“It’s hard to know exactly when it happened, just as it’s impossible to know when, or if, it will end. But for now, it’s clear: we’re all Walmart’s bitches.”---John Dicker
An unfortunate fellow was hospitalized last week in Arizona after shooting himself “in the groin area” while shopping at the Walmart in Buckeye, Maricopa County. Yet another of the Walmart Walking Wounded, a brigade which numbers in the hundreds (so far). The Arizona Republic reported the incident occurred around 6:30 p.m. after a semiautomatic weapon that was located in the man’s waistband began to slip. The gun, which was not in a holster, discharged as he attempted to reposition it, police said. And pop goes the weasel.
It’s understandable if some people have recently been mistaking Walmart for the O.K. Corral. Shooting incidents abound. Police in Thornton, Colorado were flummoxed in pursuit of a gunman at the local Walmart when several patrons went for their own weapons, confusing the lawmen as to who the bad guy was. In all the foofaraw, the shooter escaped, though he was eventually captured five hours later.
In an October episode at a Gary, Indiana Walmart, an explosion of gunfire sent scores of shoppers into a panic before an off-duty police officer who happened to be in the store with his family came to the rescue. The cop told several employees to hide behind a counter, ushered his own family into a storage closet and called for help. One shopper was shot and a companion promptly returned fire before being disarmed by arriving police who secured his handgun and stowed it beneath the skinless boneless chicken thighs until the fuss was over.
In Wyncote, Pennsylvania, an argument broke out in a Walmart checkout lane leading one customer to open fire, leaving eight others with non-life- threatening injuries. Police said that “words were exchanged” across two adjacent lanes before the shooter pulled a gun from his female companion’s waistband and began blasting away. The suspect was later arrested after clumsily crashing into a police vehicle.
Oh, and the parking lot may not be much safer. In Goldsboro, North Carolina, 18-year-old Jordan Lynn was somehow shot in the buttocks after leaving his very own Walmart. You may have noticed that this sort of thing almost never happens at J.C. Penney.
Sometimes, the Walmart squabbles are less serious, of course. In our local Walmart, just off Easy Street in Ocala, they generally keep it to mere fisticuffs. Not long ago, one customer took issue with another who complained about alleged spilt coffee. Despite his tormentor being an oversized lout, the wronged java drinker gave him a hearty shove and was rewarded with a left to the kisser. Coffeeman responded with a right to the cheek and customers began running off in all directions. Fortunately, an alert shelf-stocker had noticed the impending contretemps and rushed off to inform an assistant manager who came darting to the fray with a grave announcement: “If you people don’t stop this INSTANT, you’ll be banned from Walmart for LIFE!” Whoa, not a threat to be taken lightly.
The lout’s wife dropped her handbag on the floor in horror. “ENGELBERT!” she screamed, battering her husband with a floppy hat. “Did you hear what that man said? He said FOR LIFE! You stop it RIGHT NOW!” Engelbert did, too. There’s nothing so scary as a woman whose Walmart rights have been threatened. The poor fool will forever go down in family lore as the meathead who caused the clan to lose favor with Walmart, the blacksheep subject of future family reunion dinner table conversations, of clandestine tsk-tsking, of unpleasant jokes beginning with, “A redneck and his wife went into a Walmart….”
But on the whole, still better than gunfire.
Let’s Go Down To The Walmart To Get Ourselves A Treat
A few years ago, Siobhan and I balked at rising grocery store costs, took clipboards in hand and decided to compare prices. We trooped off to the Winn-Dixie in nearby Williston, a Publix just northwest of Ocala and the aforementioned Walmart, with a brief side visit to Sam’s Club, faithful Indian companion of Walmart. We knew the Arkansas behemoth was cheaper, we wanted to verify how much so. It was a lot. Thirty percent cheaper for the stuff we regularly bought. No fools us, we decided to shop at Walmart.
Shopping at Walmart was not a sparkling good time. Chronic understaffing meant the lines were always long, the college graduate cashiers often grouchy, and your linemates in less than good humor. Besides, you had to accept planet-polluting plastic bags or bring your own, an awful nuisance. Oh, and the aisles seemed small and crowded. If the prices were cheaper, the selection was limited to brands willing to suffer the slings and arrows of Walmart’s doubtful largesse. The produce was suspect and the meats were of dubious character. The blueberries tasted like wax, though still better than the ones at Sam’s Club which actually were wax. In our first week there, an overly Christian woman in the Seafood Department told Bill it was against protocol to cut him the size piece of fish he wanted. Bill is the first to admit that sometimes he gets grumpy with dim bulbs on the other side of the counter. When Siobhan arrived to referee the contest, the fish woman sympathized that it must be tough to live with such an ogre. “What sign is he?” she wanted to know. Given the information that her nemesis is a Scorpio, she smiled smugly and said, “I could have guessed.”
A few weeks later, our gym pal, Sharon Cinney (not a Scorpio) was shopping at the same counter. The Christian martinet, who wanted everyone to have a “blessed day” but didn’t necessarily want to contribute to it, was on the job but wearing only one plastic glove. Sharon, one of the world’s most reasonable people, asked her if she’d mind putting on a second glove. “Not at all,” the fish maven smiled, slipping another one on right on top of the first. Miss Cinney, dumbfounded, shook her head sadly and wandered off. Not long after, the fish lady mysteriously disappeared, perhaps hounded into retirement by the vicious, unforgiving Scorpios of the world.
Painting of the original Sam Walton store in Rogers, Arkansas, 1962
A Brief History
In his clever if eclectic book, The United States of Wal-Mart, author John Dicker writes that Walmart is a hybrid of smiley-face aphorisms, unparalleled data mining and irresistible consumer forces, “a macrosized microcosm” of America’s socioeconomic ills and charms. After describing founder Sam Walton’s folksy rise, Walmart’s continuing drive for world retailing dominance and the pushback that drive has engendered, Dicker observes, “Wal-Mart is a lot like the country where it was born—a little good, a little bad, a lot confusing.”
Walmart is, at bottom, an expression of the American consumer’s desire for the lowest prices on the most stuff, devil take the consequences. If Sam Walton’s employees are mistreated, if its inventory is mediocre, no matter to the rural—and increasingly, urban—poor, who find much of what they need at reduced prices. According to Dicker, “The cult of low prices has become so ingrained in the consumer culture that deep discounts are no longer novelties. They are entitlements.” If quality suffers, you can always go someplace else, right?
Dicker finds Walmart’s dominance in cultural products scary, since a faceless group of conservative executives seems to be effectively editing what America sees, hears and reads. Movie executives visit Walmart headquarters in Arkansas to brief buyers on “acceptable” films and record companies produce G-rated versions of their most popular artists to stay in the stores. Magazines that execs consider too racy end up banned or behind camoflauge. If inventory is cheap and approved by church, Fox TV and the Republican Party, it’s good enough for Walmart customers, who smile, count their change and don’t ask many questions.
Anecdotal Evidence
Almost everyone goes to Walmart now and then, if only to people-watch. Folks in New York City have Times Square, citizens of L.A. have Hollywood Boulevard, both offering a rare collection of certified wackos, but nobody beats the Regulars at Walmart. Take Verdon Taylor, for instance. Mr. Taylor, a 32-year-old Philadelphia man woke up one day to find himself sockless and rushed off to his local Walmart to rectify the situation. Sounds like something any of us might do. But not naked, like Verdon.
Naked and near-naked people are everyday events at The Big W. Walmart customers put to shame the relatively conservative nudish strutters in your average Gay Pride parades. Showering naked in the garden section is a common occurrence, what with the availability of abundant hoses. What most people call exaggerated thongs, Walmart customers call “cutoffs.” At almost any time of night or day, there will be an obese woman pushing a cart wearing a postage stamp. Semi-intentional mooning seems to be a requirement of all card-carrying Walmart Regulars. On an encouraging note, a far more modest woman arrives each Friday at her Chicago-area Walmart attired in a chic cardboard box. Time is taking its toll on the container, however, and the local cashiers are all hoping she gets a new one for Christmas.
It’s almost impossible to imagine what working at the refund desk must be like. An assistant manager at an Indianapolis Walmart spoke of an elderly lady who sought to return a perfectly good basket. The woman said her boyfriend had taken a photograph of the basket and discovered there was some unidentifiable electrical frequency surrounding it and she was afraid to keep it in her house. A clever manager might have offered her free tinfoil but this one just gave the lady her money back.
There is no end to the peformers at the Walmart Circus. One customer in Peoria, Illinois, came in every week with a beer can suctioned to his forehead. People in clown outfits and gorilla suits are commonplace. Would you like to bring your monkey in for some Chitos? No problem. A 400-pound black lady in St. Louis likes to drive around on her scooter and yell at products, especially condiments. An Albuquerque customer has a penchant for buying up all the mouthwash he can carry, scurrying out into the parking lot and drinking it down like water. Wisely, he always brings along a designated driver. A woman in Louisville loves to find the most delicately balanced displays and smash into them as fast as possible on her mobile cart. At least, she leaves quickly. Every day in each Walmart on Earth, a customer manages to nap in his/her mobile cart, blocking aisles, disrupting traffic and leaving themselves vulnerable to hit-and-run ticklers and scurrilous thieves. “We don’t really mind that so much,” says one considerate Walmart manager. “When we get to them, we’re just glad they’re not dead.”
Disa & Data: Walmart Facts
1. 37 million people shop at Walmart every day. This is more than the population of Canada.
2. Walmart averages a profit of $1.8 million an hour.
3. The average Walmart sells 140,000 items.
4. Walmart’s top-selling item is bananas.
5. 90% of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Walmart.
6. If Walmart was a country, it would have the 28th largest economy in the world.
7. The average family of four spends over $4000 a year at Walmart.
8. In 2000, a meat department at a Texas Walmart became the first to unionize. Within two weeks, Walmart eliminated all meat department positions and switched to pre-packaged meats.
9. In 2011, a man killed his wife inside the Walmart where she was working. Rather than close the store, the management just roped off the blood-spattered area while police investigated.
10. A Tulsa, Oklahoma woman spent over six hours in a Walmart constructing a meth lab.
11. A survey taken outside an Oregon Walmart discovered that panhandlers outside the store were making more than the employees inside.
Arrevedici, Sammy
We don’t go to Walmart anymore, though many of our friends do. The produce is mediocre, the meat and fish suspect and the selection of brands limited. It’s cheerier over at the Blitchton Road Publix, where Donna The Bakery Queen saves us a couple of maple-frosted doughnuts and regales us with stories of her clever grandchildren; where the help seems genuinely cheerful, the apples have a nice shine and we’re liable to meet the ever-vivacious Mary Ellen somewhere on Aisle 2. Bill can use the optimistic (and free) Higi Machine, which always tells him his blood pressure is lower than expected and Siobhan can return an item or two even when she forgets her receipt. Sure, Publix headquarters contributes to tinhorn Florida politicians, but who doesn’t? And the store is always in the Top Five businesses in the state when it comes to taking care of employees. The lights are brighter there, on Broadway. Sometimes, the sages will tell you, money isn’t everything.
That’s all, folks….
