Scylla rite gud story! Lobsang wish rite story like Scylla!
Lobsang sad.
Shit. I’m still trying to figure out, “Are you heffen duh Cheddar?”
Does that somehow translate into, “Do you need a buggy?” (cart, trolley, etc.)
“Are you heffen duh Cheddar?” might be translated from the Walmartian language as “Are you helping the children?”
As in “Would you like to make a donation to the Children’s Miracle Network?”
They have those people in Oregon? Damn… I thought it was a Texas thing.
Every time I go into Wal-Mart, I marvel at how the place has managed to attract that certain strata of humanity, regardless of ethnicity, even in affluent areas. I used to live in western Plano, TX roughly a mile or two from the EDS, Frito-Lay, Dr Pepper/7Up, Fina and JC Penney’s headquarters. The neighborhoods in the area were uniformly upper middle class/upper class, and in the Wal-Mart parking lot there was a drive-through dry-cleaning business(not cheap!), yet that same Wal-Mart was consistently overrun with slobby, trashy lower income people. I never could figure out where they came from in that area- I thought I was the poorest person nearby!
The secret, of course, is to live in Canada, where most of your houseware needs can be met by Canadian Tire, your cheapo clothing needs by Zellers, and your grocery needs by any number of big grocery chains.
We have Walmarts, too, but they seem to fill their own little niche without killing the opposition.
I see G-RAY has met my cousins. 
Oddly enough, the two Wal-Marts I’ve been to in Austin are surprisingly decent. Clean aisles, pleasant staff, tidy departments…
O’course, we have more Targets than Wal-Marts in town. That might be part of it…the Wal-Marts have actual competition, because the Targets are GREAT!
But…and I must confess to a dark dark time in my past…
…I used to go to Wal-Mart for fun.
I was one of those people. I was in high school, okay? I was bored! There was nothing to do in that stinking town! We had 7,000 people in that horrible backwater burg. The closest city had about 150,000 people, and it was Tha Big City, y’all.
They had two malls. Damn, we would have liked a mall. Give us someplace to go after school instead of @#$^&@% Wal-Mart.
When I moved away after high school, I got much better, thanks.
Now, I have a confession to make. I’m not that much of a Scylla fan. But comparing him to Steven King…that’s just dirty and wrong, he writes soooo much better. Especially this one: this one was pretty funny!
I considered writing a MALL*WART rant myself, but will limit it to this anecdote.
I walk into super-mall*wart out of desperation, as I am hungry and it is past the other fod vendor’s closing hours. I make my way to the frozen food section and scoop up 3 of the few remaining frozen Tombstone pizzas. I then make my way to the snacks but find my way blocked by the Restocking Pallets set up by someone who is trying to emulate an underground RPG maze.
So I leave my car unattended for a minute, and return to find it gone! I wend my way back to get another one (meanwhile, I am sure an employee absconded with it and took the remaining items for “restocking”, i.e. throw em away) I go back to the Tombstone section and take the LAST THREE remaining pizzas, then proceed to the Dungeon Entrance.
As I am about to boldly go into the deep, I yell “THIS IS MY CART. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT BUT THIS ONE IS MINE!”
I too have suffered through the Unending Simulated Underground RPG Maze of Restocking Pallets. One night…just for the pure hell of it, CG and I decided to go to the local Wal-Mart and buy our groceries. While attempting to get down the Bathroom Aisle to grab some shampoo and bodywash,we were thwarted by the massive amounts of restocking pallets blocking the way. Once I finally was able to reach the shampoo and bodywash I needed,I had to squeeze back through with a hispanic yelling at me in Spanish to get out his way.
We also witnessed (while cruising by the pet care section)a pair of teenage girls pushing small children in buggies in an animated conversation about which brand of condom worked best. One of the children in the buggies was looked like the world’s littlest hooker because she had really long,fluffed up hair, and was wearing a belly-baring spandex tank top and ittybitty,barely-covering-the-ass spandex shorts as well as the full complement of makeup that a child could wear:Bright blue eyeshadow, overly red clown cirlces of blush and shiny,sparkly lipgloss.
People who shop at Wal-mart are WIERD,ya’ll.
IDBB
My only good (well, not good, fun? not awful?) experience at a Wal-Mart was when I went to one in Austin, TX. The place was spotless and very brightly lit. I may have only noticed this because, and this is the reason it was fun, it was 2 am. There were no other shoppers there. And we were on a quest to find shot glasses. Yes, they had them, and I thusly started my state shot glass collection, then went back home and got the drunkest I’ve ever been.
Aside from that, I have had experiences similar to those described in the OP, but not nearly as comical. That’s just one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. And I will be calling them “Walmartians” from now on.
I got my hair cut at Wal-Mart once.
My eyes are watering, and there’s a bump on my head where I hit my head against the desk while attempting to stifle gales of laughter. As it is, my neighbors are wondering what’s given me fits of giggles.
I have seen that guy! He was doing the receipt-checking thing at Kmart and between hassling customers as they leave, he’d just start babbling away.
What was the “disability” that they discriminated against in that particular case, which gave rise to that court decree? I can’t seem to find out anywhere with Google.
Like I say, the Wal-Marts in Austin are weirdly tidy, clean, relatively pleasant places. But their stuff is still a level of quality below Target (or, as we call the store in my family, that FAH-bu-lous French boutique Tar-zhay).
“Please ask for assistance with items on top shelf.”
'Scuse me, could you help me throw hardware items at that box of Tide until it lands in my cart?
<reluctantly raises hand, days later>
[mumbles] “Guilty as charged…”
<hangs head in shame and kicks the dirt>
This sounds like you were shopping after hours. Am I the only one wondering why your wife wanted a hula hoop in the middle of the night?
After reading all the horror stories about Walmart in this thread I’m really glad I’ve never even set foot in a Walmart. I guess I should consider myself one of the lucky.
… is two blocks from my house. It’s a huge, windowless, battleship grey building set among more tasteful, thoughtfully designed commercial structures.
Walk through the unlandscaped parking lot, past the scattered shopping carts and vehicles of questionable roadworthiness. Wait a few seconds for the ultrasonic detector to detect your presence and open the filthy door. No elderly greeter at this Wal-Mart, or should I say El Mercado de Walton. More often than not, store announcements are made in Spanish, on a PA that was acoustically modeled after that of the New York subway system.
Grab one of the ancient, undersized, European-style shopping carts. How old are they? The plastic handle, when there is one, reads “WAL-MART DISCOUNT CITY.” Sure, one of the front wheels sticks, but don’t bother working your way through the collection of carts to find one that functions properly. All the carts have sticky front wheels.
Toys can be found scattered along the dirt-encrusted floors, even far away from the toy department. A bag of Old Roy, kibble spilling on the floor, is on a shelf next to some Rubbermaid storage cartons. Loud rap music from two different radio stations blasts from the electronics department. Get far enough from the bass-adorned rhymes advocating the smacking of bitches, and you’ll hear the shrieking of a crying baby. Always.
On today’s trip to El Mercado de Walton, a corner of the store was filled with the shouts of a man screaming …
**G! YO G! WAYYAT? G! YO! SHEEE! G! MUHFO G! G! YO G! YO G! SHEEE! YO G! WAYYAT? MUHFO! YO G! MUHFO! **
Repeat, ad infinitum.
A woman took the advice of one of the rap artists, but instead of finding herself a well-endowed gangsta’ to admire her more-than-ample backside, or smacking up some anonymous ho, she took it upon herself to spank her toddler daughter, repeatedly and apparently at random, wihout provocation.
The juxtaposition of items in the tiny book department, where the Bibles and fundamentalist Christian inspirational publications that dominate the shelves are placed aside copies of Lowrider, Dub, Us, Vibe, and similar magazines, is quite striking. Time? Newsweek? Automobile? Sports Illustrated? People? Such academic journals are way too highbrow for this Wal-Mart.
Have I discovered the world’s worst Wal-Mart, or are there others out there that make this store seem like a Harrod’s or Neiman Marcus by comparison?
By the way, I wonder if G was ever found …
I hate Walmart as well.
But, every once in awhile, to renew my loathing, I venture inside their hallowed walls to reaffirm my belief system that this company should some how make it possible to sterilize anyone who walks through their doors. Employees and customers alike.
Is it any wonder that the majority of these stores are located near trailer parks and in the lower rent districts of town.
Give me Meijer any day. Clean. Friendly. Everything You Want and Stuff You Don’t Want But Gots To Have Available 24/7.