Oh Walmart. Where did you go so wrong? We used to have an amicable relationship. I wasn't as crazy about you as your sister Target, but you provided low prices and semi-quality merchandise. I'm afraid our days of friendship are over though.
There are many instances that led to our crumbling friendship. The final straw though was the other night when I visited your store for swim diapers. I thought it would be a quick trip, but little did I know what chaos awaited me.
Why is it you must stock your shelves at nine-thirty at night? Wouldn't that be more reasonable at oh, lets see, THREE O' CLOCK IN THE MORNING? You ARE open for twenty-four hours after all. And while we're on the subject of stocking shelves, why must you take up a whole aisle with your pallet of merchandise? Can you not make multiple trips? Is there really a reason you need to park it in the middle of the aisle so the customer cannot go down the aisle with a shopping cart? Oh, by the way, it makes for an extremely grumpy customer when she has to GO ALL THE WAY FROM THE PRODUCE SECTION TO THE DAIRY SECTION in order to cut across an aisle. Seriously, now.
OK, I feel my blood pressure rising. Calm down, Julie. Calm down.
Also, I understand your need to stay current and remodel your store. I have no issues with you trying to make the store more customer friendly. (said sarcastically). But why would you MOVE ENTIRE SECTIONS OF THE STORE FROM ONE END TO THE OTHER AT NINE-THIRTY AT NIGHT? Once again, you are open all night, right? When a tired, drained mother of two preschoolers comes to your store for one item she doesn't expect to have to search the entire store. How silly of me not to look for swim diapers in the household cleaner aisle. Seriously, why would I have not checked there first?
If you do insist on moving the entire store lord knows where at an unreasonable hour, can you please have your employees at least look busy? See, when I'm getting grouchy at not being able to find my items, it makes me even grumpier when I see ten employees standing around watching one person vacuum the floor from the area they had just moved. At least all the employees were wearing hard hats. (I am so not kidding). Because we all know vacuuming is serious business. Remind to wear my children's Bob the Builder hat when I clean tomorrow.
If you move one section of the store (let's say the baby stuff) how about you move the ENTIRE section. After spending a half hour searching for diapers, it makes it even more irritating when you only moved one brand. Especially when the grumpy mama has a $2.00 off coupon for the other brand. No, it wasn't back at the original location. I checked, trust me. I guess I could have asked the ten employees standing around, but they were busy standing around and
Let's say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the disgruntled customer (swim diapers in hand) now decides she might as well get lettuce while she's in the store anyway. Another thing to keep in mind is if you decide to wax the floors AT THE SAME EXACT TIME you are moving the store, stocking shelves, and who knows what else, it is not exactly great customer service to glare at the customer for not moving her cart of the way. I understand you are trying to make the floors sparkling clean, but I can't very well move my cart to a different location if there are multiple pallets of stuff everywhere. Besides, I just want some lettuce, I have a headache, and I'm trying to figure out why I thought it would be a good idea to come to Walmart tonight anyway.
Whew, I thought blogging about this would be therapeutic, but I feel tense all over again!
Let's deal with the checkout now, shall we? Seeing as your employees were busy wearing hard hats, glaring at customers and gossiping I should have known there would only be TWO checkout lines open. What in the world? I'm not kidding when I say there were eleven people with overflowing carts in both lanes. (side note: I have now accumulated enough stuff by my tour of the whole store that I don't qualify for the one 10 items or less lane that is open). I know that you may be thinking I'm exaggerating. I'm not. I couldn't make this nightmare up if I tried. By now I'm weighing my options: Floaters in the pool, or waiting in line. Thank goodness there was a People magazine to keep me company while I waited.
Let's not even discuss your cashier's attitudes towards coupons. Yes, some of them were printed off the computer. They were original. I made sure I met all the requirements. I'm sorry your scanner had issues with them and you had to put them in manually. No heavy sighing or rolling of the eyes is necessary. Sheesh.
So, dearest Walmart, I'm afraid we are no longer friends. I'm not sure I can even be polite to you anymore. The only problem is, you're only twenty minutes away from my house. Target is fifty minutes away. If only the local grocery store would start carrying swim diapers and lip gloss.
Sincerely,
A disgruntled customer.
I'm worn out and my blood pressure is sky high. I think I'll go have a drink. Wait, I think we're out.
NOOOOOO...I'm so not going to Walmart. Water will be just fine, thank you very much.
2 comments:
Oh dear - - - what a TRIP. My husband would agree with every word you wrote.
BTW, don't be toooo surprised if you hear from Wal-Mart about this now that you have blogged about it. I've had two friends now that have posted about some business by name and have received feed-back (in very positive ways) about it.
Wait, do you live in my town?
This sounds exactly like our Wal-Mart. In fact I have written a letter or two myself to them on my blog. I'm even considering another one - also to Hefty products. Luckily, though, our Target is just another mile up the road.
So glad you stopped by my blog. I look forward to getting to know you through your posts.
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