A little while ago Steph over at We Don't Chew Glass wrote
about an experience she had at Wal-Mart. I go to Wal-Mart every week to do some
of my grocery shopping, and her post reminded me of all the experiences (read:
nightmares) I’d enjoyed (read: suffered through) at my own Wal-Mart.
I do about half my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart because I am
cheap and have four children. I can’t justify paying 30% more (which is how
much it is; I did the math) at another grocery store for crap like cereal bars
and tortillas. So nonperishables and brand name products I get at Wal-Mart, and then I go to a local grocery store
that has higher quality meats and produce.
But saving 30% doesn’t come without a sacrifice. Someday my
children will understand what I endured so we could save money on Fritos and
yogurt and afford to buy them shoes, take them to Disneyland, and invest our retirement savings in Pokemon cards and Beyblades. And they will listen to my
tale, and no doubt they will do what children all over the world always do when
faced with the story of the suffering their parents have undergone on their
behalf: they’ll roll their eyes and say, “Yeah, so?”
The most important thing about my Wal-Mart is that as far as
I can tell, the people in it apparently have nothing better to do than to be there. The way they meander up and
down the aisles, stopping to read the labels on the shower curtains, the Miss
Clairol hair color, the Cup o’ Noodles. Stopping, I might add, in the middle of the goddamned aisle.
Completely oblivious to the fact that there’s anyone else in the store with
them.
When this happens—the twenty thousand times that it happens
every time I go there—I say, “Excuse me” and almost inevitably the idiot kind
of starts, like he or she is stunned
to realize that there’s someone who might want to go down the same aisle they’re
on. I give them a small smile, which I presume they interpret as “That’s OK.
Have a nice day!” but which really means, “Get the fuck out of my way, you asshole.
Some of us have better things to do
than hang out in a goddamned Wal-Mart all day.” I actually don’t give a shit if
they interpret it exactly as I intend it.
What is it about Wal-Mart that all over the country it
attracts the same kind of people? I saw a woman in there one day with a t-shirt
on that said, “I used to be fucking stupid, but we broke up.” If that’s not
class, I don’t know what is. A couple of weeks ago I saw a woman who quite
clearly had the word “Nokia” tattooed across her chest (her boobs were not
visible—the tattoo was located right below her collar bones, and she was
wearing a tank top. Although I probably wouldn’t have been surprised if it had
been across her boobs, and she had been walking around with no shirt on.
Because I was at Wal-Mart, after
all). She had the name of a cell phone manufacturer tattooed across her chest?
Who does that? And why? Another time there was a woman in front of me in line with a little girl. The little girl kept lifting her shirt up to her neck, exposing her
chest. Her mother kept telling her not to do that, because, “We don’t show our
tatas.” On the one hand, at least she was trying to instill some modesty in
her daughter. On the other hand, our “tatas”? What if she’d been lifting her
skirt? Would the admonition have been, “We don’t show our hoohas”?
The employees are no better. Every single time I’ve ever
overheard anyone ask an employee for help finding something, they preface their
response with, “Uh, I don’t usually work in this section.”
Every. Single. Time. I actually once had this exchange with an employee:
Me: “Excuse me, where are the seeds?”
Employee: “I don’t know.”
This was not delivered as a tentative, slightly embarrassed,
“I don’t know…” about to be followed up with, “but let me see if I can find
someone who does,” or similar. This was “I don’t know” delivered as the first
part of, “I don’t know; why the fuck are you asking me?” I was kind of surprised
she didn’t say the whole thing. When I responded, “Seriously?” she quickly added, “I don’t usually work in this section.”
(To which I replied, “Of course you don’t.”) Either the management of the store
can’t seem to assign the staff consistently to the same section(s), or when
they’re hired, they’re told, “Don’t bother learning where shit is. When someone
asks you, just tell them you don’t normally work in this section. Works every
time.”
Then there are four types of checkers at my Wal-Mart.
Cranky, apparently mentally deficient, out on parole, and Asian women.
The queen of the cranky cashiers is Dolores. Customers, in
her mind, are sent to her so she has someone new to share her problems with
every three and a half minutes. And share she does. Except it’s not so much
sharing as spewing vitriol (takes one to know one, as they say). The subjects
of her complaints include: her lazy coworkers who “call out” because the
weather is nice, the weather is bad, the weather is just like it always is
here, or because they’re hung over, drunk, or on their way to being one or the
other (or both); all the new businesses being built in the area around the Wal-Mart,
and how they’re all fast food restaurants, mattress stores, or tanning salons,
and how incredibly useless those things are (Sweetheart. It’s a Wal-Mart—what
were you thinking they’d build nearby? A Neiman-Marcus? Saks Fifth Avenue?); how
much her feet hurt; how much it bugs her when people buy any of the following: bedding
plants (they make her “belt” dirty), big plastic storage totes (what the fuck else do you buy at Wal-Mart?), bras
(hard to get them off the hanger), large electronics (heavy), and anything with
a theft sensor on it that she’s supposed to deactivate (I have no idea why this
matters—I have seen people walk through the theft detection panels with flat
screen TVs that set the alarm off, and no one even looks twice at them, never
mind a store employee stopping them and asking to see a valid receipt for the
item). So Delores is a gem, and you can understand why when I see her on
register 9, I quickly move on to register 14 to find someone (almost anyone) else.
The apparently mentally deficient cashiers all seem to be
playing an unending game of, “Try to get one cold thing in every bag.” I get
home and unload my groceries only to find that the two pints of ice cream, the
heavy cream, the sour cream, the four cups of yogurt, and the buttermilk, are each in a different bag. Now, I am
sufficiently OCD that I put all the cold stuff together when I pull it out of
my cart. For them to get one cold thing in every single bag means they had to try. I am sympathetic to their
challenges, but for the sake of my refrigerated products, I tend to avoid them
as well.
The best choices for cashiers are the guys who are clearly
out on parole, and the Asian women. Both are reasonably efficient, bag
everything in the order it’s presented to them (thank you, cold groceries all
in one or two bags) probably because they’re too lazy to bother doing it any other
way, and they rarely say much beyond, “Hey, how are you today?” and, “Find
everything you need?” Plus if something fails to scan, they’ll take you at your
word for the price (“I’m sure that digital camera was on clearance for $2.99”)
instead of trying to get someone to find out the real price for them.
I figure with my weekly trip to Wal-Mart I’m sort of eating
away at my tenure in Hell for being a sarcastic asshole. Every 45 minutes I spend
there is 45 minutes less that I have to spend in the real Hell after I die.
Every fucking clueless idiot that I don’t backhand into the middle of next week for hogging up the whole aisle with her cart while she
reads the instructions on a package of sponges is one less fucking clueless idiot that I’ll have to
encounter in the hereafter. At the rate of 45 minutes a week for the last three
or so years, if I were to die tomorrow, I’d only have to spend eternity minus
four month in Hell. If I can just find a
way to avoid Delores, it might be tolerable, since I’m pretty sure it won’t be
unfamiliar.
A friend was telling me she’d found some old games
at a yard sale a few weeks ago, and was asking me if I had this one or that
one. I started thinking about the toys I
never had. In spite of the fact that I was an only child, there were a number of
really sweet toys that I never got, for reasons that I don’t understand. It’s
possible that my mother didn’t realize I wanted them, and I think that excuse
will cover a couple, but there are a few that I know for a fact I just never
got. And yes, thirty five years later, I am still somewhat bitter. Here is my list of Toys I Never Got And My
Mother Is Just Lucky I Didn’t Grow Up To Be a Psychopath Or Rob Liquor Stores
Because Of My Sadly Deprived Childhood.
Easy Bake
Oven
I wanted this thing SO BAD. And this is one I’m
pretty sure my mom knew I wanted, but just didn’t want to buy. I think it goes
back to a bad experience she had with Baby Alive. For the uninitiated and those
who spent their formative years as boys, Baby Alive is (I think they still make
a version of it) a doll that you can feed and then, shortly after she eats, she
poos and needs a diaper change. Her mouth had some sort of battery powered
mechanism that made a “chewing” movement that ingested the food, and then it
would go right through her.
The thing was, she only came with maybe four
packets of food, and naturally you fed those to her within the first twenty
minutes after getting her home from the store. Then you spent the next six
weeks nagging your mom to buy Additional Food Packets Sold Separately. And the commercial was on TV often enough
that you’d ask, she’d say no (or perhaps hem and haw, if you were still in
weeks one through three), and just about the time you’d forgotten about being
totally out of food packets, the commercial would come on and the whole cycle
would start again. I suspect it was something of a living hell for parents of
the time.
All of this is a rather long-winded explanation
for why she looked on the Easy Bake Oven as some kind of instrument of Satan.
Because of course, it would come with enough mix to make two cakes and two
cookies, and then you’d be out and start nagging for Additional Mix Packets
Sold Separately. I think in her mind it was just Baby Alive with a light bulb
but without diapers.
Lite Brite
“Lite Brite makin’ things with liiiight, outta
sight, makin’ things with Lite Brite!” I don’t think my mom really realized I
wanted one of these. I don’t recall ever putting it on a Christmas list (of
course, I don’t remember ever making
a Christmas list, so there’s that), and by the time I got old enough to want it
(4th grade) after playing with it at my friend Jill Schultz’s house,
I was too old for her to overhear me tell “Santa” it was what I wanted.
She did that, you see—I remember very clearly the
year we were at Lord & Taylor
looking around the Toy Department (in 1972, in the days when department stores still
had Toy Departments) and I saw something called Baby Butterball (don’t ask),
who came with a wicker basket and a full wardrobe of precious baby clothes. I
think out of guilt over having told me a couple of years earlier that there
wasn’t actually a Santa Claus (she couldn’t “lie” to me, was what she always
said in later years), she decided to buy exactly what I asked Santa to bring.
Not sure I was fooled—I wanted very much to believe in Santa, but I couldn’t
quite get over her telling me he didn’t exist. It doesn’t really matter, and
it’s off topic, so we’ll move on.
Anyway, I thought the ability to stick pegs in a
board with a light bulb behind it and have it look like a duck or a unicorn or
Elvis or whatever was just the coolest thing EVAR. But either my mother didn’t
agree with me, or she didn’t know I felt this way, because a Lite Brite was
never forthcoming.
Spirograph
“I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it, the
things I can do with my spirograph!” (One could perhaps argue that the reason I
wanted some of these things was just because they had catchy jingles that
stayed with me, but I’d retort that one would be wrong—this was cool shit.)This
is another one that I think may fall into the she just didn’t realize I wanted
it category. But damn I loved this thing. Really cool random spirals and arcs.
I even have a memory of straight sided shapes in addition to circles. My
neighbors, Peter and Laura Albert had one, and I used to play with it all the
time. Laura Albert was also allowed to wear jeans under her skirts, which my
mother thought was dumb (“Wear one or the other”) so naturally I thought she
was pretty damned lucky.
Barbie Dream
House
I loved Barbies and I adored playing with them. I
would act out scenes from books I was reading with them as the characters. I
had some small doll furniture that I’d use, and then I also had carrying cases
that doubled as a bedroom with a closet. Ultimately I was given an RV/camper
thing that was so big (three feet long) that until I was in 8th
grade and it was given away (yes, 8th grade—so what?) I had to
include it in the furniture placement plans I drew up every time I decided to
rearrange my room (which was about every three months).
But did I get the Barbie Dream House? The four
level town house with the real working (manual) elevator? That came with all
sorts of cool furniture? That Tamar Holley had and I did not? (Spoiler: I
didn’t.) Was I and am I bitter? Hell yes. This does not go on the she didn’t
know I wanted it list. She knew perfectly well, and since she bought me the
RV/camper thing that took up as much (if not more) room, and couldn’t have cost
much less, I really don’t know what the logic was for getting that and not the
Dream House. It’s not even possible to ask the question, since my mom passed
away over 20 years ago, but believe me, if she were still here, it would be
really high on my list of things to get straightened out.
Sit ‘n’
Spin
This one I’m actually not bitter about anymore. In
retrospect it was sort of a lame-o toy. It consisted of a round platform with a
post that stuck up out of the center (all molded plastic, of course). I think
it had some optical illusion spiral sticker thing on the platform, which of
course didn’t show when you were using it, because the method was that you sat
on it with your legs sticking out in front of you, and spun the top of the post
and it would rotate the platform and you’d spin around. Sort of a personal
merry-go-round, if you will.
So if I ever decide to knock off a gas station, I think
I’ll leave this one out of my conversation with my attorney prior to the trial.
Besides, he’ll probably be horrified enough to hear of about the Barbie Dream
House that he won’t need any more to work with. Might include the Easy Bake
Oven for the sympathy angle.
Big Wheel
Again, there was no question that I wanted this. I
longed to go speeding down the sidewalk, and then, just inches before jumping
the curb and being hurled into the oncoming traffic, I would reach down and
yank up on the lever to be thrown into an uncontrolled spin that would send me
flying backwards into the oncoming traffic.
In retrospect, maybe I see why I never got one of
these.
So that’s the sad story of the toys that I never
got. Of course for every one of these that I didn’t get, I had a hundred that I
did. I had Perfection (which I loved because it didn’t require a second person
to compete against to make it fun and since I was an only child, someone to
compete against couldn’t be assumed); a ton of Barbies and clothes for them; a
doll house; and a house, barn, and town for those Fisher-Price people with no
arms. I wasn’t really that deprived--hell, I wasn't deprived at all. But I’m still bitter about that
Barbie Dream House.
Epilogue: In my 40s I received both a Lite Brite
and an Easy Bake Oven. That was only a couple of years before it was announced
that Easy Bake Ovens would be going out of production because you can’t make a
cake (even a small, crappy cake) with an energy efficient light bulb. My
husband bought it for me at a yard sale. The Lite Brite was a gift from a
friend who was cleaning out, knew of my pathetic childhood without one, and my
continued longing (and bitterness), and sent it out to me so my children would
have to find something else to bitch about in 35 years.
