I have a confession to make.

I shop at Wal-Mart.

Whoop-dee-doo, you’re saying. Who doesn’t?

Before this past Monday evening, though, I would not have considered confessing to my occasional grocery runs to the giant discount store because it would imply that I was in the wrong. It also would suggest that I was ashamed, which wasn’t the case either. Or so I thought.

When my friend pulled a Great Value roll of chocolate chip cookie dough from my bag and asked, almost relieved, if I shopped at Wal-Mart, I realized my clandestine trips to the store were something that many people — perhaps even myself — considered morally questionable. I blushed.

“I feel better about shopping there now that I know you go there, too,” she said. “[My friend] tries to make me feel bad about it, but the fact is that the food there is just cheaper.”

I expressed my outrage that someone would try to make her feel bad about saving money, especially when she needed every penny she had to pay rent. Then in solidarity, we the penny-pinchers, confirmed each other’s right to not be judged by our more local-business-loving and free-spending comrades simply because we wanted to buy more food for less.

And I’m sticking to that.

Why, then, do I still feel guilty? Is it because I know local businesses suffer when the corporate behemoth stakes its claim on a community’s retail sector, and by buying from it I encourage the other businesses on their long walk to the grave?

Don’t get me wrong, I cringe to send my money to some far-away corporate office when I know it could be supporting people closer to home. Having worked at Wal-Mart before, I know that the pay and the work conditions aren’t ideal (who really thrives in a building without windows?).

What I didn’t realize was that the people pushing their overflowing carts to their cars profited off of me and my coworkers. It was a summer job for me, but there were workers with families to support who also had to pay the part of the bill that the buy-more-think-less shoppers didn’t worry about.

Knowing this, will I cease all interaction with the store? Will I put my foot down and say, “Raise your prices! Pay your workers fairly! Be responsible!”

No. I can’t afford to go to other grocery stores every time, and the shopping shuttle doesn’t stop at Kroger (remember, if you will, that I don’t have a car). But I can buy responsibly. I can think carefully about what I need and don’t need. I don’t have to buy unethically or inefficiently produced commodities. I can use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Except, of course, if it is food.

I’m happy to go hungry for a cause, but I won’t starve myself, even if it means a few more trips to the windowless world of discounts, profits and aisles upon aisles that ask me to make my confession.