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Sunday, April 21, 2013

my FINAL trip to WALMART. EVER

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THAT PLACE????
Mr. Sam Walton is no doubt spinning in his grave.
I went later than usual because I awoke later and debated whether to go but decided I really could not run out of toilet paper.  So I left here about 6:15 this morning with a kind of “bet” to be back by 7. 

No hand baskets.  I searched...  A floor manager asked what I was looking for and then replied that there was only one in the store because people steal them.  WHY?  I overreacted.  She said she heard a lady say they are great for garden tools.  But the basket doesn’t belong to her!!!   I suggested they set up a thing like the airport—put in your money to rent it and then get your money back when you return it that way if they don’t put it back at least they’ve bought it.  She thought maybe selling baskets like that for garden tools.  Later I thought they could make the baskets out of stuff that the alarm system will go off when they try to steal them—and why aren’t cashiers taking them at the register?

Then I shopped.  Got my stuff in good time even though I was greatly slowed down by a push basket and spent too much wasted time looking for a mother’s day card and a sympathy card and I know better than to try to look for something meaningful in that place.

Oh yeah and then I remembered that WALMART in their stupidity have taken away all cashiers except ONE so that the four “self checkouts” are the ONLY way to check out.  Of the four, one was not working and one was crashing with a customer and the cashier did not have a CLUE how to make it work and there was no one else around.  Meanwhile the other two registers each had a guy with a basket FULL and I mean bulging on top full of groceries.  People are AMAZINGLY SLOW at this job!!!!  A cashier develops a rhythm and near-intuitive interaction with the scanner but these people do NOT (including me, I admit) have that rhythm AT ALL.  And I was behind three other people with modest amounts of products to check out.  A guy came up behind me who helped save me—he was a calming presence and poor guy was only buying a bouquet of roses.  I should have let him go in front of me but honestly, it never crossed my mind—I am usually the very consummate kind person in stores and stuff.  But I was seeing nothing today in that store but RED.

THIS is wholly unacceptable.  And I heard the woman say to the customer loud enough for everyone to hear that she was the only cashier until 7.  I looked at my phone—it was 7:00.  I was there till nearly 7:30 and not another cash register opened while i was there--- to check out my ---- SIXTY DOLLARS????   SIXTY????  That was twice what I had expected so obviously even though I did buy vitamins, the prices of their groceries are going up too.  And of course by the time I got to the register to check stuff out I was seething and trying so hard to calm down that nothing worked.  Items didn’t swipe, I plunked in the wrong number for the apples.  I didn’t always put the item into the bag properly.  I knew I had to get out of there soon or let out a blood curdling scream.  And then because I put in the wrong apple number, the cashier had to come over and check it all out before I was "released."

I am fairly certain that this system allows for a great deal of theft—if people can walk out with the handbaskets with impunity they certainly can syphon items back into their basket without running them through that blasted register with theoretically four going at once with only one cashier in attendance. 

WALMART—YOU HAVE CUCKOLDED YOURSELVES.  I’m not going back.  It is NOT worth the “savings” if there are any anymore, and it is not worth the distance and the time and the rising of my blood pressure.  It is now 8:00 in the morning and I am livid!!!! on a SUNDAY!  On a day OFF! 

I must now back away from the computer slowly and retreat to the kitchen for very strong earl grey, hot and some bacon and eggs to calm me down.

OH WAIT—I forgot to gripe about the EGGS that were broken and only one that had good ones in of the acceptable two weeks date on them...I forgot to mention how difficult it was to find things and then the little stockers were just pulling up the absolute front item—about three per brand.  Really? 

But my favorite moment, when I first arrived and headed for the vitamins and dental floss...I was in that aisle looking for the biotin when I heard loud high voices of silly teenaged girls and I just rolled my eyes.  Then they walked by but not close together, first one and then the other.  My first impression was they were dressed up as vampires for Halloween but it’s April...so I skipped only a slight beat with that thought adjustment and then the teacher in me called to them inside my own head that they shouldn’t be out in public dressed like prostitutes and then I realized that they ARE PROSTITUTES.  LOUD and young prostitutes.  Probably 18 to 20.  I didn’t get a CLOSE look at them...just a passing one—TWICE.  But as I had to follow them at one point, every single person in the store, male or female and of all ages, walked past, turned and watched them for a minute.  Just like they wanted them to.  And yeah I don’t even need to describe their very tight too short skimpy dress on one and painted on shiny red pants down to the ankles of the other, both with very high heeled pumps and they walked in them like I do in my birks—by that I mean only with the same level of comfort, obviously they swish when they walk and I don’t—and they had very big boobs—or at least the first one I saw did—with ruffles that framed the cleavage, and teased hair and red red red lipstick and tiny clip handbags.  I mean they were the stereotype.  One’s hair was teased, the other’s was straight.  Now as jarring as that was at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, it is not necessarily part of the reason I’ll never go back to Walmart so I’m glad I didn’t think of it until after my rant.  In fact they might have actually been the highlight of the trip and possible reason to return—character research....   Naaaah...

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