I hate going to WalMart. I love potato salad, buttermilk biscuits and sweet tea. However, the one thing that all Southerners enjoy that I mortally hate is going to the frigging WalMart.
We had to make the trip today. We usually wait until it is absolutely necessary...sometimes maybe a bit more than necessary. But we HAD to go today for laundry detergent. We had to get gas first. Why? Because I said so. So, immediately I'm pissed because gas is $2.83 a gallon. Nothing to do about it except bend over and keep the Vaseline handy. After shucking over my life's savings to the attendant, I pull out and into the WalMart parking lot. You'd think something REALLY exciting was going on in there. Why are there so many people at WalMart at 10:30 on a Tuesday? Don't you people have jobs? And it is SO swampy hot today that we're all fighting to get the parking space that requires the fewest steps to the blessed air conditioning. Of course, I find a lady in a primo spot packing her (gas-hogging, ozone-killing, penis-envy) SUV full of her (cheap, sweatshop labor-produced, "Made in America") Wally World goods. I figure I'll wait her out. It's too good a spot to let go. My husband even gets out of the car to take her cart so she doesn't have to do the jog to the cart-park thing. We waited a good 5 minutes on this woman's space. Just so some schmuck can cut me off and pull into it first. I had a serious Fried Green Tomatoes moment. I think I may have burst a blood vessel.
I find another space. I don't kill the guy for taking my spot, for which I think I deserve a Good Citizen's award. We go inside. I am a raging mass of raw nerves at this point. I head to Health and Beauty Aids to pick up some personal products. You know what I mean, girls. I dodge the girls who think they are too pretty to say "Excuse me", the unattended children whose parents seem to think that WalMart is a playground, and the crazy women who didn't have the forethought to grab a buggy. OK, WalMart execs, listen up! If NO WHERE else, make the tampon aisle wider. We don't want to be there. We are highly irritable if that's what we're there for, and 4 buggies in the space where only one-and-a-half fit isn't helping the mood. They should offer Midol IV's if they can't do any better than that.
Now, back over to the grocery side of the store. Bread, coffee, milk, chips. We are easily pleased people. Except, at the coffee/bread aisle, a woman executes a move with her cart that I still, at this moment, do not understand. We are trying to turn right into the aisle, and she is coming from the other direction. I stop, and try to wait politely. No small feat, given my current state of homocidal rage. For some reason, this woman turns left like she's going into the aisle and then, instead of entering the aisle, she straightens out so that she is completely across the entrance to the aisle. WTF ARE YOU DOING????, I wanted to scream. Instead, I just pulled out my handy billy club and beat the woman to death right there in front of the whole wheat English muffins. Clean-up on aisle one, please!
After finally managing to circumvent the road block that this woman had effectively created, I grab a bag of coffee beans for Brad and a loaf of bread. Whole wheat, if you were wondering. Oh, and some chocolate syrup for Cliff's neverending chocolate milk addiction. We shuffle past the aisles of all the pre-packaged death without entering. Only to come upon someone's Family Reunion right in front of the refrigerated cheese coffin. Why do people do this? If you simply MUST catch up with your family in a retail environment, do it at KMart. No one's trying to buy stuff there.
Around we go, because...you know...they're in their own little protected bubble when they are chatting...and they can conveniently ignore you trying to get through to buy your groceries and get out of the hellhole.
And now, I want to take time to thank the people who had the spectacular idea to insert a McDonald's in the back of WalMart. It's not enough that there are Baby Bottle Pops at 6-year-old eye level hanging at the entrance of every single aisle. Wait until I have ALMOST finished shopping and done so without buying any of the crap that you market directly to my innocent child, and THEN around the last corner, throw up a giant, glowing "M" as a doorway and a life-sized, heavy-duty plastic Ronald McDonald sitting pedophilically on a bench. Nice. Make me have to explain that I have to buy things like milk, and that I've already spent a portion of his college fund on gasoline (the other portion probably soon to be used on legal fees regarding the woman I just bludgeoned). Make me have to look into that sweet little face and tell him that Ronald McDonald is a Bad Clown. A scary clown. A damned capitalistic, bloodsucking clown with horrendous hair. May as well tackle Santa next. Thanks, WalMart. Enriching lives everyday, you are.
I pen my son in with my buggy, so that he can't make a break for McDonald's, causing a football-esque episode to ensue where he dodges me like Emmett Smith. I grab a gallon of 2-percent and head as quickly as possible to the registers. I have to say here that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Self-Checkout. A perfect addition for anti-social people like myself. I find an empty line, and start ringing up my purchases, making profane comments to the computer voice as I go. At the end when I press "Finish and Pay", the disembodied computer voice tells me to "Please check your basket. Scan any additional items now, or press "OK" to pay." Cripes. Is this a shoplifting deterrent? Please. Kill me.
I stick my $20 into the bill slot, the machine hungrily slurps it down and burps three pennies back at me. Fantastic. Another WalMart trip survived. We are almost out the door!
And we forgot laundry detergent.
No comments:
Post a Comment