Attention Walmart Shoppers

The Walmart parking lot: A good place to die

As much controversy as the People of Walmart website has brought with its creation, can you really blame it?  I, myself, have very strong opinions about shopping at the discount retail chain.

It's not because I'm rich (ha!), snooty (eh?) or like Paris Hilton, who had avoided the place merely because she thought they were some kind of store that sold walls.  No.  It's just that every Walmart experience I've had has been an odd one that I wished would be over with as quickly as possible.

I can't quite put my finger on it.  I can't tell them how to fix it.  Every visit is unnecessarily overwhelming, overstimulating and mysteriously cringe-inducing.  And, I'm faced with these issues each time I step foot in the place because they have something on sale there that I can't find any place else.

Take, for instance:

• Their shopping carts.  Although, I am impressed with their cart retrieval area (complete with heat lamps to dry and warm the carts in inclement weather) I always seem to end up with the wobbly one.  Over and over, I think poorly on my luck of winding up with that shaky-wheeled cart once again.  Then I realized that all the carts are wobbly!  There is no luck involved.  Each and every cart squeals with that ear piercing metal-on-metal grinding sound and steers as if all four wheels have not yet decided to work as a complete team.  In fact, I'd beg to reason that they've installed one oval wheel per cart, just to throw us off.
• Their shoppers.  Those steering the carts seem to never be in the proper lane.  It's bad enough to listen to the bitter symphony of thousands of metal-on-metal squeal carts all being driven at one time.  But, Walmart shoppers seem to have no grasp of the concept of driving in the right lane and passing in the center.  I usually get my heels scuffed once per visit.  There's always disorienting cart traffic, not unlike the old silent films depicting what street traffic looked like before the installation of traffic lights.  There's always someone parked side-ways, mid-aisle, letting neither lane pass.  There's always an abandoned cart, half-full, with its shopper invisibly somewhere in the surrounding 25 foot radius (but suddenly visible once you try to move their cart out of the way.) 
• Their parking lot.  Each time I exit a Walmart parking lot, I feel fortunate to have escaped with my life.  (Those cart drivers end up in cars, you know.)
• Their cashiers.  They all seem to hate being there.  They're usually gossiping with their neighboring cashier, complaining about their long four hour shift, pausing your ring-up to call their manager to see if they can go on break yet, or simply wandering off.  (Yes, my cashier up and wandered off today.)

Sigh... 

So, attention Walmart shoppers.  You're scaring me away!  Go ahead and call me snooty.  Call me a prejudice consumer... but I never seem to have these problems at Target.

There.  I've said my peace.