Welcome to Walmart!!!

Generally speaking, I make it a habit to avoid shopping at Walmart. But every so often, for whatever reason, I find myself dodging loose carts, fat people and apparently orphaned children as I search their lot for a parking space. I had to go 2 times in the past week, here is a brief description of my visit.

9/22/07 9:30 am – Parking lot ridiculously full. Looking for a mini fridge for a gift. To their credit Wal-Mart did stock the item. After getting a few related items I made my way to the check out lane. There were like 3 lanes out of the 25 open. I picked what looked to be the shortest one.

The lady was rather large, and had a cart full of frozen pizza’s, ho-ho’s, chips and like 3 cases of diet coke. The Diet Coke was key, I was glad to see she was watching the calories. As she went through the line, her jabba-eyes peered closely at the register. That’s when I realized how bad of a decision I made. Little did I know that Wal-mart has a price-match guarantee. This lady however, was very aware. Like an NFL coach with unlimited challenges, she threw the red flag at almost every other item, and then would pull a stack of competitive ads out from under her slab-like arms and spend 5 minutes searching for the proof, saving pennies with each successful throw of the flag. I thought, “Hmmm… maybe all those pennies she’s saving go into a piggy bank to fund that triple bypass and the diabetes monitor she’s going to need after eating the contents of that cart.” I almost wanted to just hand her $10.00, which would be twice what she had saved to get her to move on.

“Here, take this. Get your ass out of my line, and consider buying a jump rope and a cook book.”

It took me 5 minutes to find and take my items to the checklane, it took me 30 minutes in the lane…I was the second person in line. You would think, I’d be done with Walmart for a while, but 7 days later, I find myself back inside.

This time, we were burning a gift card.

9/29/07 2:30pm – Cars circling everywhere like vultures looking for a carcass to land on. We parked in the next county, and hiked in.

On entering, it was like we walked into a dysfunctional anthill. People swarmed everywhere, up and down every aisle and row in the store. But instead of the orderly, efficient movement of ants, it was total chaos. Kids were darting in and out of traffic. Five people blocked an entire aisle while they tried to choose from 15 different toasters all at $9.99. People drove carts down the wrong sides of the rows. Others wandered aimlessly, shell-shocked and apparently unable to process the size of the store, or perhaps the savings. They just stumbled through the store, trance-like, their small heads on a swivel. People, People, People Everywhere! It was a social experience, whole gaggles of people, whole extended families team-shopping. All stopping and clustering around a display, blocking the aisle, bringing traffic to a complete stop.

Somewhere Sam Walton was having a post-mortem orgasm.

We were blocked at every turn, stuck behind people moving at glacial speed down every row. We got lost once trying to find cotton balls. I almost had a panic attack. We put less than 20 items in our cart, all located in different area codes within the same store. By the end I was gritting my teeth as I ambled behind an Extended Crew Cab Ford-load of shoppers as we slowly worked our way to the register.

I’m writing this to remind myself not to go there again. If you’re reading this, consider this a public safety notice. It could happen to you or me or anyone. We could wind up like those poor souls just wandering, our minds overcome by a whirl of smiley faced icons, blue vests and people in denim. We could go in, and never come out. We would shuffle together, and occasionally mumble, “Look at all those toasters…they’re only $9.99!”