Humiliated, Shamed and Mildly Vindicated at Wal-Mart
Due to some unfortunate events at work, my Nerf basketball caught fire and melted into this gooey heap of mess. The day was all but here and gone before I remembered that I needed a replacement but at nearly 9 pm, my only options were Meijer and Wal-Mart and Meijer’s toy department is substandard.
So I headed to Wal-Mart… There are times when my desperation knows no bounds.
<information tangent>Now, if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’re well aware that I suffer from some serious personal problems, including but not limited to: debilitating OCD, germophobia and misanthropic malaise. And since I generally do my best to avoid human contact if I’m not a) at work, b) in a sports-related situation or c) on my 8th shot, the latter two issues, make trips to Wal-Mart, particularly troublesome.
Depending on your location, Wal-Mart is either a pretty decent store or a mecca for the unclean, uncouth and unsanitary of your town. If a sign hung outside mine that said: "Give me your barefoot, your trashy, your huddled unwashed masses yearning to breathe illness and stank, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp of slashed prices beside the golden, sliding door!," I would not be remotely surprised.
Seven of ten people at my local Wal-Mart are missing teeth, various items of clothing and immune systems. Their children are sticky, fat, snot-covered abominations that scream, fuss and whine. Maybe they’re hungry, maybe they’re cold, maybe they’re just tired of staring at their mother’s muffin top while she bends over to get another 24-pack of Natty Lite. It’s anyone’s guess. And if they’re school age, they rip and run through the aisles, spreading colds, flu, SARs and funk, while their parent/guardian mindlessly scopes out Dog the Bounty Hunter on dvd and I cower near the wet wipes and hold my breath.
As such, I started bringing along a latex glove for my Wal-Mart visits. Crazy? Paranoid? I don’t deny it. I pick up a lot of stuff while I’m at the store that I don’t end up buying. I’d rather be crazy than come down with the plague because some "patron" coughed and snotted all over something before I happened along. </information tangent>
Armed with my latex glove, I grabbed the Nerf stuff pretty quickly and then meandered around the store looking for stuff I didn’t need. I wound up in the empty automotive section and tested out some car freshener that I carried for 8 aisles until I saw a Jeep trademarked utility pack. It came with bits, blades and what looked like flares and only cost $30. So I switched air freshener for pack and kept going until I reached the express line. All in all, I made 10 product exchanges on my way to checkout before placing my final pickup – a 10 pack of Orbit gum – into a magazine rack.
While waiting on slow-as-molasses Glenda to check people out, a grim-looking man approached:
"Miss, please step out the line." I asked why. "We need to talk to you about your activities." I didn’t see any "we." Just some an overweight tool in a black outfit. I refused to leave the line until I received an explanation on these supposed "activities" … I should have left the line.
"Miss, we’ve been watching you in the store with one hand in your coat pocket and one hand exposed. Where is the Renuzit spray." "On a shelf." "And the tool package? "On a shelf." "Budweiser neon sign." "On a shelf… the only thing that isn’t on a shelf is that pack of gum. It’s in a rack." He stared at me with pure rent-a-cop malice until some dude came in over a radio. Apparently my "on a shelf" descriptions were too vague, prompting the wench in front of me to clutch her purse, as if there was anything in there beyond condoms and a pack of Nicorette.
Security guy began questioning me again, so I took off my coat, shook it and asked where I’d put all of these allegedly shoplifted items. "Are you saying you shoplifted?" "No, YOU are." "We haven’t said anything. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this. Maybe you have a partner. Maybe you’re leaving stuff behind… that would explain your glove. No prints." I was dumbfounded. "Look, I don’t think you get it." "Explain it to me then."
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t out my own craziness and paranoia in front of the 30 people in the vicinity – 25 of them were the very reason why I was wearing the glove in the first place! But when he threatened to call the police, I came clean in as low a tone as possible. Like it mattered. Security guy’s voice went up 450 decibels: "SO YOU DON’T WANT TO TOUCH ANYTHING IN WAL-MART BECAUSE YOU THINK ALL OF OUR SHOPPERS HAVE DISEASES AND YOU’RE AFRAID YOU’LL GET SICK?" "Well… see…"
Security guy got on the radio. "The girl isn’t a suspect. She’s just a lady Monk." "A what?" "You know that show on channel 51 with the crazy guy." "The blonde on that show is hot." Security guy walked away.
The rest of the shoppers stared at me with scorn. At least they didn’t boo or hurl empties. About 4 seconds passed before the purse clencher – who was buying construction paper, cigarettes, balloons and Coke – called me a snobby brat and the lady behind me chimed in as well: "Hey little girl, just because I don’t have a nice coat like you doesn’t mean I’m not a good person. This is America. We’re not out to hurt anybody." While I tried to figure out how that related to germs, she started coughing. And I mean really coughing. Wet, phlegmy, had pneumonia for 18 weeks coughing. When she finally stopped, she wiped her hands on her pants and put the People magazine back in the rack.
So appropriate.
20 Comments
Disclaimer
I am a jaded, sarcastic girl prone to unreasonable fits of rage. This site is my outlet. I am not classy, nice, or fair. It's best you know that up front.
Subscribe
Recent Comments
Pit Stops
Categories
Archives
Extras
Female Monk…that is priceless
LOL You should see if Wal-Mart has a delivery service like the one you’ve got going at the grocery store
Wow Lady Monk, there’s a lot in here to comment on.
Due to some unfortunate events at work, my Nerf basketball caught fire and melted into this gooey heap of mess.
First of all, that is quite possibly the greatest opening line to a post in the history of blogs. It starts the gentle-reader off with a chuckle and some serious questions.
…and Meijer’s toy department is substandard.
Sadly, not only is this true, but I as a 31 year old supposed adult am still very aware of this. The only thing worse than the toy department at Meijer is the electronics section. How do they expect me to waste time when I’m there with someone who wants to browse for long periods of time or is shopping for something I don’t care about (i.e. pretty much anything that is neither edible nor found in the toy or electronics section of the store)?
Your entire information tangent is simply genius (though, I wouldn’t go far enough to wear latex gloves, but I’m not too much of germophobe…I think I can pretty much blame my job for preventing that). I really don’t know what it is but Wal-Mart really seems to have some sort of special appeal to the dentally challenged. It doesn’t matter what part of town or what part of the country, it’s that way everywhere I’ve been. You’ve got Glenda there and at our Wal-Mart we have Mari Opal. Where are these old women with the awesome names coming from and why do they (and so many of the other employees) seem to have Southern accents? Are they bussing them up from Bentonville?
I was listening to Mike and Mike on the way to work recently and heard Greenberg say that to deal with his germ issues he was considering wearing tight white gloves like the Marines’ dress uniforms. It seems less suspicious than a latex glove, I suppose and as a woman it’s at least reasonably acceptable for you to wear gloves as fashion implements (even if you are wearing them to protect yourself).
Here is something the really confuses me: Even if you had a partner who was helping you shoplift, how would picking up something and putting it back down in the wrong department do any good? Shouldn’t being a security guard, even at a place like Wal-Mart require some sort of logical thought process? Sometimes a person acting in a way that isn’t considered normal is really just a person acting in a way that isn’t considered normal and not something more nefarious.
People really don’t tend to understand those of use with OCD. When the people I work with look at me funny as I check, double-check and recheck things or do something associated with any of my other (quite endearing) idiosyncrasies, I just remind them that they can mock all they want, but they should be glad they don’t have to work with an unmedicated version of me.
Look at it this way, despite all of the humiliation, the nasty coughing and probable exposure to tuberculosis, you got a compliment out of purse clencher who thinks you have a nice coat.
Sorry, I didn’t really intend to be quite so long-winded. I just suddenly realized that I had spent enough time writing this that the price of pharmaceuticals has risen all across the country. I guess combining the subjects of Wal-Mart and OCD is enough to really get me talking.
Hilarious. But go to Target, Flash. I think you have a smaller chance of getting TB and Ebola there.
I am having the hardest week ever, and that just made my day. I hesitated to read it right now because I am pressed for time, but I am so glad I did. That made me realize that life is too entertaining to be stressed about it. Female monk!!! HA!
That’s awesome and terrifying all at the same time. Methinks there was an opportunity for a lawsuit or at least a gift card in there somewhere, though.
Your observations of Wal-mart shoppers remind me of those I made some years back:
Most had hairy backs and deformed, twisted tattoos that used to resemble something on their flabby arms. All wore mesh trucker’s caps and several were accompanied by homely, obese wives and unruly children with either fittingly unruly hair or a mohawk-in-the-making.
“This is America.”
So being American means you’re free to spread Black Death at will??
And I can just imagine you in Wal-Mart and that image is almost as priceless as the story itself.
Wait wait wait.
“Due to some unfortunate events at work, my Nerf basketball caught fire and melted into this gooey heap of mess.”
I can’t even focus on the rest until you lay down THAT story! How are you gonna just blow right over it?
1. Wal-Mart is where hope goes to die. The last time I was in there a kid that had half of his hair corn-rowed and the other half still waiting hawked a loogee into the grapes. His grandma actually saw it and buried the grapes under some other ones. In another aisle, I tried to get past this really really overweight woman and when I got into the next aisle, I had cheese shit on my shirt. It smelled like that shit you get with Handi Snacks.
2. If you don’t accept my facebook friend request I’m gonna kidnap you and take you back to Wal-Mart. We’ll hang out by the candy and chips. WTF?
If a sign hung outside mine that said: “Give me your barefoot, your trashy, your huddled unwashed masses yearning to breathe illness and stank, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp of slashed prices beside the golden, sliding door!,” I would not be remotely surprised.
5 stars, hahaha.
I went in a 24 hr Walmart at about 2-3 am once to pick up Madden 07 on the day it came out (big waste of $$$). I walked in behind this nasty dude that swallowed his chew and puked it all up by the end of the first check out line. When I got home, my game was fucked up, so I drove back. About an hour went by total and when I got back, the Skoal puke was starting to dry on the floor.
“Miss, we’ve been watching you in the store with one hand in your coat pocket and one hand exposed. Where is the Renuzit spray.” “On a shelf.” “And the tool package? “On a shelf.” “Budweiser neon sign.” “On a shelf… the only thing that isn’t on a shelf is that pack of gum. It’s in a rack.”
HA! I can just hear your snide British accent laying that one down. But you’re lucky he didn’t drag you away then and there. In stores like that, being a smart ass to security (and not sounding like you’re from Tennessee) is almost as big of a crime as the 5 finger discount.
Do they really expect you to walk back and put stuff where you found it? What do they pay their workers for?
The thing that kills me about Wal-Mart (other than the scum of the Earth people that are always there) is how as soon as they open one up in a small town, every other local business takes a major hit.
Wal-Mart: Effin Price Whores.
Come on wufpirate! How do you expect a Wal-Mart to have any employees if it doesn’t destroy every small business in a 40 mile radius?
Good for you for taking a photo of the purse clencher and Glenda.
I’d say that they owed you a gift certificate but I don’t know how you could be convinced to go back to redeem it!
That was great. Really, really great.
I send the ball and chain if I even think Wally World will have something I need.
Forgive the non-American but what is Wal-Mart?