Back home, our Wal-Mart and Target are only about a half-mile from one another, and are both in the same shopping district. The Target is the closer one, and as such, that’s where we go (though usually as a last resort, as my family is kind of a convenience store snob). The thing that baffles me is how there is a small McDonalds in the Wal-Mart itself, and not even 500 feet away is a full sized McDonalds.
Shopping at 1:00 am is not an answer in my area- the aisles are so crammed full of boxes and boxes of stuff ready to be set out on the shelves that a cart cannot pass. I park at the end of, say, aisle 8 and walk up 8 and down 9 to get back to my cart. I feel so lucky when noone has snarfed up my cart.
Also, why are there so many little kids at Walmart at such odd hours. Their mothers look especially crabby at night, too. Once I saw a woman backhand her child who appeared to be between 2 and 3 years old. He was sitting in the child-seat area of the cart, crying, and whammo!,… no warning, no words. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, saw me watching her, and moved off quickly. Yow. Hey, I’ve had less than stellar parenting days, but she seemed so vicious.
Walmartians- that must be the reason.
snorts Slimfast Banana Cream shake all over monitor
The other night,CG and I went out to dinner. Since we had time to kill and we didn’t really feel like driving back home, we went to the local Wal-Mart. Upon entering, we were accosted by Steven the Sick, the greeter. Steven coughed for about fifteen minutes before saying a word to us and attempting to shake our hands. We stayed away. We wandered around for awhile, looking at various items in the depts…oohing and aahing over the new Disney teapots (Ariel on one, Cinderella and her pumpkin coach on the other). We strolled past the sporting goods dept where we heard a mother discuss buying her young son (who looked between 8-10 tbh)a rifle and other hunting/gunplay accessories. Oy.
While wandering around, Ivan the Unintelligible came on the loudspeaker, advertising a demonstration in the (?)oys’ dept. It took us fifteen minutes and listening to the announcement four times to figure out it was the BOYS dept. When we arrived in the Boys dept there was a ginsu knife demonstration in progress and they handed out small knives to everybody in attendance, including several small dangerous looking boys who would no doubt terrorize the store with the little knives.
Upon exiting and on our way back to the car, we met Carl the Cartmaster who insisted on gathering thousands upon thousands of carts,pushing them gleefully and maniacally with the Cartrain through the parking lot,barely missing cars and shoppers.
IDBB
Walmart is icky. The greeters are icky. The Products are cheap, crappy pices of turd covered in a thin layer of grime and effulent. The patrons of the Walmart in my town appear to be extras from the movie C.H.U.D. http://us.imdb.com/Title?0087015
The sad part is, their prices are not much better then (and often worse) then what you can find over the Internet, big boxes stores (like Blood Bath & Beyond ect) or Warehouse stores.
I detest Walmart, and they have been placed on my lifetime ban list. Once you read a few stories(1) over some of the practices Walmart engages in with their employees and suppliers it becomes even more puzzling why anyone patronizes Satan’s discount store. Is is worth saving $0.37 on a 12 pack of crappy tube socks in exchange for your dignity and your immortal soul. Such a deal. . . (note- you may not actually save $0.37, so the last sentace contains some exaggerations).
Footnotes:
(1) http://www.lieffcabraser.com/walmart%20lawsuit.htm
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20021220/business/31450.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/29/eveningnews/main551418.shtml
More suckitude:
http://www.dove.org/columns/1996/column9612.htm
http://www.newrules.org/resources/smapaspeech.html
http://www.eeoc.gov/court/walmart_decree.html
Tip of the iceberg.
He looked like Gary Coleman?
shudder
I feel so fortunate that there is not a WalFart anywhere near my normal range of operations, and I will never have to set foot inside one of those vile places. I’ve only been in one once, and I have long since erased those memories. I accomplished that by jabbing a knitting needle into my brain.
Me OK now.
HA HA! My brother was a Cartboy the Excessive with the Cartrain at Target for 6 months, and he too blocked all of the good spots! When asked why he did this, all he could do was shrug and say, “I have no idea. I just do it.”
Walmartians! snort 
I refuse to go to the one that is down the hill from my house for all of the reasons Scylla explained. There never seems to be greeters at the door though. I think all of the thugs in the area scared them off.
Uh, that would be Cartboy the Obsessive.
Oh dear, I just heffed duh Cheddar all over my keyboard:)
Waaaaaaaiiiiit a second here. Did anybody else notice what I did? Scylla’s WalMart has only one Carry the Collider? Do you think that means that his Walmart doesn’t have the **Achilles Targeters[sup]TM[/sup] cart system?
This must be reported.
WalMart’s goods are shoddy.
But, they’re the only place in town that I can buy cheap sneakers in a size 11 Wide. 
Target won’t carry Wides in any size, & K-Mart rarely has Wides in Size 11.
I just realized IDBB went to WalMart voluntarily to kill time - you live in such a different world. I’d rather kill time by driving though the worst neighborhood in town and seeing if I can piss off someone enough to shoot at me. The inital pain is greater, but a drive by is over quicker.
About once every three or four years I go into a WalMart to check it out…“it can’t be as bad as I remember or they wouldn’t be so successful” - I think to myself… “lots of people shop here.” I even psyche myself up “I’ll save a bunch of money. And after all, Huggies are Huggies regardless of where you buy them.”
Its always as bad as I remember. Worse actually. And I’ve never actually bought anything.
Dangerosa–it was either kill time at the Wal-Mart (from which we DID purchase stuff…a cheap pair of black flipflops for me, a bottle of soda and a Ray Stevens CD) or go kill time at the Home Depot. And given the choice…I’d MUCH rather go kill time at the Wal-Mart than the Home Depot.
IDBB
So, this one time, I was walking into Wal-mart, minding my own business, BABABABABABABA!!! Holy crap! What the hell was that?BABABABABABABA!!!I realized that there was a severly developmentally disabled guy sitting in a wheelchair right there. He is screaming BABABABABABABA!!! seemingly at random. Scared the shit out of me, but what are ya gonna do, right? Then I realized that this guy was supposed to be the GREETER!
:smack: He wasn’t greeting anyone. He wasn’t looking at anyone. He didn’t seem to be aware of his surroundings in any way. He was just yelling BABABABABABABA!!! over and over. Loudly enough to hear him all over the store, as it turned out.
Now, I’m all for hiring the developmentally disabled, buy it doesn’t do anyone any good to hire them to do jobs that they are not capable of. And it certainly isn’t good to give the customer a coronary as soon as she walks through the door.
I didn’t go back for months and months. I recently had to go back–I had to get something for my mom that they ONLY carry at Walmart–and there was no greeter at all. What a relief.
Beauty!
Here in Michigan we have Meijer. They were here before the WalMarts came and are much, much better versions of a carry-everything store. If you need anything at 3am, you can get it at Meijer, and they are all (with only one exception that I know of) clean and fairly pleasant to shop in. They carry a decent selection and kick WalMart’s ass. I live in a decent size city and as far as I can tell WalMart is not a big presence here. They exist but no one I know shops there - I have been in one twice, both an amusing and horrifying experiences.
Meijer is beginning to spread so maybe you all can have one and no one will have to shop at WalMart anymore!
As horrible as Wal-marts are getting, they’re nowhere near a K-mart in it’s death spiral.
I recall the last time I went to the one near my high school. Entire aisles of empty shelves. Stuff strewn all over the floors. Salespeople? What is this concept? And the straw that broke the camel’s back–the checkout line.
There were two lines open. One of them was manned by a trainee who was learning how to use a register right at that moment. Now, you might expect that there would be an experienced cashier next to the trainee to help her out. You would be wrong. The cashier manning the other register had to come over and help the trainee every.single.time she rung someone up. Of course, this had the net effect of slowing both lines to a motionless crawl. We never went there again.
Velma–PLEASE tell them to make Meijer’s come down here! We have visited the local Meijer’s on both trips to visit CG’s grandparents in Bay City,MI and I LOVED IT!
Much better than the local SuperTarget (expect less pay more!) and Wal-Mart.
IDBB
Well, Meijer is slowly spreading through the midwest. I don’t know what the long term plans are, but I know how much I depend on them. Whenever I travel too far, I wonder how people survive without Meijer. Then WalMart came and SuperWalMart, but they just don’t compare. WalMart is not a well-loved or patronized store around here. It’s funny because we’ve always had the super one stop-shopping store around here, so I thought WalMart and Super KMarts, Targets, etc. were trying to compete with Meijer until I realized most places don’t have stores like that at all.
I also love Meijer because he gives lots of money to our local community - there’s a beautiful greenhouse and sculpture garden / park nearby that he donated!
Believe me, everyone around here would love them to expand all over!
Dude, I have BEEN that cashier. If you think the customers are in misery-think of how I felt.
I am so much happier since I quit that hell hole.
I so love this thread. My biggest nemisis at Walfart is the Counterfeit Greeter in the garden department. I say counterfeit because their true title is Undercover Receipt Checker. URCs are very adept at ignoring you until you are within two feet of their position, then with amazing speed for someone of their advanced …uhn… experience,(yah thats it) they ask to see the receipt you just put into your wallet. So, then you have to hold the bags in one hand while trying to fish the receipt out to show the URC. Meanwhile, 37 store prisoners, 12 screaming brats, 5 emphysemic chainsmokers, and a one-legged grape smasher walks by while s/he checks everything in your bags with the receipt by touching each thing and looking at the receipt through glasses that look like lenses for the Hubbel telescope.
Ahh, but my day came. I was checking out in the garden department when I happened to make eye contact with the URC. I looked straight at her and made a big show of letting her see that yes, my items were paid for by waving my receipt at her. I practically was dancing as I knew that I had definately proved that my cheap crap was indeed paid for. As I neared her vantage point the URC, who had lenses that should have enabled her to see the exact spot on the Moon were the porta-potty was dumped out before all the Moon missions left. But no. She asked my for my receipt. Now I don’t know what it was but my mind just went into some kind mode that allowed my deep, dark subconscious id to emerge. I heard my voice say “No, you may not see my receipt!” I kept walking fully expecting to be tackled by the URC. Nothing happened! Then I was looking for all the store employees to empty out of the store and start a witch-hunt for the “Blasphemer”. Still nothing! I made it home that day and wasn’t even arrested by the Police. Since then I gleefully tell the URC at whichever Walltowallcrapmart I happen to be in that “No you may NOT see my receipt”!
I think Walmart is the gateway to Hell, and everytime you go there you sell a small piece of your soul so, I avoid them as much as possible. Oh and fantastic thread Scylla.