Hugo Meunier - Walmart: Diary of an Associate

WALMART

WALMART

DIARY OF AN ASSOCIATE

HUGO MEUNIER * TRANSLATED BY MARY FOSTER

FERNWOOD PUBLISHING
HALIFAX & WINNIPEG

Copyright 2019 Hugo Meunier, Mary Foster

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Editing: Jessica Antony
Cover design: Housefires Design & Illustration
Printed and bound in Canada
eBook: tikaebooks.com

Originally published in French by Lux diteur, Montreal, 2015

Published by Fernwood Publishing
32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0
and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3

www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Walmart : diary of an associate / Hugo Meunier.

Other titles: Walmart. English

Names: Meunier, Hugo, author.

Description: Translation of: Walmart : journal dun associ. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190046333 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190046376 | ISBN 9781773631325

(softcover) | ISBN 9781773631332 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773631349 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Wal-Mart (Firm) | LCSH: Retail tradeQubec (Province)MontralEmployees. | LCSH:

Discount houses (Retail trade)Qubec (Province)MontralEmployees. | LCSH: Working poorQubec

(Province)Montral.

Classification: LCC HF5429.215.C3 M4813 2019 | DDC 381/.14906571428dc23

CONTENTS

To my family, who supports me in my awkward projects; to the Saint-Lonard associates; and to Eddie Vedder.

Kyle: We dont want Wall-Mart in our city.

Receptionist: Who does?

South Park, Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, Season 8, Episode 9, 2004

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Sam Walton

FOREWORD

WHAT IF I TRY TO GET HIRED AT WALMART?

The idea was proposed in a windowless office in the La Presse building one day in 2012. Katia, my boss, greeted it with a raised eyebrow. She was no doubt trying to understand what motivates me or was considering whether such a move would generate a story attracting interest. She hesitated. But I was on a roll.

I had just finished a story on a disturbing explosion of youth steroid consumption. I was particularly proud of the title, Le secret est dans la sauce (The Secret is in the Sauce). The reference was to a 1990s American film, Fried Green Tomatoes , in which a wrong-doer is minced up and cooked in a sauce, which the waitresses of a small-town greasy spoon then try to get their customers to swallow (literally). In the world of oversized biceps, sauce refers to steroids, which also carves bodies, though in an entirely different sense.

I like field reporting. I like going out to meet people, especially those we talk a lot about but never bother to really get to know. Lance Armstrong was doping to make millions. Big deal. I leave such mundanities to others. But the kid from Boucherville and the Pointe-Calumet beach club members why do they shoot steroids? Thats less obvious. I want to know. My boss, also excited by field reporting, didnt leave me hanging long. She agreed to the Walmart project; this was not a self-evident decision, because it meant assigning a journalist to a single story for three months. But opportunity makes the thief. Masochists ready to trade the air-conditioned comfort of a newsroom for a minimum-wage job with a non-standard work schedule dont grow on trees.

Immersion journalism is long-haul, thankless work. Weeks of work may produce no story worth publishing. I have nevertheless made it my speciality over the years. Im in my element; Im like a fish in water, or a Liberal minister at a fundraising cocktail.

Dont count on me to spot the hot scoop in a report, even if the key information is marked hot scoop in multicoloured balloon letters. On the other hand, I have a certain talent for melting into the anonymous masses. Already when I was scribbling for weeklies, I infiltrated a shelter for homeless youth in Laval for several days. Because Laval not only has bungalows, in-ground pools, the horrible Centropolis, corruption and artificial tanning, it also has homeless people.

An imposter named Mathieu, reads the front page of the Courrier Laval . In the photo, I can be seen from the back, hair long and tangled, with a sleeping mat (?!?) under my arm, at the entrance to the centre, which is now closed. Mathieu was the name of my unfortunate made-up persona. I was caught by surprise when the woman at the front desk asked for my name and came up with it in the spot. I then refused to provide the full identity of a friend, the next request. This first experiment in infiltration had certain failings.

I learned the hard way, that very evening, that you cant pass for someone else simply by changing your name and neglecting to comb your hair. In the dormitory I shared with five others real homeless people the disguise was soon suspected:

Hey Mathieu! You arent a journalist by any chance? asked my neighbour, as casually as a smoker asks for a light.

Um, nooo, why?

I dont know. You just dont seem like the rest of us.

When I ended up at La Presse a few years later, I made a name for myself by infiltrating Justin Trudeaus marriage, and then one of Guy Laliberts legendary parties on the margins of the Grand Prix. Fortunately, I had refined my immersion techniques, although it might also be easier to pass unnoticed in high society than among the poorest.

Justin and Sophie didnt want their marriage in an Outremont church to become a media spectacle. Justin Trudeau therefore offered an exclusive for his sumptuous wedding to a gossip magazine. Well just see about that, my boss of the time may have muttered to himself, just like a bad film, before ordering me to figure out how to attend the private ceremony. My mission: steal a march on the gossip magazine; publish the entire story of the pseudo-royal wedding in the following days edition; secure the triumph of freedom of the press over its censors.

As a new kid on the block, I was unfortunately unable to refuse such an assignment, though the story was light years away from my journalistic ideal. I resigned myself the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the famine in Niger, and the war in Iraq would have to wait and jumped into my car to go rent a gala suit at the nearest tuxedo rental store.

A suit, no, a tuxedo with a top coat, I asked the clerk, who was only too happy to do quick and easy business. Two hundred bucks later, I barged into the entranceway of the church, just before the wedding march (Mendelssohns version) started up.

Concealed behind imitation Ray-Bans, I discreetly spied on a species of human that has no idea what having to tighten your belt means.

Your name? asked a young woman, armed with a guest list and marker.