The Other People of Walmart

I hate shopping at Wally World. Love the prices, but the experience itself reminds me of Hunger Games-Meets-Honey-Boo-Boo. Some WalMartians, I’ve found, appear to regress to their ancestral roots when it comes to obtaining food. It’s famine time, and they are willing to threaten death-by-grocery-cart for anyone who comes between them and that mega bag of off-brand jalapeno corn twists.

I once tried repeatedly dodging a customer who’d gone on an expedition in the frozen food case. The aisle was blocked with those displays they like to add, so every time the woman would lean in, her derriere jutted out and blocked the aisle like a railroad crossing gate. She was performing major calisthenics in there. When she’d stand up, the path was free again. Up down up down. She was so lost in the frozen tundra of Tater Tot Land that she couldn’t hear me say, “excuse me” repeatedly. So at one point when the path was blessedly free, I darted past. Down came the booty and threatened to ram my cart like a Rocky Mountain Billy Goat—truly giving new meaning to the action of butting something.

Recently I had an errand in one of the nicer parts of town, so I stopped at their Wally World on my way home. I couldn’t believe it. Who knew the wealthy hid such treasures from the rest of us? Shoppers stayed to one side so others could pass. No children camped out in the middle of aisles, unattended. People uttered the magic words, “excuse me.” When my yogurt package broke, three people politely informed me. Three. And they were so nice about it! No one scared me even a little. Oh, sure, maybe it was a tad Stepford-like, but if they had said they wanted to make me one of them, I would have been okay with that.

I dubbed it “Weird Wally’s,” and I dream of going back there someday.

Alas, “my” WalMart is much closer, so I got the bright idea to shop late at night when fewer customers are there. Turns out that’s when the aisles are stocked, so instead of being blocked by oblivious shoppers, they are blocked by forests of gigantic carts and stockers who are possibly on work release programs for those who don’t work well with others.

Not only are they more hostile than the usual clientele, those giant gurneys make a grocery cart look like a little red wagon lost at a monster truck rally. In the paper goods aisle, I feared a TP avalanche that might smother me. Worry about the resulting headline—not to mention my obituary—caused me to abandon the paper items on my list. Then I dodged several convicts, a former roller derby queen, a few meth heads and an angry granny trailing Luna Lovegood’s locks behind her.

When I finally emerged alive from that obstacle course, they added insult to injury by making me do self-checkout…for my entire cartload of groceries, produce and all. Have I mentioned before that I send out Carrie-like anti-machinery vibes that break things? Any time I saved by avoiding shoppers was more than wasted with a scanner that told me repeatedly I needed help.

Well, duh. I bet the people at Weird Wally’s are getting free hors d’oeuvres and massages at the end of their shopping trips.

Life is much trippier than first imagined. ~Anne Lamott, Stitches