Profiled at Walmart

I’m not a big fan of Walmart. My experiences in most Walmart stores are usually nerve wracking and tend to make me break out in hives. Tam is of the same mind. We have one super version in our fair city and we managed to get through it once. By the time we were done, someone, and I won’t mention any names, but IT WAS ME, was foaming at the mouth.

Unfortunately, we had to make a stop at the Walmart in the city near my parents’ place. We had neglected to bring a couple of very important items so that was where we went. I opted to stay in the car and keep an eye on the luggage while Tam headed inside. She’s usually unflappable and better suited to strike-force shopping in the bowels of hell. The day she went in, she was wearing regular clothes, although she had donned her favorite summer hat.

She was also adorned with all of her earrings. She has eight in each ear, with the dangling ones being small pentacles. Nothing terribly obvious, but there they were. When she entered the store, the greeter didn’t say a word to her, but that was not a problem in her eyes. She did her shopping, made her purchases and headed for the door.

Immediately after leaving the checkout stand, she headed for the door, carrying the two large boxes (boxes that were too large to fit in bags). As she approached the “greeter” she was stopped and asked for her receipt. This meant, she had to put the boxes down, dig through her purse and hand it over. Not a huge problem, just a bit inconvenient. As she handed over the requested piece of paper, the “greeter” said something like, “you can’t be too careful,” then…the final insult, “smile for that security camera up there.”

Oh, yes she did!

When this was reported to me, I was tired, cranky, and ready to go in there and raise all kinds of hell, but we needed to get to my folks’ place so off we went, the incident behind us.

Or so we thought.

A couple days later, we had to return one of the items because we found we didn’t need it after all. We hadn’t even taken it from the box; hell, we hadn’t even opened the damn box. Since she had used her card, she was the one who needed to go back inside. The woman at the returns counter was… well, calling her “rude” would be putting it nicely.

She wanted to know why the item was being returned, which is a fair question. When Tam explained that we didn’t need it and hadn’t even opened the box, the woman ripped the box open and pulled the contents out. Ok, whatever, I realize they have to be careful, but they don’t have to be rude about it. I have to wonder if they would have been so ugly if Tam had not been wearing her pentacle earrings again.

However, the story is not done yet. A few days later, Spawn arrived in town and needed to do a little shopping and headed for Walmart. Spawn also wears a pentacle.

Can you tell where this is going?

After she made her purchase and had PASSED THROUGH THE ALARM THINGY and was on her way out, she was stopped by the greeter. Her items were in a bag, the receipt handy, and no sounds coming from the anti-theft alarm system at the door, yet she was stopped and asked to show her receipt.

Seriously.

My mother tried to defend the store by explaining that they had been hit pretty hard by shoplifters. I understand they have a theft problem, and I really hate thieves. But the way they were going about stopping this drain on their inventory was wrong. They stopped certain people as they were leaving, yet there were several people leaving the store without being stopped. Mind you, none of them were wearing pentacle jewelry.

It took every ounce of willpower for me to not go in there and tell them how much they suck… oh, hell, no it didn’t, Tam simply refused to let me go there without my mother in tow. Why? Because she knows I won’t pitch a big hairy-assed fit in front of her, since my mother would stand there and tell me to behave myself. It is counter-productive to berate a major corporation when one’s mother is in the process of berating you.

Yes she will do that, then can’t understand why I’m annoyed with her. There’s more to that part of the vacation than I’m going to put in this post, but it will show up here, I promise.

Right after, “Late Night Hjinks and Other Ways to Annoy Your Offspring”