A Roanoke Wal-Mart cashier heard of, and convinced her manager to copy, German Wal-Marts’ practice of passing out “red bows” to singles on otherwise-slow Friday nights. Singles would put the bow on their carts to indicate their motive, and meet at specially designated “flirt points” in the store; the events attract hundreds of customers. Roanoke’s “Singles Shopping” program was also a huge success, attracting shoppers who would drive from hours away to attend—until corporate headquarters abruptly demanded the weekly event be cancelled. Alas, the chain doesn’t explain itself, and the AP doesn’t try to speculate, but I’d wager pretty good money that it was the fear of lawsuits like this one or this one that squelched the practice. The AP’s condensed version of the original Roanoke Times story is kinder to Dale Firebaugh, because it omits the fact that he was so heart-broken over the cancellation that he purchased a 26-cent red bow and stood by the door hoping someone would recognize the symbol. Is he another victim of the liability crisis, or is there a different economic reason we’re missing? Perhaps love-smitten shoppers purchase less, though one would think the increased traffic makes up for it given the success of the program elsewhere. Comments open for the limited purpose of inviting readers to use their imagination for what might have motivated this decision other than liability fears. (AP/MSNBC, Jul. 23; Marques G. Harper, “Apparently, the cost of love can’t be discounted”, Roanoke Times, Jul. 22; Courtney Cutright, “Find milk, soap – a mate? at the Roanoke Wal-Mart”, Roanoke Times, Jul. 15; Rex Bowman, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jul. 23 & Jul. 25; Pete Dybdahl, “Wal-Mart: ‘It was time to move on'”, Roanoke Times, Jul. 28; Parija Bhatnagar, “Lookin’ for a cheap date? Try Wal-Mart”, CNN/Money, Apr. 7; “Wal Mart to Hold Singles Shopping Night”, Chosun (English version), Jul. 7) (hat-tip to PG, whose link to the AP story gave me the idea).
“Singles Shopping” Nixed
A Roanoke Wal-Mart cashier heard of, and convinced her manager to copy, German Wal-Marts’ practice of passing out “red bows” to singles on otherwise-slow Friday nights. Singles would put the bow on their carts to indicate their motive, and meet at specially designated “flirt points” in the store; the events attract hundreds of customers. Roanoke’s […]
6 Comments
I think Wal-Mart more likely feared complaints from people who didn’t want their own shopping experiences to require dodging Mr. and Ms. Lonelyhearts. Many venues sponsor singles events without much trouble and as far as I know, without litigation. (Heck, I attend a “youth conference” every year that essentially tries to get all the 20somethings matched up. They’re going to be overwhelmed with liability in 10 years if all the people who married in “well I’m almost 30” haste sue.)
The difference with Wal-Mart is that they were mixing the meet market with the meat market, which is problematic. I stopped attending LGBTU meetings in college because instead of being oriented to political action, they were places for queer students to hook up. I didn’t have a problem with that, but it wasn’t what I wanted to get out of it.
Frankly I think the foreign brides programs do have some obligation to inform the women involved about their rights under U.S. law — the number who are abused and afraid to involve the law is terrible. I find those deals a little creepy to begin with, and for them to expedite the women’s exploitation by keeping them ignorant is wrong.
PG: the “red bow” system seems to solve the signalling issue. Still, your suggestion was my first thought, and is certainly plausible under some scenarios, such as if the local store made the decision. However, here, the local store went to the newspaper to publicize the event, and then abruptly cancelled it within the week after instructions from headquarters. It seems unusual for the home office to dictate to the local store that the local store is giving too much credence to one set of customers over the other—surely, the local outlet has a better sense of whether the singles program is attracting more customers than it’s alienating, and Wal-Mart’s problem in the past has been a lack of, rather than a surplus of, micro-management. Moreover, if it were, as you suggest, company policy for Wal-Mart not to have singles events because it didn’t want to inconvenience some customers, that doesn’t explain why the store is continuing the program in Germany and rolling it out in other nations. So I have to reject “alienating non-singles” as an explanatory theory here.
While other organizations have singles events, they don’t have quite the deep pockets that Wal-Mart does, so are both less likely to be a target and less likely to have eight-digit downside risk. I don’t think we’re that far from seeing the smaller organizations see suits for failure to screen.
In short, I think that WM had no problem with singles meeting. However, it seems to me that Wal-Mart worried that other groups — some opposed to WM, some opposed by local community members — would demand equal use of WM as a meeting place.
It would become just another hammer to slam down on WM… It’s not a matter of liability; it’s a matter of people believing that WM is some form of public-use forum.
I think everyone is reading more into this than they should. WalMart is a conservative company run by a conservative family. Perhaps they just don’t like the idea of the stores being used as pick-up joints. While tey can’t prevent people from meeting at a WalMart or anywhere else, they don’t have to facilitate it. The store in question is in the bible belt and the company probably wanted to protect it’s image. Things are a bit more liberal in Germany. Local policies for local conditions.
I think everyone is reading more into this than they should. WalMart is a conservative company run by a conservative family. Perhaps they just don’t like the idea of the stores being used as pick-up joints. While tey can’t prevent people from meeting at a WalMart or anywhere else, they don’t have to facilitate it. The store in question is in the bible belt and the company probably wanted to protect it’s image. Things are a bit more liberal in Germany. Local policies for local conditions.
The local store may have felt that they were getting more people into the store with the program than they were losing customers, while the national HQ or regional office may have been hearing more of the complaints and less of the praise. Different information going to different levels.
I agree that this also may reflect WM’s desire to maintain a more conservative image within the U.S. than it necessarily has abroad. The “public use” idea is dubious, considering that this is a program run by Wal-Mart itself, not by some outside group. WM apparently has many kinds of promotions and community events; this is just the first one of which I’ve heard that offended some members of the community.
Surely companies like Match.com and its ilk would be getting sued out of existence if such litigation were a realistic problem, but the disclaimer “Match.com is not responsible for the conduct, whether online or offline, of any user of the Website or Member of the Service” seems to suffice. Dating services are very different from foreign bride programs; the power differential alone is tremendous with regard to the person who is in the U.S. and the woman being shipped from overseas.