Adventures At Walmart

Oh yeah! I went to Walmart yesterday. You folks get to read about my every visit, because I seldom venture to the big box, and every trip is memorable. I'm close to phobic about going there. By his request, my grandson and I went to buy his birthday presents yesterday. He headed straight for the aisle which displays Lego Star Wars toys, games, etc.

When I go for myself, I have my list, I go directly to find my items as best I can, and then I'm out. Yesterday, it did not go that way. GS had to look at every toy in the aisle before he made his choice, just to be absolutely sure that there was not something that he would like much better lurking somewhere on the long line of shelves.

He took his time, and I was patient with him, thinking of this as "quality time" with grandson as we chatted during his search. He's the child whose parents divorced three years ago, and who also has been diagnosed with ADHD. His report card was very good at the end of the year, all "A"s and "B"s, and his reading level is above average, which was joyful news, as he struggled with reading at the beginning of the school year. He's quite good at math, a gift he surely did not inherit from his paternal grandmother.

Finally, finally, he chose his gifts within certain price limits, and I went on to find the two items that I needed, shampoo, and another POS alarm clock to replace the one that I purchased not so very long ago, but which had gone bad already. I could not find the alarm clocks. Of course! They were not in the same place where I found the POS clock that I needed to replace. I wandered the vast store looking for an employee, but nary a one to be found. We wandered and we wandered to likely places where the clocks might be, but no clocks. Again, finally, finally, I found an employee who very kindly walked me to the shelf with the clocks. I went a little more upscale, moving from approximately $8.00 to $12.00, in the, no doubt, vain hope that the clock was not a POS.

In truth, this visit was not as traumatic as some, because making my GS happy was the purpose of my being there, and it was not simply about my pedestrian need for stuff that I can't buy anywhere else, and we chatted as we roamed.

On to checkout, always a challenge at Walmart. The only quick-access checkouts were the self-serves, so I chose one, although the self-checkout generally does not work out for me. Twice during the process, I was prompted to bag items that were already bagged. What did I do? Not place them in the bags just right? With not enough force for the machine to register that they were there? GS helped me with the buttons on the machine for payment for the purchases, and we were finally done. He wanted a pretzel on the way out, and I told him that I would not go through the checkout line just for a pretzel, but - oh joy! - the pretzels were in a booth.

I know that some of you who read this post work at Walmart, and you need your jobs. Others of you must shop at Walmart or even like shopping there, and that's fine. Some of my anxiety about Walmart is due to my eccentricities, but not all of it. Walmart seems to overburden their employees by not having enough of them around and also is not generous with benefits, as many of their employees are part-timers with no benefits and low salaries. Then their stores are big, ugly boxes, which are an assault to the eyes inside and out.

All done with Walmart for a few months. Yay!

Disclaimer: Grandpère sometimes shops for groceries there. I try not to. Chacun à son goût.