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WalMart looms large in the American landscape — not just as the operator of a ubiquitous chain of retail discount stores that encompasses over 4,500 outlets across the U.S., or as the economic behemoth that is both the world's largest company (by revenue) and the world's biggest private employer. No, WalMart also looms large as a shadowy behind-the-scenes force, a willing collaborator in furthering furtive government plots through actions such as transporting signs announcing the upcoming imposition of martial law on WalMart trucks, allowing federal immigration officials free rein to enter WalMart stores and arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, and secretly funding the legal defense costs of a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager. It's no wonder, then, that rumors began to swirl in April 2015 when several WalMart stores around the U.S. were abruptly closed due what WalMart claimed were plumbing problems: WalMarts in Pico Rivera, California, Livingston, Texas, Midland, Texas, Brandon, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, all suddenly closed their doors, with WalMart corporate announcing that some of those outlets would be shuttered for six months or more. Several aspects of these closures struck WalMart employees and shoppers as implausible. How was it that several stores in widely dispersed areas of the U.S. with nothing in common all needed to be shut down simultaneously in order to address plumbing problems? Why were all these stores closed with barely more than a few hours' notice to WalMart customers and workers? Why should rectifying plumbing issues require that these stores be closed for upwards of six months? Why the seeming lack of required city work permits and marked septic or plumbing trucks at the affected locations? In the absence of more satisfying explanations, skeptical onlookers developed numerous conspiracy theories about the real reasons behind the closures: As unsatisfying as it may be, the most plausible theory from this bunch was that the closed WalMart stores all had really bad plumbing problems.
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