I Loath and Love Wal-Mart

I Loath and Love Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is a place where I love to go and watch people. Nowhere else, outside of a damaged food auction or a trailer park swap meet, can you see such undesirable people. I’m not talking about your standard down-on-their-luck individual or unfortunate physically-impaired person, but your complete don’t-care-what-they-look-like or how-poorly-they-represent-the-species kind of human being. And I’m using “human being” loosely here, because there are some creatures in Wal-Mart who clearly prove Darwin wrong: Organisms so faulty that to have had them exist within our reproductive population simply mocks our genetic future. Add to that your average Wal-Mart employee, usually the illegitimate offspring of mentally handicapped siblings or of such a broken spirit that they wouldn’t even pull the fire alarm if the food court started serving Molotov cocktails, and you have a perfect storm of horrible shopping pleasure.

The loath part of my relationship with Wal-Mart is much more complicated. Wal-Mart, being the powerhouse of retail organizations that they are, slowly destroys all of their competition – much like kamikaze termites eating the last tree in the forest – thus occasionally leaving them the only place in town for certain immediately-needed items. So while I love to visit the freak show that is the Made in China headquarters for the jingoistic, I loath having to actually buy anything from there.

Thus it was that I found myself standing in the Toy Department the day before Christmas looking for a last minute gift for someone that both Kela and I swore the other had bought a gift for well over a month ago. It took three customer service representatives and a call to a different store before I was finally able to get a definitive “doncurrydemnomore” from someone wearing the nametag of (and this is the honest truth) Slappy. Slappy went on to explain that Wal-Mart stopped carrying the item November 30th due to lack of demand (nooneboughtdemnomore).

Horrific national and localized economic damage aside, Wal-Mart does usually provide me with some positive benefits. I know where to go to feel better about myself, I know where to go to find people who will vote against their own self-interest just to feel like they belong to something that they never will, and I know where to go to should I ever find myself in need of a singing large-mouth bass the days before Christmas. At least, I did until November 30th.