04Feb09 Walmart irritates me

Let me start by saying that I have pretty high respect for retail and fast food workers. During high school and college I worked in both industries, primarily as a cashier. Customers can be irritable and highly irrational at times. There are instances, though, where their anger is justifiable.

Such was the case at Walmart last night. To start with, our area was getting some snow off and on all day yesterday. Snow isn’t all that common here so when we do get any quite a few people freak out and swarm the grocery stores because “It’s a blizzard!!” In my town that would mean Walmart and Save-A-Lot. By the time we got in line there were at least three people ahead of us with overflowing carts.

Oh, that raises a question that has almost nothing to do with this story. What do you call the metal thing with wheels at a store? A cart? A shopping cart? A buggy? See, all my life I called them buggies. Where I came from that’s what they were. No one would ever call it a shopping cart; it was a buggy, plain and simple. Then I came to college. One day I went to Walmart with some friends and I guess I asked if we needed a buggy. They looked at me and said “A what? Do you mean shopping cart??” Ever since then I have been trained to call them carts. It doesn’t help that my husband is from Wisconsin and laughs every time I say buggy. But I digress.

I didn’t look at the time when we first got in line. I later regretted that because I would love to know just how much time we spent in line. For a while the line did move. While we were waiting a lane beside us opened but before we could move over two other people with carts full jumped in line. We decided to stay put because it always seems that when you try to jump in a shorter line something happens and you end up taking more time to finish than if you had stayed in your original line.

Eventually, we got far enough to be able to unload our cart onto the conveyor belt. Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. The customer in front of us had tried to purchase two Tracfone cards. The cashier had swiped and activated one of the cards but couldn’t remember which. After some time she got a CSM involved. Moments later a second CSM arrived. I think they eventually figured out which of the cards had been activated but I could be wrong. They were trying to determine if the woman had been over or undercharged and why the second card wouldn’t activate. At least, I’m guessing that was going on. They never once spoke to me and my husband to let us know that it might take a while or to let us know we should move to another lane.

During this whole process the cashier had managed to completely lock up the register. After at least 15 minutes (remember I said I regretted not looking at the time? this is why) one of the CSMs told us that it was going to take a while to reboot the register and that we should move to another lane. I quite bluntly told her that would have been good to know 15 minutes ago. She made some sort of apology and then tried to help us load our cart back up. She really was getting more in the way than helping which did not help my mood at all. She had been the cashier running the lane that had opened when we were first waiting in line. It opened back up with a different cashier after they closed the lane we were in.

Did they hold the spot in that lane for us, who had been waiting in line over half an hour by now? NO! We had to choose another lane to get in and of course all of them had at least 2 people in line with full carts. We picked one beside us and waited. And waited. The customer in front of us had apparently picked up a DVD from somewhere and wanted to know why it cost $13. My guess is that someone picked it up and then set it down on one of the $4 or $5 movie tables. She didn’t seem to get it so it took a few minutes for the cashier to get it straightened out and to see if the customer wanted to get the DVD anyway. This, of course, just added to my frustration.

If I had thought that it would have made any difference I would have talked to a manager. Seeing that two CSMs were involved in the whole fiasco who made no move to inform us about the situation made me decide that they could probably care less. Maybe if Walmart had some competition in the area they would shape up some. You might not believe me but this Walmart seems to be worse than others. My guess is that their only competition is Save-A-Lot. There is a Krogers and I think a K-Mart the next town over but that’s a 20 minute trip one-way. Not everyone has almost an hour to spend driving around to get their groceries. I know there are a few people who want to boycott Walmart altogether but it just doesn’t seem possible in an area like this.