Success Quote by Lee Scott

Spoken like a CEO trying to make peace with the idea that not everyone wants to be “optimized.”

Lee Scott’s line lands because it’s disarmingly permissive while quietly asserting inevitability. “There are going to be” frames resistance as a fixed, almost natural phenomenon - like weather, not politics. It’s a rhetorical move that drains heat from criticism. People who “never want Wal-Mart” aren’t opponents raising arguments about labor, wages, zoning, or the hollowing-out of Main Street; they’re simply a demographic preference, a lifestyle choice. The company doesn’t need to answer them. It just needs to outscale them.

“That’s OK” is doing even more work. It projects calm confidence, a posture of corporate tolerance. But it also contains a subtle shrug: their disapproval is noted and filed under nonthreatening. In context - the 2000s era when Wal-Mart became a symbol of globalization’s blunt force (low prices paired with anxieties about worker treatment, local businesses, and supply-chain ethics) - the line reads like strategic reputational judo. Don’t fight the critique; domesticate it.

The intent isn’t to concede ground so much as to redefine the battlefield. Wal-Mart becomes a neutral option in a marketplace of choices, not a dominant force reshaping communities. Scott’s sentence is a miniature PR philosophy: de-escalate, normalize, keep expanding. When you’re big enough, dissent can be treated as a niche.