Old people in the express checkout line:
I go to the express checkout line because I want to get the hell out of Wal-Mart as fast as I possibly can. It never fails though. As I step up to the e.c. (express checkout) to buy my candy cigarettes and triple A batteries, the crypt keepers wife has beat me there. I don’t know how she did it, but I’m pretty sure she was there the last time too, maybe still working on the same order. This lady has 400 things in her cart. Apparently none of these items have a bar code because each item needs to be rung up separately by the one cashier who already hates his life, but does so even more now because he has to walk 10 feet over to the express c. to help this lady, who is still working on that same order since he started his shift 3 hours ago. Finally she finishes her order. She just has to pay and then I’m up. Swipe, Swipe, Debit, pin pin pin pin, no cash back, ok, receipt, gone! This shouldn’t be too hard right? Wrong! Old Mother Hubbard here starts writing out a flippin’ check. First she has to dig through her purse to find her check writing glasses. She finds those, but now she has to dig through her purse to find the case for her grocery shopping glasses. She finds that. Ok, so she writes her check. The next step for any normal person would be to rip it up and use your debit card, but this is not a normal person. As of last week, this lady purchased her first dial phone. For fifty years she had been using a classic rotary and now, on top of the understandable level of anxiety she is already experiencing from switching phones, she’s trying to conquer the express check out. I do feel a bit sorry for her. Things were simpler in her time. The grocers smiled. The bag boy was that nice young man from down the block, you know, the Thompson boy. Cigarettes didn’t cause cancer. Simpler times. Anyway, the disgruntled teenage cashier makes his way over to our checkout for the 80th time and sees that she wants to pay with a check. He consults the employee hand book then process the check. She’s done. I realize I left my wallet at home and curse the day I was born.
Employees complaining about working/ telling me they “only have 30 more minutes” then they’re out of here:
Dude I don’t want to hear it. I know you’re not proud of your job. I don’t care. I need you to do this job, and get paid crap for it, so I can buy my candy cigarettes and triple A batteries for 35 cents. And besides, making fake conversation with the Wal-Mart employees is hard enough, now you’ve gone ahead and made it even more awkward by getting all emotional on me. What do you want me to say? “Thirty minutes huh? When you get off we should totally hang out?” No. What I feel like saying is “Thirty minutes huh? You know, I would be just as happy if you never had to work and you were all replaced by express checkouts. At least then I would never have to talk to you.” It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s that I absolutely hate trying to carry on a fake conversation. I’m not really interested. There just isn’t much to say when you run into someone at Wal-Mart. Everyone is there for the same reason: cheap junk. The couple times I’ve run into people at Wal-Mart and maybe actually had something to say to them, (when I was driving around in a electric cart with walking casts on both of my legs, or when I was buying a puzzle at 2:30 on a Thursday morning) I still didn’t want to talk. Something about Wal-Mart just sucks the life out of you. I understand you, complaining employee. You hate this place and just want to get out of here as fast as you can, me too, that’s why I don’t want to talk to you.
Boxes that are mangled beyond recognition:
It never fails. If I need to buy something “important” from Wal-Mart, a fan, maybe a small camping grill, or a waffle iron, every box on the shelf appears to have been torn apart by wolverines then tapped back together by a troop of chimpanzees. You can never trust these packages. There’s always a crucial piece of the innards missing. It’s too easy to steal from Wal-Mart, that’s way. They don’t care. You can buy a waffle iron, take it home, rip apart the box, take out the waffle iron, stuff all the foam and plastic back into the box, take back the box filled with just foam and plastic, and they’ll give you your money back. Then I come along, wanting a waffle iron and what I end up getting is an empty box. I buy the mangled box because a) it’s the only choice I have and b) the guy up front tells me some lie about how this wasn’t a returned item it’s just shipped in a special way. It really flips my switch because now I have to make another trip back to Wal-Mart just to return this thing which means I’ll end up buying 25 dollars worth of crap because that’s what you do when you go to Wal-Mart. You intend on getting one little thing and you end up seeing the 5 dollar DVD section. You buy Rambo II. Then you buy some air freshener for your car. It’s only 87 cents. Then you sniff the scented candles for about a half an hour. After that you’re so high you can’t remember what you did, but when you get home the roof of your mouth is torn up from eating a box of sour IceBreakers and you’ve got a 3-pack of thong underwear you’re afraid to open.
The parking lots:
Parking lots are normally like a jungle; only the strong survive, but that sense of danger is heightened tenfold when you realize that 90% of the people in a Wal-Mart parking lot are NASCAR fans. So I’m driving down a lane. I know I’m going the right way because the “car butts” are point towards me. Then all of a sudden I’ve got Jeff Gordon in a Ford Windstar coming out of nowhere. He’s cutting through lanes, swerving around abandoned shopping carts. He doesn’t care which way the car butts are pointing. All J Gordon in a Ford Windstar sees is the white taillights of a car in slot meaning someone is about to pull out. And why is that all he sees? Because every inch of his rear and side windows are covered with NASCAR decals. He’s got a huge American flag flying from his antenna, he has a couple of those fake bullet holes slapped on the doors, and he’s even got gold ol’ Calvin pissin’ on a Chevy symbol too. So he slingshots off a Toyota Camry, clips the back tire of an Oldsmobile Auroa, sending it crashing into side wall, and takes the lead in the lane I’m in. What happens after all this excitement? We sit. Jeff Gordon in a Ford Windstar isn’t going anywhere until that car he saw, the car that started this all, backs out. But apparently someone in that car forgot to pick something up inside so the driver sits in the slot, geared in reverse, doesn’t take his foot off the break, and waits that way until that person gets back. We wait there 20 minutes. The person we’ve been waiting for finally returns with their waffle iron. I know what they’re plan for that waffle iron is. Bastards. Jeff Gordon in a Ford Windstar gets his precious spot. I circle around for a while. As I’m circling I come across another delay, same guy, different way of causing havoc in the parking lot. Jeff Gordon is no longer in a Ford Windstar now it’s Jeff Gordon walking down the middle of the lane. I pull up behind him. He has to know I’m there. He doesn’t stray from his set path down the middle of the lane. His wife is walking right next to him. I think she even looks back at me but she doesn’t budge. She doesn’t even tug on the sleeve of his 1985 letterman’s jacket to move him over. They eventually get inside and I eventually get my spot, but it’s back home, where I don’t have to deal with this mess.
THANKS
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