The sad casualty of captalism

I was at Wal-Mart early this morning. And, like most times when I go there, I found myself stricken with the realization that there are 40 checkout lines, and only 3 that are operational with a long line in each of those three lines.
For a logic problem, this has two solutions.

A. Either staff more cashiers
B. Decrease the number of checkout stations.

Yet, there is apparently no logic at work in the reality of the situation. There may be only one time of the year when it is feasible for Wal-Mart to actually have all 40 of those checkout stations staffed, and even during that time period, they don't have all of them staffed. There's no reason for them to. since they have a Wal-Mart on the other side of town with the same 37 empty checkout lanes.
None of this makes sense in the grand scheme of things. But, this is the world we are living in today.  Wal-mart has likely consumed untold millions of tons of steel to create those same 37 empty checkout lanes at all of their 8500 stores(wikipedia) across the world.  That is a tremendous waste of resources when you really start to consider it. You could likely build an entire town from the materials which they've sank into those unused checkout lanes.

It's a sickening waste of materials.

These are the things that I think about while I'm waiting to give them my hard-earned money in a line of my fellow humans. Granted, I could go to another grocer, but much like everyone else I do like to save a few dollars  here and there, and Wal-Mart happens to have these enormous packages of chicken breast that will feed me for nearly two weeks for 12 bucks. So, yes...I am biting the hand that is feeding me, literally, it's my right.

This doesn't change the issue at hand, why squander resources on unused checkout lanes, or produce products that only last two months, or put every single item in it's own fucking bag when there are countries on this Earth that can't even feed, house, or clothe themselves. This is a huge problem, and it makes absolutely no sense.

If Wal-Mart isn't going to pay someone to stand at each one of those checkout lanes when they are open for business, then they need to get rid of them and use those materials for something that will benefit mankind, instead of consuming those materials for the most useless artifact of our capitalist society, the empty checkout lane.

Yet, this isn't even the dagger that pierces me square in the gut. They've taken the extra step to provide a self-checkout option. I've actually used those in the past, and I always leave with some twinge of guilt that I'm stealing from the store. But, aside from that, THOSE ARE ALWAYS CLOSED and there are typically at least 10 of the damned things, again with using up vital resources that could build someone a house, a car, a desk, or a brace  for the back that capitalism has shattered through it's grinding gears.

Honestly though, this is just a prime example of the extensive waste of resources that is at work in this modern world. Packaging is an enormous consumption of materials, especially when the packages are packaged, repackaged, and then packaged again in some other way such as a box full of your bagged groceries, or a vase of flowers inside of a bag that has been put inside of a box. This isn't even touching  on the multitudinous oceans of useless plastic objects that are generated for one-time use then cast away into the ocean to be diffused by the Earth for a thousand years, yes straws, ketchup packs, and all of those stupid little things we all use every day that we just throw away.

Case in point, Taco Bell sauce packs. Yeah, I like the sauce. I use a lot of sauce on my food from there. The sauce is one of the prime ingredients to me that makes their food at the remotest palatable. Suddenly, on a visit to Taco Bell over the summer, I noticed that their sauce pack contained significantly less sauce in it. So, my train of thought gets on the subject of resource consumption.
Does it cost more for them to put more sauce in the package?
Does it cost less for them to use more of the plastic packages, and put less sauce in the packages?
Why the fuck won't they just fill the goddamned packages up all the way, and use fewer of these fucking sauce packs??

Well, it has to be an issue of cost at the end of the day for THEM. But, in the grander scheme of things, IF they have determined that it's a lowered cost for them to add LESS sauce to their packages and instead consume more petroleum to produce more plastic packages for less sauce, THEN these practices are driving up the cost of all of our petroleum based products.

The worst part of the thing is that it's probably a smarter idea for them to just have a huge tank of the stuff delivered to their 5800 locations in the United States, and just ask customers if they want sauce on their tacos when they make the damned things, instead of wrestling with this conundrum that they've obviously been presented related to their sauce packages.

Sauce packs and checkout lanes, think about it. Think about all of the other tremendously useless items that this planet is generating on a daily basis that are just cast away, consumed, and left to decay over thousands of years.