Sam Walton: Made In America

by Sam Walton

The competition in the club business can get pretty spirited sometimes. Once I was in the big Price Club on Marino Avenue in San Diego, and I had my little tape recorder with me—like I always do—and I was making notes to myself about prices and merchandising ideas. This guy, a big guy, comes up to me and says, “I’m sorry but I’ll have to take your tape recorder and erase the material you’ve got on it. We have a policy against people using them in the stores.” Well, we have the same policy, and I knew I was caught. So I said, “I respect that. But I’ve got things on here from other stores that I don’t want to lose, so let me write a note to Robert Price”—that’s Sol’s son. So I wrote: “Robert, your guy is just too good. I was trying to get some information on this recorder about some of the items you were carrying and some of my impressions of your store, and he caught me. So here’s the tape. If you want to listen to it, you certainly have that privilege, but I have some other material on here I would like very much to have back.” So in about four days I got a nice note back from Robert, with the tape, and none of it had been blurred or scratched out. He probably treated me better than I deserved.