Does anyone else just not shop at Wal-Mart anymore?

All through college, Wal-Mart was a pretty frequent stop of mine. Groceries, random household items, some electronics, etc, etc.. Especially on a college budget, what better place to shop right? I’ve long known about the horrendous pay/benefits for their employees.. the questionable locations many of their products come from, etc, etc… But money and convenience trumped all for me.

Well as I’ve grown older I’ve started to realize how much I truly hate going into that store. Even though the areas are well organized, it is always a task to find something. I would find quite often they wouldn’t have the exact product I was looking for, but rather some cheap knock off “wal-mart brand” version of it. Moreover when you’re in that store you’re just surrounded by the most pathetic grouping of people… and I know that’s going to sound smug, but my god it’s so true. And it’s not even so much that there are poor people in the store with shabby clothing.. That I can dismiss and understand (even sympathize), but so many of them are outwardly rude to strangers and their party (usually children), and just exhibit personality traits that make me cringe for the future of humanity.

It seems as if they offer the rudest of the rude customers jobs as well. So often did I find myself at the mercy of a person speaking bad English, with a very rude attitude, and frankly no clue what I was asking about. But I suppose that’s the type of employee that sticks around for that pay.

Then to top that off, you finally track down whatever it is you want and make the way to the front of the store… to wait 10 minute in line.. if you’re lucky. One day several months ago I went into my local Wal-Mart. It was my 1 year anniversary and I had to pick up several items, so I thought “ok Wal-Mart, they’ll have all of it.” Well much to my surprise they didn’t have any plain white candles of sufficient size. All their scented options were atrocious, so I ended up with a 1000 pack of plain tea lights (seriously wtf am I going to do with all that????). The water bottle I sought for my girlfriend (she needed one), brought me to a piss-poor collection of very obviously crappy water bottles, neon colored no less. They didn’t have half of the fresh vegetables I needed to cook the meal I was trying to make for anniversary dinner, and the ones they did have (aside from being very obviously of questionable location, aka heavily genetically/chemically altered) were jumbled together and most had bruises or clear marks of defect.

I gathered several other items I needed, and made my way to the front of the store to check out. Pretty unsatisfied with what I’d found, but I had no other options, time was of the essence. Get to the front of the store, and I kid you not, there was a line wrapped all the way down the length of the registers, and into the clothing immediately past them. Two regular registers were open, along with three or four “speedy” lines. Many people in line had carts with hundreds of dollars of items.. the line quite easily would’ve taken 45 minutes. I literally just dropped (not set down, dropped) my basket of 6 or 7 items on the ground where I stood, walked to my car, and drove away.

I’ve not shopped at a Wal-Mart since, and I have no plans of ever doing so again.