Why I Hate Walmart

Walmart: I hate it, for lots of reasons. I go there, rather I used to. And all year long I had been saying that I couldn't just stop going cold-turkey, that I would have to make it next year's resolution to stop going there. Well one day I had the suckiest time there and I said "I'm never freaking going back to Walmart again." And I didn't. For about 3 months. And just last week I got sucked back in.

I needed one of those Kodak picture makers, but the kind where you can just stick a picture up there and for 28 cents you can get a copy of it in under a minute, because, you know, I don't have a digital camera (for many reasons but mostly I wouldn't be able to figure it out). So it turns out that everyplace in the world has a Kodak picture maker, but only the kind where you stick your digital camera thingamajig in there. So I finally broke down and went in Walmart, but I rationalized several ways. One being that I was going to a Walmart other than 'my' Walmart (the one where it sucked so much that one time) and also that I would just get the pictures and get the heck outta there! But nooo, it's so cheap you can't help it.

And today I went back because of something I saw there the other day. I was watching Evy, so in addition to my almost-3-year-old, I had a 12 month-old who was asleep when we pulled in the parking lot but decided to wake up one minute after I had fully committed to the risky baby-in-the-stoller-and-toddler-walking-by-my-side scenario. Mistake numero uno.

So I needed a basket, right? Well they just don't have them by the door, they like to make a fun game of it where you have to go up and down the checkout aisles looking for them. There was a female employee right in the front of the store and I asked her if they had any, and she said "nope" and then just kept staring at whatever it was she was staring at, because that's her job at Walmart. So I spent 5 minutes looking for one myself. And I know this was stupid because when you've got little kids with you it's like carrying around ticking time bomb, so why was I wasting my time on this? It was the principle of it dammit.

Fast forward...it sucked being in there because the employees are rude because Walmart isn't a great place to work for, so I hear...and the customers are rude because it's not a happy place. I even find myself getting snappy with people when I'm there, and I'm surprised by the things that come out of my mouth because I generally consider myself to be a very nice person. It's sort of like the anti-Disney World if you think about it.

Oh, and an old guy tried to give Jacob a quarter. Are you freaking kidding me? I understand that in his day it was ok to do this, and maybe he could have been forgiven if he walked away after I kindly said "no thanks" with a pleasant smile on my face. I would have even given him the benefit of the doubt after the second time because maybe he was hard of hearing. But after the third time, and my grabbing Jacob and stategically placing myself between him and the guy, and the guy trying to push his way around me to get to Jacob, as if to say "How dare you get in the way of my giving your child money!" well then I was pissed. So we just started walking away and he stood there and had the nerve to say something snide to me.

Then we checked out and I got way too many bags after I said "Just go ahead and stuff it in one bag"...and that will be subject matter for another day...

So that was basically the beginning of the end of today. It was one of those days where everything that can go wrong, did.