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Suppliers and manufacturers need to show benevolence to their communities. I work in a small family-run business with three stores in a metropolitan area. We are known for service and integrity in business, the stuff you don't always find in big-box store operations. Build relationships with customers and the community, and treat them fairly. We sell products similar to or the same as the big-box retailers, but we also sell our service and relationships. Integrity, having a business identity, and creativity are integral to survival and success. Look for your locally owned businesses.

Mathew Scamahorn
Portland, Oregon

Congratulations to your magazine and Charles Fishman on this fine story. I'm an American who experienced the decades of prosperity in the Midwest following World War II, when hard work and ingenuity seemed to be inevitably rewarded. It has been tragic to see cities and even states fold up and decay--no factories, no work, no way to keep families going.

"The description of the Wal-Mart meeting area, with its discarded lawn chairs, is chillingly degrading."

Your endorsement of even one courageous stand by an American who follows in our best traditions is heartening. The description of the Wal-Mart "meeting" area for visitors, with its discarded lawn chairs, is chillingly degrading and throwaway. It visually captures the essence of Wal-Mart's degrading ethos. Thank you for getting this story out to the public through the AOL welcome screen. It was refreshing and heartening to me to read your article and to see it in this venue, which spans the world and is read by millions.

Marilyn Lowen
New York, New York

Wal-Mart helps support all of us in the not-so-rich category. If some of us didn't have that $99 Wal-Mart lawn mower, our yard wouldn't get mowed for some time. I have three children and a husband. If it wasn't for Wal-Mart, I would suffer and so would many others. The prices have to stay low somewhere. If not, your middle class will be low class, and your low class will be what? A certain store sells Copper Key clothing for four times more money than Wal-Mart. It's the same shirt, but with a different tag. Wal-Mart may have gotten rich off of helping the not so rich, but it's better than not helping and getting rich off all of us. Ask Mr. Snapper how much it really costs to make a $500 lawn mower.

Heather Fletcher
Winter Haven, Florida

It was amusing to read about this boob from Snapper refusing to sell his lawn mowers at Wal-Mart because of his ongoing bias and bitterness toward the success of this retailer.

I enjoy Wal-Mart. Those who don't must prefer government regulation to the free market.

Either that, or maybe they just don't know how to compete.

Frank DeCaro
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Charles Fishman is a disgrace. He appeared to do little if any research for his article on Wal-Mart lawn mowers. I don't work at Wal-Mart, never have. I don't own Wal-Mart stock. I do have a lawn mower purchased from Wal-Mart for about $125 seven years ago. Annual maintenance has been the cost of a sparkplug and 20 minutes' labor. I figure it will last about 20 years. Fishman, who referred to my mower as disposable, obviously did no research. His "hate Wal-Mart" attitude permeates his writing.

J. Brinson
Wilmington, North Carolina

Generations

Millennials? ("Scenes From the Culture Clash," January/February) I am a mid-boomer parent of three of them, so I know what they are all about. Any working parent of millennials should not be surprised. I don't ever expect to turn up at any of my offsprings' employers, but I certainly feel qualified to advise my kids as they start their careers. It's up to them to decide what to do with the advice. Generation gaps of the past aside, the best way to know about and get along with a younger generation is to have participated in creating it.

David Wright
Kitchener, Ontario

I strongly disagree with your conclusion that businesses "have to" adapt to the "work habits" of these overgrown children. We live in a global economy. There are millions of Third Worlders who will likely do a better job for less money--and with less attitude. Companies should not try to accommodate them, either. The HR person who was called 17 times by that employee's mother should have just summarily fired him.

Your article was so overtly biased toward the idea that the corporate world should continue to wipe these overgrown babies' butts that I wonder if the writer is either a millennial or the mother of one.

Personally, I think their inability to cope with reality has less to do with emails, video games, and whatnot than it does with their idiot parents and teachers having awarded them trophies for just breathing. Let the real world chew 'em up and spit 'em out, just like it did with my generation and all previous ones. It'll do them some good.

Robin B. Shore
Everett, Massachusetts