KelvinG said:
Ugh, Walmart.
I agree it's cheap crap. I used to shop there years ago for essentials when I had no money, but never again.
I shop there when I'm looking for something and have no earthly idea who might carry it. 9 times out of 10 Walmart does, so it's a "none of the above" option for me, at least since I let my Sam's Club membership lapse.
I've never seen Walmart brand stuff there, except their generic pop and other groceries, which I never buy. Most of their stuff is brand name, even if cheap brand name, but certainly no trashier than you'd find most other places. I've got no quibble about their selection or quality, since even the "cheap plastic stuff" is usually right next to slightly more expensive plastic stuff.
No, my problem with Walmart is the freakin' people. If you've been there, you know who I'm talking about.
It starts in the parking lot. The pimped-out van straddling two spaces, the clot-like growths of oversized blue shopping carts nesting in every open space, the clueless parents refusing to corral their 18 kids as they sprint to and fro in front of your car. And of course you have to circle the parking lanes, so that means you need to navigate that big area in front of the door, where these idiots gather like swallows at Capistrano(sp?). They stop in the middle of the street and check for their wallets, their keys, to check the time, and maybe, just maybe, see where their godawful children have run off to.
Then you get inside. You're greeted by some pathetic shell of a human being, usually. The guy will be 90 years old, in a wheelchair, or have some kind of malignant tumor sprouting from his neck. All I know is, that's one more employee who won't be manning the registers.
You hit the wall of shoppers who must, MUST examine every special from the circular ads posted on the wall there, and must do it from a distance that makes it difficult to get past on either side. In the aisles, you must detour endlessly around seemingly abandoned carts that congest the main avenues and maneuver around the invariably obese women who chatter in some random Slavic language in the center of the smaller lanes, utterly oblivious to people trying to get around them.
You jockey for position like a driver in lap 490 of the Indy 500, and finally identify a clear lane to the department you want to get to. Turn a corner and you hit a wall of boxes that tower over you like the monolith in 2001. They're restocking at noon. On Saturday. The busiest shopping time of the week.
So you adjust. You backtrack, but it's too late. A trio of children has decided to disassemble the entire auto parts section right in the aisle. Daddy, looking at hubcaps for his pimped-out Ford Focus, is too busy to notice the urchins at work. So you backtrack further. After dodging a thousand human landmines, you find what you came for. Triumphant, you head to checkout.
And here's where your problems really begin. You drop into the express lane, 12 items or less, behind a woman with 300 items (mostly consisting of quasi-colonial kitsch) piled onto the conveyer belt. Now, she's got easy access to the little divider bar that goes between customers' stuff, but she WON'T PUT IT DOWN. You can't reach it without violating her personal space, which you immediately sense would be a mistake, so you sit tight. You tap your fingers to remind her of your presence - and it's almost invariably a her - but she is oblivious.
Situational awareness is the common theme in all Walmart customer problems, in my opinion.
So the order moves forward to the cashier, and smelling your opportunity, you snatch the divider bar from over her shoulder and begin laying your one or two items on the belt. She looks at you as if she'd caught you raping her schnauzer. After all, these are HER items, on HER belt, waiting to be tallied by HER cashier. How dare you intrude on the sanctity of HER shopping experience?
So you check out, and if you're lucky you pay with only one swipe of your credit card in the reader. Then you must present your receipt to the codger running the "smile 'n secure" patrol at the exit. He stares at your receipt through glasses thick enough to focus terminal amounts of sunlight onto an insect, and though he obviously can't read a thing gives you the highlighter "seal of approval" so you may leave the store.
Then, in the parking lot, you must load your goods while fending off the space-hunting parasites that follow you, stalker-like, in their cars, hoping to snatch your spot. If you're wise, you'll dump your cart in your spot to slow them down enough that they don't catch you and eat your brains.
Since 90% of my negative Walmart experience comes from other shoppers, I can't really fault Walmart. Perhaps its time to open a discussion about reproductive rights, however.
