Wal-mart: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

This is the tale of the two Wal-Marts.


First off, let me tell you how much my family and I love Wal-Mart. It is our home away from home. We buy our groceries, medicine, and everything else you could think of from Wal-Mart. We're in there just about every day. Very rarely does a day go by that we're not there to pick up some sort of item we happen to require. It's not uncommon, either, for the greeters at Wal-Mart to see us come in more than once a day, just in case we forgot something on an earlier trip. So it's one of our favorites places to be. There are a couple of people who work there who go to our church, I tell one of them (we see her at least twice a week in the store) that we're back to give away more of our disposable income. The people in there are really nice to us, and we really don't have any issues with them. :)


As I said before, there are really two parts to this story, as I went to two different Wal-Marts the last couple of days. Anyhow, the first part of the story goes like this. It's the good part of the story. Wal-Mart has been clearing out some of their Christmas goodies, and my family and I went into the deli section to find something to snack on, when lo and behold, they had some of their baklava on sale they didn't get rid of at Christmas time. It was marked half off, and this is one of my favorite snacks to eat, but since I'm so cheap, I didn't want to pay full price for it when they had it on the shelves earlier in the month. We decided to buy some, and it was soooooo good. I always tell my wife that when we get to Heaven, I hope they have three particular items; chocolate, coffee, and cheesecake. I've decided that my list is incomplete and baklava must now be added to that list. :)


Now...the bad part. This is the other Wal-Mart I went to yesterday. I was helping my folks do some chores in another area of town, so I went to the Wal-Mart close to where they live. I've been to this Wal-Mart before, especially since my wife and I used to live near this area before we moved four years ago, so it's not an unfamiliar place. I had to go into Wal-Mart to buy my seven-month-old daughter some formula because I wound up walking out the front door without it. So...I made my trek to Wal-Mart to get some. I decided to go into one of those do-it-yourself checkouts. I like to use those sometimes, especially when I'm in a hurry, and since this was one of the bigger Wal-Mart (read: a lot of people floating around inside) and since my daughter wasn't going to like me tarrying too long with her "vittles", I thought it best to get out out of there as soon as possible.


There was a lady who was in front of me in the self-checkout line. She was having some problems getting some stuff scanned, and she was taking a while. After a couple of minutes, I realized she was mentally handicapped (or mentally "challenged" if that's what you want to call it), but I say we're all "handicapped" in some manner or another. Anyhow, one of the Wal-Mart associates (employees) came over to "help" her with all of this. She proceeded to go into her bag of stuff the lady had supposedly scanned already and told her she didn't pay for an item that was in there. The customer looked really puzzled by all of it, and she told the employee she thought she had paid for it already. This associate replied back to her in a very rude manner, "No, you didn't!", at which point she (the associate) decided to look up on the screen to validate her accusation. There were some other issues as well, because the associate had to go "unlock" the system to change some information that was previously unscanned, scanned twice, I'm not really sure what all that entailed. After all this happened, the customer went back to scanning her remaining items. She was still taking a little longer than most people would going through the checkout. The associate stood there, impatiently and irritated, watching all of this, periodically turning her attention elsewhere, and then back to the customer. When the customer had two items remaining, the employee, believe it or not, then took it upon herself to get behind the customer, and start scanning the items for her. This was in spite of the fact that the customer wasn't having any problems scanning it (other than taking a little longer than usual) and this was all without the customer's asking for assistance.


Now...I'm a Christian, but I tell you, when I saw all of this, I was completely dumbfounded, and I almost said a bunch of ugly words to that associate, some things which shouldn't come out of my mouth. I kept quiet, but I was livid. After the customer left and I had checked out, I went over to the customer service desk and had a little chat about this incident with one of the assistant managers. The assistant manager told me that a lot of people have problems with the self-checkout machines, and it was possible the associate was just trying to help the customer get through the line. I do hope that it's just a misunderstanding on my part, and I "read" the associate wrong, but I have doubts about it. I've been to those self-checkouts many times before, and on occasion, I've had problems with them for whatever reason. I've also been behind people in those checkouts who have had similar problems. I've never seen someone (myself included) be "assisted" in that type of manner.


I still can't believe somebody at Wal-Mart would act this rudely to someone. Now...I know we all have bad days, and I've been to Wal-Mart (and other stores) where people aren't too friendly or act irritated because they've had a bad day. We all have those kinds of days, and that's understandable. I can live with it. It's quite a different story when I get checked out by someone and they start displaying their attitude towards me in some other manner than just looking annoyed or being unfriendly. That's when they've crossed the line.


Thinking about all of this, it's quite apparent to me the world is getting worse, day by day. I'm not sure how much longer we have on this earth, but the Bible tells us that just before the Lord returns, people are going to be much worse. They'll be hateful, selfish, and unforgiving.



But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy 2:3)



Of course, this is nothing new. We've experienced it for years. It just seems that it's much worse than it used to be. We have kids going into school shooting other kids. We see people killing other people, their children, their spouses, over inconsequential things. Road rage has been on the increase for years (it's just driving, folks). We all better get ready because the Lord is going to be returning, and from the looks of things, it's coming sooner than we think...


Are you ready?



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