Wal-Mart is praised far and wide, including in blogdom, for its innovation, its selection, its low prices, and its shareholder value. Indeed, Wal-Mart is now ranked first in the Fortune 500 for all of these reasons.

Turns out Wal-Mart is innovative in less obvious ways as well. Did you know that Wal-Mart routinely took out life insurance policies on low-level employees? The families of these employees often didn't know that. Wal-Mart is now being sued by these families to collect some of those benefits. As of January, according to this story, Wal-Mart no longer buys this kind of insurance. You can read that as a simple economic decision. Or you can believe that Wal-Mart recognized that it was in a hole and, being the smart company that it is, decided to obey the First Law of Holes: When you find yourself in one, stop digging.