Everything Walmart *

[Xander]

Wow, I guess Wal-mart's quest to close ever more indepedantly ownded businesses won out over its desire to force a puritanical lifestyle on the entire country.  Now its the adult stores. How far removed are they now from p0rn?

They've already crossed the sinful booze line too: Wal-mart loves the hooch

[name]

Walmart always sold liquor in Baton Rouge as a function of their grocery store.  All the groceries there have liquor on the shelves.

If you read the articles (thanks for the links. . .interesting) you'll see too that they're not putting gigantic plastic dicks on the shelves.  These are products made by Trojan and Durex to appeal discreet to women.  They'll blend in on the condom aisle, and really should just draw in the percentage of shoppers who are too inntimidated to ever go into a local smut shop anyway.

No biggie.

[Xander]

Yeah, I think its a state law in Louisiana that all stores have to sell some kind of alcohol.  In other places, Wal-mart's lack of liquor sales was heralded as a kind of trustworthy trademark of a company that maintains good family values in the midst of such a sinful society. I guess really they just hadn't yet branched out into the booze market.

[CHEWIE]

I love Wal-Mart.



 

[DoctorPadawan]

Unfortunately, none of the women who work at the local Wal-Mart look anything like that.  Does anyone remember Mrs. Garrett from "The Facts of Life"?  She's hotter than women who work at my local WM.   

An "I hate Wal-Mart" thread is just asking for me to go off, but for now, I shall refrain.  All I will say is that WM as a company seems to have a huge problem with selling a record or video game that "glorifies" violence, but they'll be more than happy to sell you a real gun with real ammunition that you can really use to kill real people less than 20 feet away (and, in most stores, directly adjacent to the children's section). 

Way to go Wal-Mart!  Stick the squiggle dance up your collective ass!

[Jim]

Regarding censorship.  Why does Walmart not sell CD's with harsh lyrics but they sell Rated R DVD's and MA Videogames that have worse language plus all kinds of sex on top of that.  The edited music is my biggest gripe and the fact that 95% of the people I have run into are a bunch of lazy bastards.

[Darth Broem]

Wal-Mart is ok with me except for how crowded it is all the time.  Plus the one thing about every Wal-Mart I have ever been to is this.  It is a bitch to get in and out of them.  Has anyone noticed this before?   For some reason it's a nightmare.  Maybe it is just me but I get miffed just about everytime I go to one for that reason alone. 

But you know what the prices are good and everything is right there.  So, I shall quit my bellyaching and ignore those fat ladies with the thongs popping out of the top of their low-rise sweatbottoms and be happy about it dagnabbit.   

[DoctorPadawan]

Broem, WMs are designed and laid out in such a way that you have to do a lot of dodging and weaving on purpose.  They put those little kiosk island obstructions in the middle of the aisles so when you get behind Big Bertha and her fourteen children orbiting her fat buggy, you'll end up going down another aisle in frustration, and they hope you'll see something else in that aisle that you want.  It's an intentional obstacle whose purpose is not so much as a "key item" but an ergonomic consumer diversion.

The aisles at WM are also intentionally smaller (in width) for this very reason too.  If you're trying to get down an aisle, and Big Ed's Ass Farm is standing in the middle admiring the Hot Wheels, you can either squeeze by (doubtful) or turn around, go up the next aisle, and come back down the other side.  WM is banking on you doing the latter, and they hope when you go down that second aisle, you'll make another impulse purchase.

There is a rumor that WMs are also designed in such a way that the stock shelves can be easily moved to the side and the store floor can be used for an emergency medical center in the event of a terrorist/nuclear attack, but I have yet to see any real confirmation of this one way or another.

Regarding censorship. Why does Walmart not sell CD's with harsh lyrics but they sell Rated R DVD's and MA Videogames that have worse language plus all kinds of sex on top of that.

WM is fairly inconsistent with this type of thing, so I have no idea.  I find the fact that record labels and/or "artists" such as that paragon of freedom Fred Durst  and others allow the edited versions to be made more offensive than someone saying "****."  If WM had its way, I'm sure that movies would be edited down with all the "dirty stuff" (which you'll notice always involves sex and rarely violence) taken out, and they are actually one of the key investors in this really dubious DVD technology created by a "Concerned Parents Group" (which is, as usual, a group of people who have nothing better to do with their time than tell others what they can and can't do under the guise of "Think of the children!") that is programmed to automatically fast-forward through/remove all the offensive parts.  Hollywood studios are standing up to combat this company, so WM might not get its way after all.

WM has apparently instituted a policy that they will no longer carry any video game rated MA and that they will require any person who purchases an R rated movie to produce identification first.  Whether this will succeed, I have no idea, but remember kids, it's wrong to listen to Snoop Dogg talking about popping caps in people's asses, but check out our new stock of hunting rifles in aisle 12!

I've been keeping an eye on WM for well over 10 years and I know a lot of little tricks they pull, so if anyone has any questions, post away and I'll ramble on for some more.

[Diddly]

I hate Wal-Mart stores, so I always enter and exit through the Lawn and Garden section, which is right next to the toys. However, I sometimes venture to electronics and notice how DVD sets are several dollars cheaper than they are at places like Best Buy. And sometimes I give in.

Does anybody else hate the people who park next to the entrance and stand next to their car, making it both hard to get inside on foot AND hard to pull around them due to traffic?

[Ner_vod]

Wait, what about the Garden Center

[Tracy]

I always enter and exit through the Lawn and Garden section, which is right next to the toys.

Me too -- it's the only way to go.  I always check out there too -- it's usually a lot faster.

I hate the people who drive wrong way in the parking lot.  Or better yet -- the people who walk right down the middle of the "driveway" without a clue taking their own sweet time. 

[DoctorPadawan]

Wait, what about the Garden Center

Pretty much every Super WM is laid out the same way, although sometimes the Garden Center is on the left of the building and sometimes it's on the right of the building.  Regardless, the Garden Center is almost always directly beside the pharmacy and the toy section, and when open, the Garden Center entrance will lead you straight into the toy section and you won't have to deal with the WM greeters or Jim Bob Joe Jr. trying to return three year old tires that have worn considerably because "they had holes innem."

And now, an anecdote about the Wal-Mart greeters.  Did you know that this position was supposedly created because of a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former employee?  Yep.  I can't remember the specifics, but WM hired and subsequently fired a mentally challenged person to work as a cashier.  Due to the person's mental impairment, they were unable to perform their duties correctly, and they were subsequently fired.  This person filed a lawsuit against WM claiming discrimination on the basis of their mental impairment, and supposedly won a fairly big settlement.  In order to skirt any future discrimination suits, WM created the position of "greeter", which you'll notice is often stocked with people who might not be particularly adept at handling a cash drawer or lifting heavy items for stocking.  This way, they can put the "less gifted" people at the door, thus making them less susceptible to job discrimination lawsuits.

Also, never buy meat at a Super WM grocery section, as it is brought in from outside the area on a truck, as opposed to most grocery stores in the US that have an actual butcher.  The reason for this?  The majority of butchers belong to a union, and when the butchers were hired by WM and told they had to leave the union, the butchers quit and WM just simply did away with the butchers completely, chain-wide.  It even got a Canadian WM completely shut down last year.

[Darth Broem]

Actually I was moaning more about their parking lots.  Again it may just be the shear number of people?  I don't know.  It seems like everyone of them I have a heck of a time getting in and out of the freaking parking lot.  Obviously you just drive through and pick a spot but WMs seem like a mine field.  Or oddly laid out.  I don't get that sense when I go to a Target store.  Again those are not nearly as crowdes as WMs. 

But yeah they can be bad to manuever in the store to.  Especially the grocery aisles.  I hate shopping for groceries there.  But again they are at a cheap price so I endure it.  Eh, I sound like grumpy old man but that is the feeling I get there.

[Ben]

I noticed the rather poor color of beef at WM a couple weeks ago. It almost looked unfit to be sold.

[DoctorPadawan]

I hate the people who drive wrong way in the parking lot. Or better yet -- the people who walk right down the middle of the "driveway" without a clue taking their own sweet time.

I meant to reply to this in the first reply above, but I forgot to do so before I hit the "post" button.  Oh well.   

The thing that gets me about the people driving the wrong way in the parking lot isn't so much that they're driving the wrong way, but that they often have the nerve to flip you off or honk and yell because you're going down the right way.  "HOW DARE YOU IMPEDE MY LAWLESSNESS!  MY KID HAS SOCCER PRACTICE IN TEN MINUTES!" 

Still, the worst offender in terms of WM parking lots on a sociological level has to be the "pedestrian crosswalk."  Now, when I was growing up, I had the "look both ways before crossing the street" mantra drilled into my head.  There are "walk/don't walk" signs that reinforce safety, and any good parent will tell their child to obey traffic laws.  Well, WM decided that pedestrians should have the right of way at the entrances to the stores (I have no problem with this on principle), but showing their collective intelligence, the Peggy Hills of the world have decided that this means they can just walk right out in the middle of the goddamned road whenever they feel like it, and they'll sue you if you don't stop.

Now, this isn't really bad for me, because when I go into a WM parking lot, I hardly ever drive in front of the store (for these reasons) and I always obey the signs.  When I cross the pedestrian DMZ, I still look both ways and wait for cars to stop before I walk that 10 feet.  The problem is the people who just barrel right out in the middle of the road have taught their children that this is acceptable behavior, and now little kids are running out there because momma dun it too.  Kids are being endangered because of WM (inadvertantly) saying the area in front of the doors is all about the walkers, while it hasn't been taking into account that most drivers are the same people that walk out in the middle of the road and we already know they don't know how to look both ways.

My advice on parking at WM is to park as close as you can, but try at all costs to avoid driving the main drag in front of the store.  And to benefit all of us, most garden centers have a rarely used auxilary parking lot to the side of the fences, so you can avoid the main drag and not have to worry about Jethro and his "GIT-R-DUN" Hot Wheels monster truck denting your doors when he goes in to buy a roll of Skoal and a six pack of wife beaters for 4 dollars.