Five Things I Hate about Walmart

I really hate Walmart, and not just because I gave them over $10,000 for food and merchandise over the last year.  Rather it has to do with the fact that if I'm going to give them so much money I'd prefer that they didn't have so many practices that I found annoying.  Here's a list of things in no particular order that bug me about Walmart, as if anyone cares...

Elimination of greeters

Greeters at the door were one of the few touches of humanity at Walmart.  I remember well growing up and seeing the grizzled old vet, with all of his pins on his Korean War hat, who's chat with people coming in, shaking hands, patting backs.  How can the Walmart powers not understand that making people FEEL GOOD when they walk into a store is a GOOD thing?  Now, I walk into Walmart now and I experience cold emptiness and fear.  There's generally no one around, and you get a cart, get your junk and get out.  Maybe it's just me, but I'm also more acutely aware now of being watched by cameras:  eliminate the old dude and the door, and just watch people from afar via camera.  Soulless.

And beyond just the greeters, you can't find associates anywhere (especially at the paint desk).  I understand that there might be a security risk for greeters, that if someone tries to steal something, gets caught, that they could pull a weapon then dart - so here's a thought: why not combine the greeter role with a security role?  Install armed, tefloned folks at the door, and instruct them to smile and say "hello".  How bad would that be?

The soft core women's magazines they sell at checkout

The checkout lane at Walmart is stocked with trashy, soft-core pornographic women's magazines, depicting women in various states of undress and discussing topics far to filthy to bother repeating here.  At least in some of the local gas stations they keep magazines like these behind the counter wrapped in paper, but for some reason, the trashy women's titles are right out in the open, where, as you're stuck behind someone paying for their 47 items (in the 20 item express lane) with pennies, all your eyes can take in is either the hydrogenated junk food, or the barrage of women's bodies advertised like slabs of meat.

These sex-obsessed publications have no place in a family store like Walmart, and are little more than soft-core smut to distract people in line. 

The garbage soft core and horror/gore movies (and games) that they sell

Walmart seems to have no problem with selling disgusting films of a mature rating.  Although they don't just out and sell porn, they aren't that far off with big advertisements for pastry-assaulting films like "American Pie", and there's no shortage of strong, grizzly horror films on their shelves (one title I saw recently featured a cover with a woman mostly devoured by bugs.  Great family title there, Sam Walton...)  And unlike the video places that rent out adult titles, that at least do viewers of hiding away their smut in a back room, Walmart puts all of their garbage right out in the open, often right at eye-level for kids.

The atrociously slow auto service center
I can't even imagine what takes so long to do something as simple as an oil change, but somehow Walmart can turn this into a 2-hour ordeal.  And step out into the car shop to see how things are going and you get bombarded with the stench of a thousand cigarettes.  Oil change, tire rotation, a massive soul-draining wait and lung cancer, all rolled into one.

They take all my money
I live in an area where Walmart is all you get, so when I need basic house goods, I could either order through Amazon (which is just as evil in their inventory) or buy a couple over-priced items at the local country store.  I easily shovel out thousands of dollars to this monster each year, and sadly, I don't have any alternatives.  They suck away my meager pay each month and there's little I can do about it, so I guess I have to deal with their junk inventory and inhuman staff.

 

Final thought:  I was in the toy section of Walmart recently and saw, along the floor level, a copy of the shooter game for 'Walking Dead'.  So a grizzly killing game involving shooting zombies belongs in the toy section?  (I watched a couple episodes of Walking Dead on Netflix and I was NOT impressed.  For one thing there's nothing original about the show.  And while I'll deal with some of the violence, episode 2 begins with a sex scene that, as far as I'm concerned, was graphic enough to shatter any interest in the series completely (as well as an interest in anything AMC is going to play.)  So by putting this game in with the toys what is Walmart saying? 

I need to convert to Amish...