WallyWorld

Much Ado about Wal-Mart....

I'll start out by saying that I'm not a Wal-Mart hater. Like, I'm not one of those weird people who wear the t-shirts with the smiley that has the bullet through the head or anything like that. I dislike Wal-Mart, yes, but not because they "damage the economy" (I think they provide some good opportunities for people who probably most likely wouldn't be able to get a job elsewhere.) I don't agree with their pay scale and I don't agree with how they treat their employees. There is a brand new Wal-Mart in my town, just opened up on Friday. I thought I would go in there to check it out and get my shopping done. There are specific reasons I'm writing this today though. There are specific reasons why I dislike/loathe Wal-Mart. I shall list them out.

1. Inconvenient as hell
2. Shitty parking
3. Stupid people in the parking lot!!!
4. Things are too far away from each other in the store
5. Stupid people spawn on the bathroom floors.
6. "Check yourself out" lines
7. Wont develop "certain" pictures
8. Poor quality of products
9. Check out people
10. MacDonald's
11. TOO BIG
12. Too many stupid people in too big a place
13. Not enough checkers
14. Too much land
15. Shopping carts!!!

I went into Wal-Mart recently to get some pictures developed on the Kodak kiosk thing that is in there. I had gone to the one at CVS but it [fat, insane, bald headed technologist] screwed up my pictures and it took 30 minutes so I thought I'd run to Wal-Mart and do the kiosk that just shoots those bastards out which takes 5 minutes for about 3 pictures. Well the store is brand new like I mentioned, but there weren't a lot of people there. I was suprised to get the spot i got, (186 steps from the entrance; these were right next to the handicapped parking. I tried to go into the center of the store but there are no doors there. You have to go to either side. I hate stores like this. Bad fire escape route planning.) I trotted into the massive store. No directory to tell me where I wanted to go so I started walking. This is like fucking mall of America! Another 3,285,226,661 steps later, I found the photo department. I went there, and this rude fat cow steps in front of me, and starts using the machine I was about to use declaring that the other one is broken. The store has been open three days and the other one is broken. So I stand behind her and kinda peek over her shoulder to find out that she is going to do the Kodak quick print thing of 60 photos. SIXTY! Do you have any idea how long that will take on that stupid Kodak machine?!!?! The machine right next to her does cropping and adjusting much faster, but prints it in one hour through the photo service and would've done all of hers in a lot better quality in the same amount of time for the quantity she had! [edit: when I went to pick up my pictures, i was truly impressed at the quality of the photo. I'm glad i went to the other little kiosk, and i'll actually probably go there to get most of my pictures developed. They did a great job.]

But NOOOO-oo-OOO she had to tie up that machine for an hour with her SIXTY!!!!

This same concept is used on check yourself out. It's meant to be a 10 items or less thing, people. Don't go up there with your three shopping carts full of crap for your litter of tit-sucking children and block up the one station that's working so those of us who need bullets, condoms, and gum can get on with our day. Plus, they can't figure out that it is glass and you pass the product over it with the barcode DOWN so that it will scan, so they take 45 minutes on the same
product.

LET THE PROFESSIONALS HANDLE IT IF YOU CANNOT YOU IDIOT.

They should have a trap door. If the person that oversees the self checkout stations sees that there is someone with a full shopping cart approaching the check yourself out station, TRAP DOOR WHOOOOSHHH away they go never to be seen again.

Someone I know [not me before you ask] once wanted to get a roll of film developed and this person took it to Wal-Mart. This person said, "This roll of film may or may not contain photographs of someone in the nude. Will you throw them away or will you develop?" She said, "We will throw them away." I don't agree with that at all. Even though they are nude photos, they are still the property of the person who is dropping it off, and I don't agree that Wal-Mart has the right to throw it out. They sell vibrators and porno mags, what is the difference other than it's probably more amateur photography?!? It's like saying Wal-Mart doesn't have stock in the manufacturer of your vehicle so they take the hubcaps and crush them… WTF?!

I also hate that they are putting MacDonald's' into Wal-Mart. That's just what we need, isn't it folks? (At least in the south anyway) have you looked at the average physique and average number of teeth in the head of the average American that shops at Wal-Mart? Do we really need to be encouraging them to eat more?!! AND CRAP none the less! Have you ever noticed how really shitty the fruit section of Wal-Mart is, but everything else food wise is really good? I think that the engineers of Wal-Mart thought that all the walking around the two and a half square mile store would cancel out the fat consumed by the American from MacDonald's, but they forgot about the ARMY of motorized carts [that I always run my knee into.]

I hate the shopping carts at Wal-Mart because they are always so big. It's impossible to tell it where you want to go, and nobody walks down the right side of the isle, so if you are walking with a shopping cart, you tend to bang into people or have to try and dodge the other carts in the narrow part of the isle (cuz it has something in the middle) or if you are walking without a shopping cart and want to get where you're going easily and quickly, it's like playing frogger.

Hop. Hop. Stop. Move 2 down. Hop. Hop. SQUISH!

LEARN HOW TO WALK IN THE FUCKING STORE YOU MORONS!! IT'S JUST LIKE DRIVING A CAR! Stay on the right.

I hate how inconvenient it is that I have to walk 3 miles to get to fingernail polish, 2 miles to get to candles, and 5 miles to get to automotive. If I just walked to Wal-Mart from my car (since I made it to Wal-Mart in my car, and my car sitting in the parking lot, it's one mile away to the store front), I don't really want to walk an extra 5 to get the oil to put into it. AND if my car has broken down (add 15 miles) and I walk to Wal-Mart, I don't want to add the 3 miles to get to the licorice, dots, and peeps that will make me feel better about my stupid car.

And while I know most Wal-Marts are trying to make it so that a person can walk into any Wal-Mart and know exactly where they want to go to get something, all of them are completely different. Some of them are exactly flipped, and some of them are completely bass-akwards. And all of them are entirely too big. Except maybe the older ones like the one here that is closing [so that the new one, which is completely too far and inconvenient for anyone except the fat snobs that live in the neighboring subdivision, can get all the business and rake in the cash.] So the smaller ones are okay.

These new ones though, they are like two to four acres big. Where this new one stands once stood a beautiful little patch of forest. This seems to happen a lot here. They will tear down a perfectly good habitat for animals and plant life and build a big ass UGLY brick building that will stay empty because the rent is too high. This pisses me off because the location of the older Wal-Mart is perfect. They could've done just as well tearing it down, employing the workers at the 600 other Wal-Marts in the area (that only have 6 checkers per every 100,000 square miles) while they built the new one, and replenished the crap shopping mall [that has no operating stores in it] that is next door to the shitty Wal-Mart, and done just fine. In fact, they would've done better because that little mall has more parking, and a circuit city is going in where there once was a Piggly Wiggly. Why do they have to take down the environment unnecessarily?! It's just frustrating because now there are a lot of eagles and hawks that circle over it, and foxes and other animals that have been driven out with NO WHERE to go. There is a big highway that runs right by the Wal-Mart so I'm sure there will be a lot more roadkill on the road in the coming months. How depressing.

It does suck that Wal-Mart is running a lot of the small business out of town because small businesses are much more convenient. I would much rather go to a quick little store in and out, 5 minutes, with good customer service than a big ugly store that's too difficult to maneuver. Cheaper prices right? If i'm buying a grocery cart of items, i'll take walmart, yes, but If i'm getting post it notes? Give me the little office store that charges me $.50 more. Wal-Mart started out as a small business, and I don't know why it doesn't try harder to work with small businesses instead of just snuffing them out. It's just confusing and frustrating.

So you see, it's not that I despise the company because of their political actions, money grubbing owners, or poor business ethics. Or maybe it is. But I would never stand outside a Wal-Mart and picket; I would (had I known sooner that it was being built) probably petitioned for them to use land that already had building on it that could easily been torn down or replaced or remodeled. It's so inconvenient because you have to drive ALLLLLL the way out there(it's about 10 miles away from the closest major intersection), park way the hell away from it, go searching within the 3 square miles of store with a treasure map for your stuff all while fending off old people, fat stupid little kids and their fat stupid hygienically impaired parents, and then waiting in line for 45 minutes while

a. the checker price checks every box of cookies because the gluttonous family in front of you couldn't wait to open them,

b. waiting on the fat toothless folk that chased you away from the twinkies with a broom they stole from the cart next to them who are now looking at the glass on the checkout
counter like a dog looks at a mirror,

or C. waiting in line behind the old fucker who's trying to understand the woman who only speaks two words of English, and wondering why she can't tell him the balance on his credit card.

Isn't shopping great?