Could Walmart and Fox News be in here?

Some of the Most Hated Companies in America — Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

We hated Rush Limbaugh — but we still listened. We know fast food makes us fat — but we eat it anyway.

We hate fossil fuels, GMO’s, oil spills, gas leaks, coal fired plants, hydraulic fracturing, liver and Wall Street.

Yet, whether we like it or not, we all use the products and services of the very companies we claim to despise so much in our daily discourse.

Here are some of those most hated companies in America.

McDonald’s

The Golden Arches are always in the news during election years. The company is a prime target for the “raise the minimum wage” crowd.

Workers walked out across the country last year demanding a starting wage of $15 an hour.

Just to show the company is not completely without compassion for its entry level burger flippers it set up a hotline to assist employees with managing their meager finances.

Some notable suggestions — sell possessions or go on food stamps.

Big Mac doesn’t mean big heart.

Fox News

To millions of devoted leftists Fox News is the antiChrist.

A disingenuous collection of on-air miscreants that shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a TV Camera or microphone.

Lying, pontificating, judgmental, hateful, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, misinformation provocateurs, fake news manipulators, cleverly disguised as news shepherds spewing their dishonest pablum to the misinformed and unintelligent masses hopelessly sucked into their massive information wake.

And you get the “Pillow Guy” too.

I’m sure there are a ton of adjectives Fox haters could have easily added to that little rant.

But they’re the number one most watched News Network (?) 24/7/365.

Where’s CNN+ when you need it?

Facebook

Facebook started out as the darling of social media. Quickly kicking My Space to the curb.

Pictures of our food, our animals doing stupid things, what’s not to like?

The Facebook juggernaut rolled across the globe faster than Alexander the Great conquering the then known world.

Old and young finally had a voice. High school reunions, former workmates, families were able to connect daily, hourly, minutely.

For a time, it became a national addiction. Three fourths of the world communicating on Facebook.

Now every post is a fact checkers paradise. Say the wrong thing and you’re in Facebook jail.

I’ve managed to upset the fact checkers three times and was sent to the gray bar hotel.

TikTok will probably be the one to dethrone Facebook from its lofty perch.

But it’s also far from perfect.

TikTok

I’m certainly not a fan of TikTok. And you shouldn’t be either.

“TikTok takes advantage of every access permission you give it, collecting information about your phone’s model, screen resolution, current OS, phone number, email address, location, and even contact list.

It keeps track of things you write but don’t send.

What is TikTok but a data collection platform?

TikTok stores user data in the US and Singapore, but since it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, they’re required by law to submit user data if asked.

And while it’s important to note that there hasn’t been any clear-cut evidence of TikTok sharing data, at its core, TikTok is a ticking time bomb.”(Source)

It’s a favorite among the younger generation who are never aware of the dangers of what they post.

No one seems to care it’s a Chinese company with access to everything about you.

You know — China — one of those countries that hates us.

Walmart

What’s not to like about Walmart? They are the low-priced leader with lots of “imported” products.

Walmart has scored at the bottom of customer service surveys for years.

They’re also the targets of “minimum wage” activist groups.

While Walmart claims their workers make an average wage of $12.81/per hour they fail to include part time workers.

If you include part timers the wage drops to $9/hr. on average.

To Walmart’s credit they did react positively to the negative press by promoting 35,000 part-timers to full time status.

But their stock has still been underperforming and some of that could be due to high gas prices and inflation along with supply chain disruption.

Despite that same inflation and high gas prices my local Walmart in now offering over $20 per hour to start.

Some Final Thoughts

Why is it that the bigger a company becomes the more people hate it?

The reason it got big in the first place was that it gave customers what they wanted. Products we all needed and wanted at affordable prices.

But somewhere along the line on the road to bigness the company started to make money.

Its business model worked — but to some people the amount of money being made was just too much.

And who decides how much is too much?

Would the model still work with higher pay and more benefits creating higher prices on the shelf or the drive-thru?

Sounds like forced inflation to me.

I agree that some CEO contracts seem to be off the wall when they lose company money and still get raises and stock options.

Most of us would be shown the door for our poor performance rather than receiving a “golden parachute.”

Is there a company out there you hate? Let me know in the comments.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and that you’ll support me and other writers on Medium.

Some of the Most Hated Companies in America