waveclaw's Journal: Yet another trip into the big room

Ugh. Shopping. Not that I won't die without more milk or fat free cheese, it's just that shopping in my region of Texas means one thing: shopping at Walmart. I'd rather get back to renaming my dated files in ISO 8601 format. After spending much of the day looking for reasons to not go (and an equal amount washing off the icky feeling afterward) I went to Wally land.

Soooo many vapid people filled the isles. Crushing piles of carts. People who stop to fiddle with the smallest of thing spread, like sheild volcanoes, their carts and kids and junk blocking the way as if lava flows cutting through civilization. Blech. I choose to not associate with these people for a reason: stupidity. Blind, ignorant, self-serving and head-up-$ORIFICE stupidity.

An example will illustrate the cause of my ire. An express checkout lane breaks down. A clever person converts an unused regular checkout lane into a temporary express lane. Copious signs are posted: express lane - 20 items or less. A call is sent out on the intercomm. I had given up my previous position in another line to make a last search for glue (mainly hoping that the supply isle was finally free of the family that appeared to be setting up long-term housing there.) Upon returning the hellish wait to be drained of money for items I probably could justify not purchasing for 1 or 2 more days, I took up a position in the new exprees lane. My 11 items were sparsely scattered in the cheap and poorly treated Walmart cart.

A large man with a overflowing cart enters the line behind me. His glazed examination of the 'express - 20 items or less' sign warns me this evening was about to get ugly. I got as far in the process of checkout as most of the way through purchasing, before he prepared to load his ark onto the convery belt. In ensuing conversaion he pleaded ignorance, inability to understand how to map signs with lane numbers to the lanes that they discussed and how this 'little' [1] incident should be let to slide.

Never before have I ever felt sympathy or joy at dealing with an empolyee of Sam Walton's attempt to crap-o-tize [2] retailing. Her stern adherance to following the rules AND ethics in rebuking him was the highlight of my day. The look alone on the neanderthal's [3] face as he sought out one of the (actually very short) normal lines was delightful to my eyes. While walking out, I preemted the welcome specialist with "Thank you, have a good nite."

1. Irregardless of the fact that he had easily 5 times the number items of combined count of the rest of the line.
2. The low, low, low margins and area-suffocating nature [4] of a [Super] Walmart can not be benificial to either local employment or traffic patterns.
3. Stupid People
4. Combined with the focus on 'only the top 10% of sellers' (read low, low, low quality at high, high volume) implies that the contientious customer will usually buy at a lot more at slightly more expensive, but independent stores with a Good Selection, leaving the 'average' people to walk the isles.