Less than a week after the D.C. Council failed to override Mayor Vince Gray‘s veto of the controversial living wage bill, Walmart opened its first two hiring centers for the stores it plans to open in the District. And thousands of applications came pouring in.

According to the company, more than 3,000 people applied for D.C. Walmart jobs on Sept. 23, the day the hiring centers opened. Within the first week, Walmart had received more than 11,000 applications.

The company released a video (below) implying that the flood of applications serves as a refutation of the Large Retailer Accountability Act, which would have required Walmart and other big retailers to pay a living wage of $12.50 an hour, minus benefits. Walmart threatened to scrap plans for three of the six stores it initially planned if the bill became law, and to reconsider its options for the three stores already under construction, two of which are set to open before the end of the year. Gray vetoed the legislation, and the D.C. Council couldn’t muster enough votes to override the veto.

Those 11,000 applications are for just 1,800 jobs. That means that even if the company received no applications after the first week, its acceptance rate would be about the same as the University of Chicago’s.

Photo by Aaron Wiener