Approximately a year ago I was contacted about being the CFO for Wal-Mart's real estate company. Just the annual capital budget ran approximately $6 billion. It also had a large staff--approximately 150 people. Anyway after several telephone interviews Wal-Mart asked me to fly out and meet them.

I ended up taking a flight out of a west coast airport that got me into Northern Arkansas airport at something like 10:00. Let me tell you it is dark in Northern Arkansas at 10:00 P.M. and I got lost driving to Bentonville. Now this is kind of funny since I have lived on four continents and travel the world with a map and hardly ever get lost. I currently fly all over the country to some of its major cities and never get lost, but it was so dark and the road signs if they existed at all were so small I could not see them. Anyway, to make a long story short I get to my room at approximately 1:00 am.

It is a $50 room even though there is a Hilton Inn down the road which might cost $20 more but would be a much better room. There is a lot of noise from pick-ups driving around at night with modified exhausts (even though I live in a major city I am from a similar area so I am not an elitist). Anyway I get up at 5:30 am so I am lucky to have 3 hours of sleep.

I drive to Wal-Mart and start the interviews at 8:00 am. These last for 8 hours. Lunch is a bottle of water and a protein bar which I ate while walking down a hall. I finally get out and have to drive to the airport. I make it back to the airport and have a raging headache. I catch a flight somewhere around 7:00 am. I am worn out by the time I get back to the west coast.

Now this is the kicker. I never ever hear back from them. Not even a “Thanks but no Thanks” letter and even though they have my email address I don’t even receive a two word email like "You suck." Nothing!

Now I have my own consulting business and at that time I was very busy. A chargeable day could bring in a significant sum when I am working on a project like I was at that time. So in my case time really is money. The HR department had a large number of executive recruiters and support. What would it have taken to send an email?

In summary, I was very unsure about Wal-Mart. I knew they treated their staff even worse than most retailers and they have a turnover of close to 50% or more a year. I also do not support bringing in all of the goods from basically what I look at as slave labor camps (I am a true believer that if people do not pay employees a decent wage there will soon not be anyone in this country to buy anything). Finally, I find the quality of the goods leaving much to desire. Also going from the west coast and NYC where we lived previously to NM Arkansas would have been a big change.

With that said my mother had cancer surgery a few months before and I would have been closer to where she now lives. We are both from the South Central part of the United States and so it was not like we have never been in this culture before. Also, we are kind of burned out with the West Coast and thought the change would be interesting. But after never hearing anything from them, all I can think is if this is how you treat let us say one of the top 30 or so executives in the organization then how do you treat the bottom level of people who work in your stores. The whole of Wal-Mart is just an extension of the slave labor environment in China.