Much out of character for me I had reason to visit a Wal*Mart today at around noon. My coffeemaker died this morning and we have out of town guests arriving tomorrow. No time to trust a delivery, gotta be cash and carry. I did spend a few minutes online at walmart.com & target.com to see what products they stock. Those two stores are across the street from each other here, so I wanted to be ready for both. Fearing the worst of locust-picked-over shelves 3 days before XMas I wanted to be ready as ready could be.
Loins girded, off I went. Wal*Mart’s parking lot was busy, but not totally jammed. A favorable omen; perhaps this’ll be easy. Hah, foolish Florida Man! Entered through the garden store. Which, despite the fact it’s perpetually BBQ, patio, and garden season here in south FL, is the seasonal makeshift big toys section. Still had a decent collection of big toys on the shelves.
There are 3 registers there. One of which had a clerk. Which register, singular, had an unruly line of 20 heavily laden carts snaking amongst the toys and blocking access to the store itself. I shoved through that and into the store.
As I passed that line I overheard several conversations about how self-checkout had a line of 30 people each with overloaded carts, and most of the manned checkstands were not. The few that did hav a cashier had lines to the back of the building. So as bad as it was here, these folks thought themselves the smart ones picking this “short” line. Hmmm - so much for easy.
Once in the store, lotta people looking harried and People-of-Walmart-ish. Waaay too many PJs & crocs. Not a good look. Lotta full carts too.
Easily found a clerk (yaay) and asked where small appliances like coffeemakers was. Her English was limited but she pointed the right way and 4 aisles later I had Eureka.
They had many kinds but only one brand/model of what I wanted, a 5-cup drip. The website had about 6 makes/models of that size. Oh well. This wasn’t the one I preferred, and the checkout process seemed daunting if those folks lined up in the garden center were to be believed. Ugh. At least they had about a dozen of these coffeemakers, so I could set off for Target and if I came up empty handed there I could (reluctantly) return here with guaranteed success.
Off to Target.
Parking lot busy. Go into the store. Busy, but none of the frenzy of PJs and POWMs. All the checkstands have cashiers, and about 5 people with only handbaskets are waiting to use the 6 self-checkout stations.
Get back to the coffeemaker aisle and they have a much better selection in general, but only the same single 5-cup model as Wal*Mart had. But for $5 less, which is a big discount when it’s only a $25 item to begin with. So I grabbed the box, walked to the front, waited about 30 seconds then was directed to a self-checkout, paid with my Target card in my phone for an extra 5% off, and was gone for less than $20 total with tax.
Same product for less money in vastly better surroundings. What’s not to like about Target? I very rarely even enter a Wal*Mart, and this is why.
It has probably been 3 years sine I last bought something at a Wal*Mart. My new wife likes some of their housewares and gets something there every month or so. Not I.
I’m certainly used to stores in different parts of the suburban metroblob attracting different clienteles. But these two stores were directly facing each other on opposite sides of a big boulevard. Not even a city limit separating them. Same geographic catchment area almost exactly. POWM are just amazing.