11-10-03 - I Resolve Never To...
Did I tell you I'd sworn off WalMart again?
It had been two years or more since I had been to WalMart. I snickered when I saw a WalMart truck. I bragged about how long it had been since I'd last gone. People would actually say to me "How can you not go to WalMart?" as though the secret to happiness was to be found inside the walls of the blue, red and gray tabernacle.
On July 3, I went to WalMart. I remembered, almost immediately, why I'd stopped shopping there.
The SUPER WalMart opened up a couple of miles from home about three years ago. While I wasn't at the Grand Opening I began shopping at the New SUPER WalMart shortly after it opened.
[Side note: I was at the Super Target Grand opening. They gave away those cool glasses that caused the Target bullseye to appear around the fireworks. I didn't actaully go to the Super Target because of the Big Grand Opening, but I was excited and didn't leave until after the fireworks. I know I have a pathetic life when I'm excited about the grand opening of the SUPER Target.]
At first it was nice. It was clean, with big wide aisles, it had a large selection and nice produce. But I soon found I was frustrated. It was BIG. It had a lot of stuff. But I could never find any help. Shopping there turned into an endurance contest.
Instead of doing my grocery shopping, taking it home, resting up for my next foray into shopping and making a separate trip for the paper goods and cleaning supplies, I was walking all over this huge warehouse of a place looking for everything at once.
The prices may have been a little cheaper than the local Homeland but the checkout lines were always long.
And it began getting dirty. And the customers were kinda scary. And the help was worse. The aisles were always clogged with junk waiting to be put on the shelves.
I spend about $150 a week for various and sundry items for my family. And I was spending longer in the checkout lines than doing the actual shopping!
I remember the day I decided I wasn't going to go there anymore. I had a whole cart full of groceries. I stood in line. I read People. I started reading Southern Living. It took forty-five minutes from the time I got in the line until I got checked out. This was a regular Sunday afternoon, not the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, fergodssake. I decided, as I stood in that awful line watching my frozen foods thaw that I wouldn't do that any more.
It's not like all these people wanting to buy stuff came as a big shock to the corporate conglomerate in Bentonville. They have something in the neighborhood of 40 checkout lines at this WalMart. At any given time less than a quarter of them are being used to actually check anyone out.
I quietly quit going. I traipsed through Target. Before Big K-Mart hit the Big B (Bankruptcy) I shopped at Big K-Mart. I hit the Homeland. I encountered the IGA and I even, in a moment of desperation, which I don't recall what brought about, burrowed into the Buy-4-Less (speaking of scary places).
I broke my resolve for homemade ice cream.
When the DearHusband and I were married, we got an electric ice cream maker as a wedding gift. It struck me as a little bit strange at the time but we used it every summer for thirteen years. I fondly remembered the couple who gave it to us, one of whom has since died, every time we used it. It turned out to have been a very nice, useful, wedding gift. I can't say that about all our wedding gifts and I don't remember very many of the gifts we received when we were married much less who gave them to us.
The weekend before the fourth of July we picked fresh fruit at fruit farms; they give you a bucket, basket or bin, you pick the fruit and pay them grocery store prices. I had three quarts of blackberries and a bunch of peaches rotting in my kitchen. I had to do something with it.
I settled upon making fruit ice cream for the family Fourth of July celebration.
But my ice cream maker had bit the dust, given up the ghost, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, quit working, the weekend before when we used it for the last time.
The Super Target had them advertised in the Sunday sale circular. By the time we got there they didn't have any left. They offered me a rain check but they wouldn't sell me the display. We tried the regular Target. We tried Lowe's, Home Depot and Ace. There had been a run on ice cream makers in the greater metropolitan area.
So the DearHusband and I looked at one another. And we said "we could try WalMart..."
The DearHusband had given up WalMart several months after I did. He continued to go for awhile rationalizing that there was just too much you needed at WalMart to not go. After an ugly incident at Christmas, he decided I was right and didn't go anymore either.
We hit the WalMart up North. No ice cream makers. That hadn't been a completely horrible experience (since I stayed in the car, it wasn't horrible for me at all) so we decided to try the one closer to home.
I remembered why I'd stopped going almost as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. The customers are kind of scary at the WalMart at 10:00 p.m. before a major holiday. And the place was filthy. We found our ice cream makers without any major mishaps and we got in line. And we waited, and we waited, and we waited.
If we hadn't had all the fruit in our kitchen slowly turning to sugar, we would have left. Finally they announced if you had ten items or less there were checkers in the electronics department. We dashed to electronics and I am happy to report were checked out and headed out the door while the poor couple who had been behind us in line was still waiting.
I fell from grace for an ice cream maker. I feel like such a slut.
M&Co.
12/18/2003
