Well, and you have to put up with Dave. He might be an asshole if you're not drinking buddies with him, for all we know. Dave can't afford to pay me enough to put up with his toxic abusive bossiness.

Yeah, my point exactly on why someone would take a Walmart job over a Dave job.

Well, and you have to put up with your Walmart boss. S/he might be an asshole if you're not drinking buddies with them, for all we know. Walmart can't afford to pay me enough to put up with their toxic abusive bossiness, and don't offer much guarantee that the potential boss is better than Dave.

What makes it harder for many of those smaller shops is that they require the new worker to own their own tools. WalMart does not require workers to supply their own forklifts, nor bring their own mops & buckets when they start working there.

Working in "the trades" is an entirely different thing.

who the heck requires someone to own their own forklift

Walmart might be the biggest scam company in the United States — they've stolen over $100 million in unpaid overtime, and pay wages so low that they've recommend their employees utilize foodstamps. Then there are the standard corporate playbooks: a popular one is to keep a significant amount of employees just under full-time so you don't have to legally give them benefits.

There are hundreds of Dave's at corporate Walmart, and they care so little about the employees at any given location that they probably wouldn't even return an email, let alone talk to shift workers face-to-face.