Fun At Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart: the quintessential department store for your everyday needs. From the biggest must-have items down to the infinitesimal, last-season flops – Wal-Mart’s got you covered. Clothes, food, paper products, pet supplies, goldfish, silverware, dishware, paint, electronics, sporting goods, toys, gardening supplies, tools, movies, tunes, shoes, personal care items - it’s all there. (Unless you’re shopping at our local Wal-Mart store, then it’s never there.)

How does one get to such a fantastic place such as this? Well, my friends, you needn’t worry. Look north, south, east, west; northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest - there is a Wal-Mart no more than 20 minutes away in any direction you may choose. You could combine any two or three of those directions and you will still find a Wal-Mart within that 20-minute range. I have seen towns with a population of 900 built around a Wal-Mart. Bizarre – everyone works at Wal-Mart, then turns around and spends a majority of their paycheck there. Talk about being in dire need of an economic stimulus.

I don’t know about your Wal-Mart, but ours is a tad bit…unique, if you will. One might call it exceptional, but not mean that it’s exceptionally great; rather a little on the…uh… special side…if you know what I mean. Honestly, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. I have to give credit where credit is due – the employees are the ones who really “make the store.” For example:

My husband, Charlie, and I went to Wal-Mart one fine, cheery afternoon. We were in the market to buy some dog food and perhaps a few gadgets for around the house. I don’t remember exactly what was on the list that day except for the dog food. It sticks out in my mind, and you’ll soon understand why. When we finished our little shopping excursion, we proceeded to the checkout lanes. We were a bit tickled because, that day, almost all of the registers were open, so there were no outrageous lines that wrapped around the women’s department and over toward the toy section. We quickly located a particularly short line and skipped merrily, hand-in-hand (because that’s what you do at Wal-Mart) over to it. Charlie and I unloaded our items in the cart onto the little conveyor belt, all except for the dog food. See, dog food packages come with these handy little UPC labels or stickers on the top corner of the bag so that all the cashier has to do is reach over with a handy-dandy little scanner gun and *beep* - you’re good to go! Our cashier was apparently a little new at the whole scanner gun code of behavior because she pulled it out of its little holster and checked to make sure it was working. She did this by pointing the laser beam at her eyes (which were dancing in two different directions behind a pair of very large, very thick, very out-of-date tortoise shell glasses) and…
squeezed…the trigger. A bright red beam escaped from the scanner gun and began to melt the frames on her glasses as it cut through the lenses. The cashier stared with unblinking eyes directly into the big red light, seemingly unresponsive. Finally, after what seemed like we’d let the whole tragedy unfold in front of us for way too long and should probably stop her, she let go of the trigger. She then turned and looked beyond us with crossed eyes, snorted, and said, “Well, it seems to be working.”

Thank goodness, because I really didn’t want to lift that 50-pound bag up out of the cart and put it on the conveyor belt.

One thing I do have to say is that Wal-Mart always has the coolest toys, gadgets, and latest trends come Christmas time, doesn’t it? And the prices – to die for! Literally. No, I’m not kidding. You don’t want to be at a Wal-Mart on Black Friday, one of the two biggest shopping days of the year. As far as I’m concerned, that is the most appropriate name for that day. You can’t get more specific than that. Black Friday. The only other acceptable name for that day would be Hell On Earth. You could not coax me out of bed and into my Forester with a case of chocolate waiting for me in the passenger seat, a toasty hot cappuccino in my cup holder, the heater on, my favorite tunes playing, a chauffer, all the money I could possibly spend in a day, and my own personal shopper to go down to Wal-Mart (or anywhere else for that matter) to go shopping for Christmas presents on Black friggin’ Friday! The people that do it are nuts! I call them The Crazies.

And those people are crazy! Mostly women, and every single one of them a few eggs short of a dozen. Once in awhile, they’ll talk a man into going with them. “Oh, honey, it’ll be fun! Mary and Donna and I have it all planned out. We’ll take this route through the store - Mary is going to get the Nintendos and the Wii games; I’m going to grab the Elmos and the Bratz dolls; Donna will tackle the Pokemons, Digimons, and whatever other ‘mons she can find. All you have to do is get the iPods and the iTunes and then come find us with the cart so we don’t have to carry all that stuff around the store and fend off the shoppers who didn’t get there early enough.”

Whew! That’s a lot of planning just to grab a few hip items for the kids this year, isn’t it? Fellas, you may be asking yourself, “Why? What is behind this strategy? The shelves are always chock full of these things any other time. If we get there early enough, it’s not like they’ll run out or anything.” No! This is not a strategy - this is a science, ok? This is a marketing frenzy that only happens once a year, full of subliminal messages that entice those with the shopping gene to think to themselves, “I have to have that…for the children. How can I pass up that price? That’s incredible! I’m going to get that thing for twenty five dollars off the regular retail price and save!”

Herein is where the catch lies. You want the latest, hippest digital camera – regularly $199.99 throughout the year. The digi-cam people are going to let Wal-Mart sell it to you for $89.99! Wow – that’s a steal, isn’t it? But, oh – you forgot! Cameras need batteries (rechargeables are best), and what do you know? The battery people have raised their prices a tad bit for the holiday. But you don’t see that, because you are blinded by the great deal you just got on that little digital wonder, am I right? And what about the accessories? The memory card, the battery charger, the compatible printer…now that you’ve been hoodwinked into buying the digital camera, you have to buy all the stuff that makes it work, but is “conveniently” not included with the purchase of the camera itself. Otherwise, that’s a stupid Christmas present that you just bought your teenage daughter. If you just buy her the camera, that’s kind of like putting your underwear on over your pants – it just doesn’t make much sense, and boy, do you look like an idiot.

One year, my father-in-law got talked into going on one of these scavenger hunts. Poor guy didn’t know what hit him. One minute he was warming up the car for The Crazies (sorry, gals!) – just being a genuinely nice guy; next minute, he found himself waiting in line amidst a crowd of full-blown maniacs outside of Wal-Mart. He said hell never forget that day. People were glued to their watches, which were synchronized with the store clocks. There was a group of women, whispering amongst each other, staring down some of the other shoppers, and wielding brass knuckles and spiked balls on chains. Another group was shaking uncontrollably and their teeth were chattering; not because they were freezing in the cold, early morning November air, but because they were hopped up on enough caffeine and nicotine necessary to sustain acute lack of sleep. Some people were hurriedly marking the store’s newspaper ad and doing some last minute scheming for their run through the toy section. (Slackers!) And there stood Dad, a rose in a sea of thorns, oblivious to the horror that was about to unfold in front of his eyes in three…two…one…

The doors flew open and the cashiers fled to their registers. The Wal-Mart greeter was suspended from the ceiling joists, so as not to get trampled by the 4 a.m. shoppers. He was armed with a bullhorn so that everyone could hear his cheerful (fearful?) greeting as they stampeded in. The store manager stood on top of the courtesy desk, shoveling carts out of the turnstile with a hook-tipped stick for people to grab as they raced through the entryway. It was sheer mayhem as shoppers threw elbows and upper cuts, clobbered each other with handbags and cell phones, and crippled one another with shopping cart-to-ankle collisions. “I swear, you’ve never been witness to such heated competition,” recanted my father-in-law.

As the waves of people continually crashed into the small opening at the front doors, Dad found himself being carried, not forward, but backward by the tumultuous tide. He could see Betty (my mother-in-law) and her daughter, only identifiable by the tops of their heads, far enough in front of him that there was no want or will to catch up with them at that point. He slowly made his way through the front doors and toward the empty turnstile next to the courtesy desk where the store manager (now beaten, bruised, and passed out) had once stood. Dad saw his opportunity. He dropped to his knees through a slight opening in the mad dash of feet, grasped the floor with his hands (if you can imagine grasping a flat surface), and crawled out to freedom through the cart return. It was his only hope, and the reason why he is still alive and with us today to tell such a remarkable, heart-warming survival story.

“An experience unlike any other,” Dad set his jaw, his lips frowning ever so slightly. “I don’t recommend it; not at all.”

We couldn’t agree with him more!