I Hate Wal-Mart

I hate Wal-Mart. I really do. I hate that the goods they sell are cheaper than anyplace else around so I more-or-less feel obligated to save money by buying there. If I shop at Wal-Mart I find an item for $4.00 that costs $8.00 at another grocery store. My theory is that Wal-Mart will one day run every one of its competitors out of business and then we'll all live in the United States of Wal-Mart. Not only that, by buying its cheap goods from China, they are propping up their economy to a point where Wal-Mart may be the de facto government of that country before long. The People's Republic Of Wal-Mart.

Sam Walton, wherever you are now I'll bet you're proud of yourself.

Today we had a short list of items to buy so we headed for, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. The problem is that Wal-Mart is a block from my home, and every other store is more than a mile. With gasoline at $3.00/gallon I think I'm saving money and energy. How is that for rationalizing selling your soul to Satan? Anyway, we stood in a line to make our purchases. The young woman ahead of us was paying with cash, over a hundred dollars worth of groceries, and she didn't dig out the money from her purse until she got the final tally. I didn't mind so much; she was about 21, very pretty, and when she saw she was inconveniencing me she flashed me a smile which flooded testosterone through my old veins. Pretty girls know how to defuse anger, don't they? Daddy paid thousands for her perfect teeth, and she made sure I saw every one of them from between those red, perfect lips.

The person who annoyed the hell out of me was behind me; a woman, not as young as the 21-year-old in front of me, but old enough to know better, who kept up a continuing one-sided dialogue on her cell phone. She never shut up. We heard about her personal problems for the whole time we stood in front of her. Not only that, she had a rasping, irritating voice that carried, so everyone within range could hear her and her personal stories. I want to warn everyone, SHUT UP IN CHECKOUT LINES! I do not want to hear about your new haircut, your car problems, your boyfriend problems, your PMS, your bowling score, your boss's affair with his secretary…I don't want to hear any of that. What I want to do in the checkout line is look at the covers of People and Us and see the headlines about Britney Spears. I don't know Britney, don't care about Britney, but a whole lot of people are sure interested in her problems, aren't they? She probably wouldn't have so many problems if people weren't there causing her to melt down in the first place.