Shopping At Wal-Mart

 

I don't mind admitting that I shop at Wal-Mart. I know that the place has gotten a kind of bad rap, and rightfully so. You never know what you're going to encounter when you go there.

 

In the picture above, you can see an elderly Wal-Mart employee with pink and green hair and a teddy bear on each shoulder. While this is an AI generated picture, there is actually a rather weird lady who works at the local Wal-Mart that I used as a model for the picture. I'm not sure what the thinking is behind this. I can more or less understand the pink and green hair. Perhaps she owned a boat once and wanted to let people know which side of her head was port and which was starboard, I don't know. The teddy bears are kind of a questionable look though. Unfortunately, there is also a middle aged male employee who apparently thought they looked really cool, so he wears them too; one on each shoulder. I hope the trend doesn't catch on. In all honesty, it looks kind of stupid. Those two give me all the reason I need to go to the self-checkout counter. I just happened to think, maybe the teddy bears are there to distract the customer, so you won't notice that the cashier bungled the sale and charged you $8.90 a pound for 89 cent a pound bananas.

 

On one occasion I was in shopping and spotted a lady bent over, practically laying in the cart she was pushing. Her watermelon sized breasts were taking up almost half the cart, which I guess would be a relief not having to pack those puppies for a bit. I can only imagine the back problems.

 

Then there are the fellows who wear pants too large or too loose for them, or their guts are pushing their pants down, I don't know. The bottom line is that their hairy butt cracks are on display, though no one wants to see them. Guys, if you're guilty of this, do all of us a favor and buy some suspenders.

 

Of course you get the young folks in there who think that pajamas and slippers are fine fare for shopping in public, but if people are running around with teddy bears on their shoulders, I guess it's not that weird.

 

Unfortunately for folks like me, who like to do their own shopping, there is a growing segment of the population that wants to have an employee shop for them. The end result is that on any given day, there is a cart or two or three in the aisle blocking access to the wheat bread or green beans or whatever it is that I happen to need at the time, while the employee, phone in hand, goes searching for whatever the various customers want, and I have to wait until they get out of the way. They don't shop for one person at a time, oh no. That would be too simple. They've got a whole stack of racks they are filling for different customers all at once.

 

The only thing more aggravating are the people who get in the motorized carts and bang into the shelves, the other carts and people. I've made an observation. Inevitably, they want something on one of the upper shelves, so they have to get out of the cart anyway, so it kind of defeats the purpose. So many of the folks who are utilizing these carts would do well to get out and walk. They could really use the exercise, and frankly, they should probably stay away from the Twinkie shelf. In retrospect, perhaps Wal-Mart should look out for their portly patrons and put all the snack items on the upper shelves, so that the cart dwellers would have to make repeated trips up and down, thus giving them some well deserved exercise.

 

When I go shopping, I always have a list. That doesn't mean that I only buy what's on the list. I usually see something else that I feel that I need, but normally, I know what I'm after and I don't goof off. I go get it and check out. I happened to notice that most of the men in the store were like me. They were pretty much straight forward, moving at a steady pace, picking up what they wanted and moving on. The women, on the other hand, were like browsing deer, moving slowly, looking at every item on the shelf, picking up boxes or bottles and reading the labels, putting them back, picking up the next item.  What is that about? Can anyone explain that to me? A man can go shopping and be out of the store in fifteen minutes, if he doesn't get stuck behind the tubby person in the motorized shopping cart or have to wait while an employee tries to fill a dozen orders, blocking the one item you need to complete your list.

 

There is one last thing I would like to touch on. The checkout line. As I mentioned, I prefer to check out my own groceries. Frankly, its faster than  going to the check out where someone is being paid to do what I can do for myself. Plus, as I mentioned, I really don't want someone who wears teddy bears on their shoulders like epaulets waiting on me.

 

Apparently the schools haven't done a very good job teaching people to read. There is at least one check out aisle that is devoted to people who have fifteen items or less. There are usually four or six cash registers there. The reason being is that they know some folks don't want to wait in line behind someone who has a cart full of groceries, when they themselves only have a few things. Inevitably, there is always someone who doesn't understand math or is unable to read, and so they show up with a week's worth of groceries and a crying kid hanging off each side of the cart. When they finally get done running their goods through the scanner, and the receipt is as long as a roll of toilet paper the cat's gotten hold of, they try to use a credit card to pay. First they have to find it in that duffle bag they call a purse. Then there is a search for the right card, and the non-stop punching in of buttons. Meanwhile, the ice cream has started to drip on the floor and the potatoes are starting to sprout it's taken so long. It's enough to make a person want to call in their grocery order.