I was not aware that Wang-Ka had a posse. Or that we needed jobs at Wal-Mart. Or that we would even dream of working at Wal-Mart, considering what I’ve heard about some of their labor practices.
Scylla’s as witty as I’ve come to expect him to be, and dammit, yes, I wish I’d written this one myself. What’s worse, Scylla’s illustration of Wal-Mart as some kind of Mordor from some demented game of Dungeons and Dragons has infected me. It’s a clever, contagious viewpoint! Now I find myself thinking of Walmartians that I, too, have encountered…
*Scylla has already touched on the ones I thought of as the Fungus People. These man-shaped creatures don’t actually do anything; they just stand there in the middle of the aisle, sometimes clutching a cart… sometimes clutching each other… sometimes just standing there alone. They don’t move or go anywhere. They just kind of stand there… swaying, like seaweed in a gentle current… swinging their head from one side to the other, looking at merchandise on their right… then their left… then their right again…
*Lightning Lampreys, small creatures disguised as children. Usually found in or near the toy department, and sometimes in electronics. These knee-high creatures run in random directions at full speed. They never strike stationary objects, like poles, pillars, or displays. They DO, however, occasionally collide with animate objects, like my leg. They don’t actually do any HARM, of course, but upon plowing into my leg, they do one of two things:
(a) Bounce off, fall down, and begin shrieking. What do I do then? I don’t dare touch the kid; someone will accuse me of molesting or assaulting him. I look around. People are staring at me. About then, Mom comes out of the cosmetics section, like a rhinoceros emerging from the savannah grass…
(b) Plow into my leg, full tilt, and then immediately wrap himself or herself around it, arms and legs. The creature will then look up at me angelically… and silently. What the hell do I do then? I don’t dare touch the kid; someone will accuse me of molesting or assaulting him. I begin to look around, towards the cosmetics department…
*Electronic Symbiotes. Another nuisance creature, these things are literally attached to the display units for Xbox, Nintendo, and likewise in the Electronics section. They’ll stay there for hours. Unfortunately, the people who designed that aisle did not make it any wider than any other aisle, which means shopping for software at Wal-Mart can be kind of tricky, unless you’re willing to simply kick them aside…
*The Screamer In The Distance. Nearly every time I have ever been to a Wal-Mart, I have heard this creature, somewhere off in the distance, shrieking like a banshee with kidney stones. I think, at some point, a baby, like, DIED in Wal-Mart, and its ghost now haunts the place, to be laid to rest only when someone finds its little skeleton and puts a new Pamper on it…
*Smeagol the Elder, Wal-Mart Greeter. Damn you, Scylla, I wish I’d thought of this. Furthermore, the one at the store near my place doesn’t know how to operate his little sticker gun, which means you DON’T want to return anything when he’s on duty, or you’ll spend a good fifteen minutes waiting for him to try to put a sticker on it, fail, fiddle with it, and finally disassemble his sticker gun and get a sticker out, put the gun back together… and only THEN put the damn pink sticker on your return.
What’s worse… OUR Smeagol has his own little cave, right there in the store. His Precious. The place where the carts are kept, with the plastic flaps that keep the air conditioning from going out. The Cart Guy puts the carts in the cave at the outside entrance, and Smeagol pulls them out at the inside entrance, where precisely four carts are lined up, waiting for customers to get them.
…except when the store is busy. You see, Smeagol can’t count past four. Or so I’ve determined. There must be FOUR carts ready for customers, INSIDE the store, no more, no less.
If there are NO carts, then Smeagol must totter back into his cave (preciousss… my preciousss) and get four more carts. If you attempt to go into the cave YOURSELF and get a cart, Smeagol will leap at you, shrieking and hissing, and perhaps bite one of your fingers off with his six remaining teeth.
No, no, ONLY Smeagol is allowed into the cave. He will laboriously, slowly, wrench four carts loose from the Great Cart Mass, and totteringly push them out into the store’s greeting area. THEN he will agonizingly, slowly, wrench them apart, separate them, line them up… and THEN, only then, may customers take them and go shopping.
Once, I pulled a cart off the group of four he was pushing out while he was pushing them out. He snatched the cart away from me, and said, “UUUUuuhMA STHA GUMPTA!” and fixed me with a baleful eye that put me in mind of the Flaming Eye of Minas Morgul, if you know what I mean. He then jammed the cart BACK onto the others… and then separated them, lined them up, and allowed me to select one (although I think he was a bit irritated with me for taking one out of the middle, instead of taking the front or back one).
That’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m currently planning an expedition to see what hideous creatures lurk in Lay-Away, though. (“Here There Be Monsters!”)
Contributions would be gratefully accepted.