Sean's Journal
Write Me

Dear lord! It was a horrifying experience. Getting inside the store was a nightmare as we had to negotiate ourselves around the decrepit store greeter who had to personal touch and fondle every child that entered the store. Okay, that is an overly creepy description of his tussling hair and applying little smiley face stickers to the tykes. If it were me, though, I wouldn't want this creepy old man touching me at all - smiley stickers or not.

Immediately I sensed I was in enemy territory. The masses who swarmed to Walmart were the GOP stalwarts - the working poor who don't realize they are kept that way by the very GOP policies they support.

As we move through the aisles, you get ramrodded by men who seem to think they can swing maps and brooms about without paying attention to what is going on. I'm sure these are the same guys who carry a 2 by 4 in the middle and make quick turns. They are also the people who think the Three Stooges is funny.

Admittedly we were enthralled. Oreo cookies $2 a pack. Really cheap DVD's. Really cheap VHS's. They didn't have much of a cd player selection, but their mini-stereo units were kind of cool.

So far so good, we continued. My biggest complaint thus far were all the kids running loose, confused old people (no offense to them, I was equally confused on how to navigate the store), and aisles that were too narrow to allow two carts to comfortably pass by each other.

The sewing and hobby section was blissfully empty, except for three or four Asian women who were buying fabric in the tens of yards. "This is sixty yards of denim, 24 yards of the burgundy satin, 24 yards of the electric blue satin . . ." It must have been for a sweatshop or something.

After examining everything in this department, mainly because there weren't any kids and because we like to pretend that we can sew costumes, we moved on to the outdoors section. I'm a camper, I like camping, I like pretending that if civilization collapsed, I could survive with my superior survival skills. And now I have THE tool that will help me survive. It is the American Swiss Army Tool: knife, pliers, saw, screwdrivers, and the ever important bottle opener. It is small, fits in my briefcase, and guaranteed to get me arrested the next time I go flying and forget it is in my briefcase.

We were coming into the home stretch and I continued my habit of parking the cart near one of the island displays and venturing into the aisles. I ran up and down the home office aisles looking for something to catch my eye, like the super cheap two-drawer filing cabinet (with that, I shall be forever organized! I though to myself). As I was returning to my cart, I noticed a squirrely goofing looking mother fucker taking items from my cart and putting them in his. Our Caprisun was being taken by the Walmart Pirate!

I'm not good at conflicts. I'm more the type to let the goofy sob take what he wanted and go and pick up more. Why risk a scene? But the environment was getting to me. I suddenly wanted to join the NRA and abolish all taxes! "Excuse me," I said, "I'd appreciate it if my stuff could stay in my cart." I thought it was the most polite way of expressing my desire without directly calling the guy a complete asshole. His response floored me. "Heh heh, see, it's my job, carts that have been sitting longer than 5 minutes have to be cleaned out." I was doubtful of his claim because every other wage slave in that hellhole had to were cheesy little vests unless they were managers. This schmuck was no manager and wore no vest. I also thought about this in terms of the new economy, can you imagine Amazon putting a five minute wait on a shopping cart?

If I hadn't already spent 2 hours here, I would have sought out one of those special managers and had a word or two about their anti-consumer shopping. Maybe the policy was put in place to prevent someone from leaving a bomb in a shopping cart in the store. Yikes. Another reason to avoid stores that attract hundreds upon hundreds of people at a time.

We checked out and vowed never to return unless there was something we needed and could only get at Walmart.