wife and I always knew that boycott couldn’t last. Amazon owns practically everything, which means that any attempt to divorce yourself from them will inevitably end with you crawling back to Bezos on your hands and knees, desperate for him to bequeath you an HP desktop printer that will break within two weeks of it arriving.

So my wife and I, card-carrying members of the privileged class, fell off the wagon late in the spring and started ordering s--t from the Death Star again. But this is where it gets weird: everything started coming late. A box of latex gloves — pretty important to have on hand during The Great Infection — arrived nine days after we ordered it, which is 9,000 weeks late in Amazon time. A dreaded Nerf my son bought ended up never arriving at all. Everything was arriving late, a cardinal sin given that Bezos built his monopoly by getting you your six-pack of tube socks faster than Dominos can deliver a lukewarm pizza.

I wanted to believe that this lateness was due to Amazon putting down the bullwhip, but LOL no California just opened up an investigation two days ago into their labor practices in the middle of covidmania. This was a strictly case of Amazon just being lousy at what they do. Bezos went in front of Congress yesterday (virtually; I’m surprised he didn’t send an $8/hour fulfillment center employee directly to Louis Gohmert’s office to testify from six inches away) to defend himself. He rolled out a nauseating bootstraps wet dream of an opening statement to legislators, and argued that, well actually, everyone in America LOVES Amazon so what’s there to bitch about? Have a light sampling:

Who do Americans trust more than Amazon “to do the right thing?” Only their primary physicians and the military.

Jeff, you asshole. The average American’s PCP is the only doctor within a 20-mile radius who takes their insurance and has an appointment sometime before next Decembruary, and our military is currently grabbing random Americans off the street like strangers with candy would. If I trust those two entities MORE than your company, well then your company is Mephistopheles. I do and it is. If you can’t even get me a discount hair dryer in a week or less, what use do I have for you? When I make a moral compromise as a consumer, I expect you to hold up your end of the goddamn bargain.

But guess what, JEFFYKINS? You can’t hurt me anymore. Turns out my wife and I stumbled upon a more humble, more principled business operation called… WALMART. We were on the hunt for a new online retail megalith from which we could order books, pool noodles, duct tape and large pallets of seltzer. Turns out Walmart has ALL that s--t. And not only does it offer fair prices — surely through ethical means! — but their s--t arrives ON TIME, if not sooner. You gotta double-check the not-so-fine print, but most items on the Walmart app come with free two-day shipping. No minimum purchase amount. No mandate to join some membership scam called SamPrime, where you get access to the entire catalog of Hallmark Channel movies on demand. None of that. You load up your cart and PRESTO! Everything Bezos just disingenuously promised before Congress, Walmart delivers. HOW’S IT FEEL TO GET YOUR S--T OWNED SO THOROUGHLY, ALIVE GIRL GUY?! The Walton family didn’t even know what the Internet WAS until two years ago!

No company in America pulls in more annual revenue than Walmart. They’re, uh, somewhat challenged when it comes to principles, but you didn’t see THEM grilled by Congress yesterday now, did you? Their employees did that already! That’s just how faster Walmart is at turnaround than their 21st century nemesis. Walmart is nearly 60 years old. They know HOW to be evil. They know how to suppress wages and cut corners with the kind of ruthless efficiency I expect from my local mom-and-pop cartel. Also, they employ four times as many people as Amazon. So really, when I buy rubber spatulas and wall anchors from Walmart, I’m supporting our DELIVERY FRONTLINE HEROES. Really, I’m a hero when you think hard about it.

Like Amazon, Walmart uses third party vendors for certain items. But over HALF of Amazon’s sales come through these third parties. Amazon allegedly trawls these vendors for gratis consumer data, and then takes such an onerous cut of the sales that these same vendors are forced to choose between selling their wares at a razor-thin margin or not at all. Worst of all, for ME, the shipping and return process for these vendors through Amazon is a bigger gamble than ordering fish tacos at a chain hotel restaurant. With Walmart, everything is much clearer. I know right away if that joint compound I got is NOT eligible for free next day shipping because I’m actually buying it through HardwareDaemon386. And if I do buy it from ol’ HD386 and it turns out to be tainted with molasses, I can return it with minimal fuss.

THIS is how a monopoly should operate. While Bezos grows ever richer as the rest of us suffer, his own goliath has grown flabby and unreliable. And that’s the greatest crime of all. You had one job, Bezos: to make the trucks run on time. But you f--ked up, and so the Waltons are my mercantile parents now. Give America its money back.

DISCLOSURE: When I self-published a novel in April, I HAD to go through Amazon because no one would have bought it otherwise. They’ll always find a way to get you by the balls.

Drew Magary is an in-house columnist for Medium’s GEN magazine, and a former writer for both Deadspin and GQ. His third novel, Point B, came out in April.

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