Neylan McBaine

When I Worked For Wal-Mart

When I interviewed for the position of Public Relations Coodinator at Walmart.com in 2000, I confused Wal-Mart with Walgreens. My interviewer, a bright Asian woman from Los Angeles, took pity on my big city, East Coast ignorance and hired me anyway. I'd never been in a Wal-Mart store and had barely heard of the company, hence the confusion. My first day on the job, I learned it was the largest retailer in the world. By, like, four times.

Working for Wal-Mart armed me with prime cocktail party trivia: How many employees does Wal-Mart have? 1.4 million. What's its annual revenue? $260 billion (in 2000). Guess how many plastic bags Wal-Mart goes through each year. Three trillion. What is the highest selling item by volume? Bananas. The Bay Area financiers who were plentiful at that time thanks to the dot com boom understood Wal-Mart to be the source of endless geeky fascination. They pestered me with questions: What percentage of revenue came from the sale of food as opposed to services or non-perishable commodities? What are the highest margin items? What are the loss leaders? My position in Public Relations armed me with the appropriate talking points and sound bites to make me the center of attention at any social event.

While I was spouting fun facts, I was also receiving an amazing business education. The CEO of Walmart.com at that time was an impressive woman who had previously been the president of Banana Republic. I revered her. My direct boss was patient, exceptional at her job and willing to train me extensively. The vice president of marketing, to whom my boss reported, was charismatic, brilliant and, surprisingly, concerned about me. Over the course of my six years with the company, he took me under his wing, shuffled me around to a number of fascinating positions and gave me a world-class marketing education. My husband, too, was taken under the wing. Elliot worked for the company himself for five years.

In spite of the Ivy League educated, top-of-the-industry leaders I got to work with during my time at Walmart.com, it was impossible to forget that we in fact all -- even the glamorous CEO lady -- worked for Mother Wal-Mart. The Arkansas Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart that had grown to rule the world through folksy principles such as the Sundown Rule (answer every communication by the end of the work day), sharing hotel rooms (even the CEO shared rooms at the La Quinta Inn, the corporate choice), and charging employees for their own photocopies and supplies (we were encouraged to use pens we collected from hotels or brought from home). Our holiday party was held in January so as to avoid the seasonal jack ups in venue prices. Corporate thrift was a way of life.

Honesty was taken seriously too. Tales circulated in our hip Silicon Valley office of buyers in Arkansas getting fired for taking the slightest gift from a vendor: tickets to a football game or a ride in a local dealer's Porche. We contrasted this with our environment where, for example, our neighbor down highway 280, Yahoo!, routinely offered opportunities to throw a ball around with the San Francisco Giants as a reward for our business. For us city slickers, it was humbling to realize that Mr. Sam, as he was affectionately and a little eerily called, had created an empire from simple ethics like honest communications between vendors and buyers, and the lowest possible price passed on to the consumer. 

Our humility knew its bounds of course. I hit my wall sitting in a meeting in our Bay Area office with two visitors from my Arkansas partner team. The lady, perhaps 45 years old with permed hair and a knit Santa Claus sweater complete with dangling bells, led the meeting from the front of the room while the boy she had brought with her sat beside me at a conference table. The boy was my age, with his elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. At the first sign of a lull in the meeting agenda, he pulled out a six inch hunting knife and right beside me began picking at his nails with the knife's tip. 

I was not immune to the darker side of working for the world's largest retailer, and as I became more intimate with our Arkansas counterparts I began to understand how the national media had gained a tight grip around the behemoth's unsuspecting throat. For every happy wedding-held-in-the-Wal-Mart-aisles story, there was an account of labor abuse or unpaid overtime. The lumbering bureaucracy always seemed surprised by the allegations spit so expertly by the media and labor unions, and the home office was more often than not unprepared with a potent comeback. At the same time, the intimacy of the largest labor force in retail was shocking: my husband, on a business trip to the Arkansas home office, found Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, sitting at a diner by himself during lunchtime. Elliot joined him for a one on one chat over hero sandwiches.  

The political position of Wal-Mart withered during the years I worked there -- through the George W. Bush presidency and environmental activism leading up to election years. While I saw all of these amazing people and principles at work every day, I came up against increased skepticism and even derision among my San Franciscan community for working for the evil giant. It was at this time that I realized that working for Wal-Mart in San Francisco was similar to being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: both have amazing people and principles, but sometimes mess up in practice. In both organizations, the fruit of their labors save people's lives -- Wal-Mart physically by improving quality of life for millions with its low prices and the Church spiritually with its Gospel message -- but as organizations they are misunderstood and misrepresented, partly due to their own unsatisfactory efforts to represent themselves. By the end of my years at Wal-Mart, saying I worked for Wal-Mart was even worse than saying I was a Mormon. For many of my colleagues, it was the first time they had to stand up for something that they knew was good but that was publicly derided. Unfortunately, I knew the feeling all too well. 

I owe a lot to my Wal-Mart experience, but I'm the first to admit that the washcloths I bought there a few weeks ago basically disintegrated in the wash. There is no doubt that Target is cuter, hipper and has way better design. Still, at 7 o'clock this morning when I forgot that I was supposed to bring fresh cut fruit to my daughter's Thanksgiving Feast at school, it was Wal-Mart that met my need. I threw my coat on over my pajamas, was in my car by 7:02am and in my local Super Center by 7:05am. There were ready-made fruit trays steps away from the friendly front door greeter, and as I brought them over to checkout, "Hello My Name Is Shawn W." yawned a friendly smile. "Early morning," I smiled back as he bagged my purchase. By 7:12am, I was home again.

The Matriarchy

"My family's a matriarchy," the cute boy told me across the Silliman College dining hall table. "The women absolutely run the show." As Elliot would later describe the dinner, I might have well have asked, "Please describe the character of your extended family in twenty words or less." I thought I had asked him out on our first date. He felt like I had invited him to audition for the role of Potential Boyfriend with an informational interview.

(I stand by my claim that the Silliman dinner was our first date. He points to our evening a week later, when he asked me to a show at the Yale Repertory Theater. Apparently I didn't grill him that night.)

For thirteen years now, I have observed the truth of my future husband's observation: despite being one of four boys with only one sister, Elliot's family is indeed a matriarchy. His grandmother, his mother, his aunts and his sister have unusual strength of character that is consistent across the generations. Now that I'm living in the bosom of the matriarchy, my observation has morphed into greater participation, and I've felt increasingly blessed to have been invited in. On Sunday, when Elliot and I spoke in our ward's Sacrament Meeting, I looked down to the first two rows of pews: my mother and stepfather were joined by my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law and my aunt-in-law, flanked with the newest generation of powerhouse ladies, my three girls. "I am part of a large, supportive Mormon family," I thought. Is this what I had imagined when the boy told me about the matriarchy so many years ago? It certainly had been a hope.

Monday afternoon I lay very still in my bed, plastic shields taped against my delicate, recovering eyes. I had just had LASIK surgery that morning. My plans for childcare after school had fallen through, and Elliot was left to manage the post-school stretch all by himself. Until he thought of his sister. Within an hour of his desperate call, his sister arrived at my door, complete with brownies and harvested treasures from her yard she thought my girls might enjoy studying. As I lay undisturbed in my bed, listening to my sister-in-law expertly save my husband from an afternoon of doom, I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed. I saw the inside of a house, green and happy, where my children laughed with their aunt. A bluegrass band appeared, like the one we used to stop and listen to at the edge of Prospect Park every Saturday morning in Brooklyn, and my girls danced to the fiddle around the green and happy living room, twirling under their aunt's raised arms and clapping at the joyous sounds. I observed the scene with satisfaction, feeling grateful my girls were loved in my absence.

When I woke, the bluegrass band was gone, but the feeling was true.

The Paradox of Choice

This morning, my family had the opportunity to present the Sacrament Meeting program in our church. Elliot and I both spoke, and Esme and Auden sang "Teach Me To Walk In the Light" with me. This is the talk I wrote for the occasion.

In March of 2004, the New Yorker magazine contained an article entitled “Select All” by Christopher Caldwell. It made such an impact on me that I tore the article from the magazine and saved it in a file so I could pull it out on a future occasion such as this.

The thesis of the article is that people are terrible at making choices. In fact, we can be paralyzed by having too many choices. “People don’t know what they want,” states the article. “The prospect of deciding often causes not just jitters but something like anguish.” Psychological studies support this claim: in one study, shoppers who were offered free samples of six different jams were more likely to buy one that shoppers who were offered free samples of twenty-four different jams. The result seems irrational -- surely you’re more likely to find something you like from a range four times as large -- but paralyzed decisionmakers can be replicated in a variety of social studies. Another example: Students who are offered six topics they can write about for extra credit are more likely to write a paper than students who are offered thirty topics.

I am sure many of you can relate to this paralysis on a daily level: in our consumer culture, we are bombared with so many different brands and choices -- Do I get the sugar free? The trans fat free? The caffiene free? The organic? The free range? -- that sometimes we just walk away without purchasing anything at all because the weight of the decision seems more trouble than its worth. Is this real freedom?

This idea -- the idea that we can be paralyzed by having too many choices -- hit me as a divine truth when I read this article in 2004. For years, I had felt confused and torn by my inability to pick a clear path for my life. I seemed to have the world at my fingertips and I couldn’t understand why that didn’t make me happier. I really just wanted someone to tell me what to do!

In 2004, I was married and had recently had my first child. I had gone to Yale for college, where I had repeatedly been told I could be anything I wanted to be. I felt the pressure of expectation. I was a leader of tomorrow. I was going to do something great with my life, and I was given every tool possible to make that happen: amazing classmates, professors, study opportunities. My parents also contributed to filling my well to the brim: as an only child growing up in New York City, I traveled extensively, went to the best schools, saw the best art, and had the best teachers. If I wanted to study ballet, I went to New York City Ballet’s school. As a pianist, I attended the Juiliard School. New York kids are brought up to know just how great their world is.

I absolutely loved my childhood. And I’m not just saying that because my mom is sitting in the first row! It was an enchanted way to grow up. But when I was finally turned out on my own, I felt an intense burden to do something amazing. After all, I’d had all these amazing resources poured into me. But there were so many things I could do, so many paths! I love music -- should I make that my life’s pursuit? I was an English major in college -- should I write? I was interested in business -- how about trying out a job in marketing? In 2004, I had just had my first baby. Should I stay home with her (which I was not good at!) or keep doing a job I am good at? I was so confused and disheartened. I wished I had a lighthouse steering me through the night, pointing me in the direction I should take my life. I wanted my options to be limited so it would be easier to choose a path.

I was paralyzed by choices. On the surface, it seems like such a wonderful problem to have! I can do so many things! I can be whoever I want to be! But this is the very irrationality pointed out in the article: these choices, whether they be what kind of jam to buy or which life path to take, can create real anguish in the person doing the choosing. As the New Yorker article states, “The paradox of choice is not limited to the shopping aisle. It helps explain why so many people at age thirty are still flailing about, trying to choose a career -- and why so many marriageable singles wind up alone. You await a spouse who combines the kindness of your mom, the wit of the smartest person you met in grad school, and the looks of someone you dated in 1983 (as she was in 1983)... and you wind up spending middle age by yourself, watching the Sports Channel at 2AM in a studio apartment strewn with pizza boxes.”

So what does this image of this poor single guy have to do with the Gospel? The “paradox of choice” is one of the most powerful tools Satan has to lure us away from obeying the commandments of God here on the earth. It is the very essence of Satan’s plan: convince us that God’s commandments are confining, stifling, limiting to our happiness. Convince us that if we had no obligations, if there were no commandments, that we would be free, that we would be happier, that we could allow ourselves to be who we really are, not what God’s narrow rules tell us to be. Commandments are a buzz kill! They put us in a box! Choosing from twenty four different types of jams is so much more liberating than choosing from six types! In other words, the devil tries to conjure within us the anguish we feel having to choose from twenty-four different types of jam, in, of course, a more infinite and existential paradigm.

We talk so much in the Church about studying the character of Christ so that we can be more like Him. But what about studying the character of Satan so that we can better understand how he can affect us and work on us? One of the great truisms in the study of English literature is that the character of Satan is the most interesting character in John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost, and one of the first well-rounded characters in modern literature. What if we apply a character study to Satan as he appears in the scriptures? What do we learn? The character of Satan appears two significant times in the Bible and both times Satan evokes the paradox of choice to try to get his subjects to bend to his will.

Let’s look at the first instance. In his interaction with Eve in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempts Eve with a question that assumes more is always better. In Genesis 3 we read: “Now the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” As Camille Fronk Olson states in her book, Women of the Old Testament, “Satan suggests that a restriction from God means He is withholding valuable opportunities. A loving God would certainly allow His children access to every experience. Satan tries to convince Eve that God selfishly withholds blessings and power by not giving us unconditional access to every option at all times.” In essence, Satan tells Eve, “What sort of loving God withholds choices? Being able to choose from every tree in the garden will make you happier!”

Satan proves himself to be a one trick pony when he returns to the narrative in the New Testament. Before Jesus begins His ministry, we read in Matthew chapter 4 that He goes up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. “And again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto Jesus, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” It seems that the very definition of temptation is to be offered something outside our realm of righteous choices, something that we think God would let us have if He really loved us, but that He withholds from us because He is irrational, unjust or just plain fickle. In other words, more is always better.

The scriptures teach us an entirely different lesson, however. One of the central tenants of the gospel is that commandments make us free, not in the sense that Satan offers freedom, but in the sense that Nephi specifies: We are free to choose liberty and eternal life, or to choose captivity and death. Just as having too many choices in the supermarket can lead to greater confusion and indecision, having no guidelines in our earthly agency can lead to spiritual confusion. Nephi further explains the purpose of limitations: “If ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.” (2 Nephi 2:12) The Lord states it most succinctly in Doctrine and Covenants 98: 8 when He says, “The law maketh you free.”

Since 2004, I have continued to be fascinated by this idea that humans are paradoxically made more unhappy given a wider range of choices. Popular culture and psychology seem to be confirming an irrational conclusion that both my personal experience and the scriptures teach me is a true principle: hitching our wagons to the Lord’s predetermined set of commandments can provide the happiest and safest path through life.

This principle has given me great comfort as I’ve spent most of my life in places that celebrate unbridled choice as the greatest indicator of liberty. My allegiance to commandments that seem to some to be arcane and outdated is puzzling to many of my peers. Exploring self, being true to self, honoring self is the religion of the day. In this religion, I should be asking myself questions like, Why shouldn’t I drink coffee if I want to? Why shouldn’t I leave my marriage if I’m no longer happy? Why shouldn’t I celebrate each person’s right to live how and with whom they want? If God loved me, wouldn’t He let me experience anything I want and choose any path I want? In the last General Conference, Elder Oaks pointedly addressed this erroneous thought process: “The effect of God’s commandment and laws is not changed to accommodate popular behavior or desires. If anyone thinks that godly or parental love for an individual grants the loved one license to disobey the law, he or she does not understand either love or law.”

I have sometimes felt lonely declaring the paradox of choice in the way I live my life, declaring that I am happier not having every lifestyle, experiment and experience open to me. But I can point to specific instances when fewer choices have led me to greater happiness. For example, my LDS friends didn’t understand my choice to go to Yale in respect to my limited dating opportunities: I had a dozen eligible LDS boys to date as opposed to the tens of thousands on the BYU campus. My non-LDS friends didn’t understand why I’d limit myself to only dating LDS boys. But one of those dozen LDS boys was the right one and deciding who to marry was one of the easiest choices I’ve ever made in my life.

On the other hand, followers of the Gospel have the responsibility to balance the commandments’ narrowed choices with the role of personal revelation and free agency in our lives. As followers of commandments, we can run the risk of becoming too afraid of choice. We become so concerned with following the letter of the law that we forget the spirit of the law. We confuse cultural expectation with doctrinal demands. Our lives can be equally confusing and disappointing if we tune out our own passions, talents, interests, drives and whisperings of personal revelation for uncontemplated conformity.

The Lord addresses this need for balance in Doctrine and Covenants 58:26 when he says, “For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.” The Lord doesn’t want blind obedience. Each of us has a specific life mission and purpose that is not cookie cutter. We need to be understanding and supportive of each other as we explore the possibilities for our lives. None of us would be here if Eve had not consciously and thoughtfully chosen to forge her own way.  The scriptures repeatedly offer examples of people who make isolated choices outside of the prescribed righteous guidelines they profess to follow: Eve of course, but also Nephi killing Laban, the Israelites forcefully invading Canaan, Abraham sleeping with Hagar to have a child. Being flexible to a point seems to be a hallmark of exercising free agency. One of my friends bucked cultural pressure and turned down the perfect marriage proposal at age 20 to pursue her interest in African anthropology. She is now an award-winning scholar, married and pregnant with her first child. Sometimes flexibility is forced upon us: June’s first baby died and she healed by diving headfirst into her professional work. She is now a worldwide expert in her field. Finding that balance between following commandments and making our own choices is one of the most intricate lessons we can glean from this life.

I recognize that I still have a long way to go to fully understand the Lord’s purpose for me and the lessons He wants me to learn in this life. But I have already come to the conclusion that staying close to the Savior is the only way we can avoid swinging to one extreme or another in this life. Neither hoarding choices in pure selfishness or abandoning choice in unconsidered conformity are paths the Savior would have us follow. Instead, He serves as the great equalizer, the great mediator between two extremes. We can find balance between following the straight and narrow path and being true to ourselves if we more fully understand the love the Savior has for each of us and His desire that we become skilled in this essential life art of making wise choices. 

Chaos Theory in a Pair of Socks

"Let your Kindergartner get creative!"

The instructions on the flyer for Crazy Sock Day seemed clear: instead of wearing a Halloween costume to school, let your child "get creative" and scratch her dress-up itch with a pair of crazy socks to wear with her usually-stringent uniform! 

Thursday night after the girls were asleep, I collected an abundance of materials. Safety pins, package ribbons, scissors, and Esme's standard red knee-high uniform socks. My idea was to have Esme decorate the knee-highs with ribbons and curly cues just as she would like. In the morning when I presented my idea, it was met with pure glee: "I'll be the only kid in the class with sparkly ribbons! These really will be crazy!" We eagerly curled ribbons and pined them in bunches up and down the sides of the red knee-high socks. As she carefully descended from the car and walked into the school building, I watched her point out her ribbon explosions to the teachers supervising drop-off.

Getting creative is not my strong suit as a mother. My mom was the proud owner and frequent user of a sewing machine, and she made every Halloween costume I remember wearing. There was the belly dancer outfit (with a leotard beneath of course), the cat from Cats, the gypsy (which incorporated elements from the Metropolitan Opera costume shop), and a princess and a ballerina thrown in the early years. I made Esme's costume this year for the first time, but there was no sewing involved. She wanted to be a violin, and that required only cardboard and an exact-o knife. It was a huge hit.

As I watched Esme proudly parade her decorated socks into the school, I thought I might have hit it big twice in one Halloween: a violin and a pair of crazy socks! And not a stitch of sewing! I can do this mom thing! Except that when she got back in the car that afternoon I knew it had all gone horribly wrong. The socks no longer looked like a wacky birthday package. Instead, two scraggly ribbons hung alone on the otherwise bare red socks.

"Mommy..." the tears came almost immediately. "The ribbons kept falling off all day long. They just ripped off. And they were lying all around the classroom. Stephanie even picked one up and brought it over to me and I was so... so embarrassed!"

"Oh sweetheart! I'm so sorry."

"I just kept shoving them into my backpack all day and tucking them into my socks but they just kept falling off. And by the end of the day everyone could see that I was just wearing my plain old uniform socks. Oh I'm SO sad!" Esme has a wail that convinces any listener of her deep and inconsolable pain.

I was already driving on a main road, but I reached my hand around to take hers. "Sweetie, I'm just so sorry. I didn't realize they would rip off. That must have been embarrassing for you." Trying to get her thinking about something else: "What did the other kids do with their socks?"

"No one else made their own crazy socks. Everyone else had store-bought socks. Mom, why didn't you just go to Wal-Mart and buy me some socks to wear today? Making them was so dumb!"

In an instant, all the sympathy I had felt for my sweet humiliated kindergartner flushed away and in its place came an awful anger. So that's what this was about. She wanted store bought socks like everyone else. I was at once hurt -- getting creative at home wasn't good enough? -- and disappointed that my daughter would fall to peer pressure so easily. I took her resentment so personally. Perhaps it was because I am insecure in my ability to be a fun mom with the perfect Halloween-themed socks on hand, and I was proud that I had actually ponied up a craft for once, or perhaps it was because I feel vehement about giving my daughters rock solid confidence and this was clear evidence that I have so far failed in that goal. I felt my eyes sting.

We talked about her feelings a lot throughout the rest of the day. I brought up one of her favorite books, David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes in which the little girl turns the colors of the rainbow because she is trying to please everybody and is unable to stay true to what she wants. We talked about how easy it is to go to a store to buy something but how making it makes it unique and creates a memory in the process (a bit hypocritical of me considering my history with making stuff, but perhaps I'm changing!).

But in the midst of trying to build her confidence, I tried not to forget that she was truly humiliated. And that needed to considered too. That needed to be validated. But did the humiliation justify bending to peer pressure and buying her store-bought socks for next year's Crazy Sock Day? Or should I stand my ground and use this as a small but potent lesson that it's okay to be different?

It's just one of the many times motherhood will punch me in the stomach. Or, as Elliot put it, "When you bend on the uniform, everything turns to chaos!"

When The Hurt Is Too Great To Stay

In June 2008, I sat on a bench outside the Harvard Business School's Baker Library with my father, enjoying a pleasant New England afternoon. The topic turned to my pregnancy, my third girl. My dad, himself the father of two girls, offered, as he often did, his unsolicited opinion: "I just worry about your having three daughters. Girls are so expensive to raise and then they don't contribute anything to society. Maybe the Chinese have got something right..."

Beside the obvious craziness of this remark from a dying old man, was it emotional abuse? After all, I am one of my father's two daughters and therefore one of the expensively educated and non-productive subjects of his observation. (My older half sister is Yale- Oxford- and Columbia-educated, but my dad didn't live to see her successful reentry into law practice over the past year. Perhaps she would have redeemed us both in his eyes....) I was already familiar with my dad's views on daughters since he had offered to finance embryo gender selection after my first daughter. We declined.

But emotional abuse? I endured years of similarly cruel remarks, so perhaps. But from ample tender moments and a warm physical affection that was contrary to his upbringing, I knew my dad loved me deeply. As my mom says, he just had a funny way of showing it. I never claimed I was emotionally abused simply because I didn't want to trivialize the sufferings of people who are indeed irreparably harmed by those close to them. Throughout my life with my father, I cried, ranted, fought back, clammed up, and kicked him out of my house at times, but I never cut off ties. I didn't feel I was being hurt deeply enough to merit hurting him even more.

An article from the New York Times today offers one of the first perspectives I've read on the effects of parents' emotional abuse on adult children. I appreciate the severity of the question posed in the article: When is parental emotional abuse enough to motivate the child to sever the relationship? It is not always wise or advisable to make the decision I did. Indeed, my sister chose a different route with my father, and, in my mind, justifiably so. He was even harder on her than he was on me. And when the strain spilled over to our husbands and our children, we were no longer the only victims.

Learning to love my dad was the most obvious challenge the Lord has thus far placed in my life. And its obviousness made it a task that I approached with a detached discipline: "Here," the Lord seemed to say. "He's talented, devoted, smart and elegant. But he's also obnoxious, clueless and often cruel. Figure it out." I couldn't walk away from such a piqued challenged from a God who had given me to this lusciously multifarious man in the first place.