Last week, I wrote about some of my “interesting” experiences while shopping at Walmart. This week, I will tell you about two more, both of which happened last year, only three months apart. But before I do, I thought I would give you the link to a previous post on here from three years ago when I wrote about one of my most embarrassing moments ever…which just happened to also be at Walmart…just in case you haven’t read it yet and might be interested!
https://sallybreslin.blogspot.com/2022/07/this-had-to-be-queen-mother-of-all-my.html
Last May, on an unusually hot and humid day for that early in the year, I had just spent over an hour shopping in Walmart. With my cart heaping, I finally headed to the checkout. I was only one aisle away when alarms that sounded similar to air-raid sirens started to blast.
I wasn’t alarmed (pun intended) because I’d heard warning signals blasting in stores before, usually when someone accidentally opened an emergency-exit door. So I continued my trek toward the registers…until an employee stopped me.
“That’s the fire alarm!” she said. “Please exit the store immediately!”
I had just spent an hour picking out, among other things, perfectly ripened vegetables and perfectly cut meats, along with a dozen eggs I’d carefully inspected to make certain had no cracks or chicken poop on them. So there was no way I was going to leave the store without every one of those items.
I didn’t smell any smoke or see any flames, so I figured I still had time. “I’m all done shopping,” I said to the sales associate. “It will take me only a minute to pay for this stuff, and then I’ll be out of here.”
“No, leave your cart right where it is,” she said, her tone stern, “and get outside now!”
“Should I take my cart with me?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t wasted all of my time and energy only to have to head home empty-handed. Besides that, I reasoned, if the food was just going to perish in the flames anyway, then why couldn’t I take it?
She gave me a look that told me she thought I was pretty much…well, an idiot.
“Only shoplifters leave the store with a cart full of items they haven’t paid for!” she said.
I suppose she had a point.
So, reluctantly I left my cart and exited the store, along with many other shoppers, all of whom also had abandoned their carts in the middle of the aisles. The store looked as if a spaceship had swooped down and beamed up all of the shoppers, leaving only their carts helter-skelter everywhere.
Outside, the heat was oppressive. There was only one shady area – a long strip of dirt with a couple of trees growing in it – surrounded by asphalt. Within seconds, the employees made a beeline for that area and then gathered like a herd of cattle underneath those trees, while we customers were left to stand out in the blazing sun. I would have gone back to my car to sit and wait, but my car’s ancient air-conditioner doesn’t blow cool air unless the car is actually moving. And I wasn’t about to head home without my groceries unless I saw actual flames and smoke pouring out of the store.
The fire department arrived and firefighters rushed into the building. Many of the customers who’d been standing outside gave up at that point and left. The fact they were soaked with perspiration and looked on the verge of passing out, might have had something to do with it.
But I still wasn’t ready to totally abandon my cart, which was sitting somewhere near the Maybelline cosmetics…and probably breeding a colony of salmonella bacteria by then. The thought did cross my mind that if the store really was on fire, then the meat I’d so carefully selected, with just the right amount of marbling in it, probably would end up being a little too well-done to suit my taste anyway.
But I still clung to the hope everything would be okay.
After about 20 minutes, the firefighters finally exited the store and announced “all clear.”
It turned out to be just a false alarm.
I was prepared to trample anyone in my way as I dashed back into the store to track down my cart. To my relief, it still was sitting exactly I’d left it. A lot of other carts also were still sitting where they had been abandoned …but not everyone returned to claim them.
I could just imagine what “fun” the employees had trying to put all of the items in those carts back where they belonged…except, that is, for any ice cream.
I think it pretty much needed to be administered its last rites by then.
The second incident happened three months later, in August. I like to bake everything from scratch, so I use a lot of lactose-free margarine. Well, when I arrived at the butter and margarine cooler, the whole section on the left side of it looked as if it had just fought in the Great Battle of the Butter...and lost. Either that, or it had been attacked by a marauding gang of margarine and butter addicts. The packages were open and caved in, and sticks of margarine, several with no wrappers on them, were lying everywhere.
Needless to say, I decided to go to another store to buy my margarine.
The next week, when I returned to Walmart to shop for groceries, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The margarine looked even worse! I picked up one of the packages and it was so limp and soggy, it actually fell apart in my hand. There was no way, I thought, employees in that department couldn’t have noticed such an obvious ongoing problem. If they did, then they apparently just didn’t care about it.
It reminded me of that old 1970s TV comedy, Chico and the Man, where whenever the main character was asked by his boss to do something extra, he would refuse and say, “That’s not my job!”
So once again, I left Walmart with no margarine and was forced to buy it elsewhere – for 65 cents more per package.
That same night, I received the usual e-mail from Walmart, which they send every time I shop there, asking me to fill out their questionnaire about my shopping experience. If I did, they said I would qualify for one of their many gift-card awards, valued anywhere from $100 to $1,000.
Usually I just delete those questionnaires, but I was so aggravated about the margarine situation by then, I filled it out…and vented. I knew it probably wouldn’t even be read by an actual human, but it still was good therapy to at least get it off my chest.
The next day, to my surprise, an actual human from Walmart did call me and left a voice mail, apologizing about the margarine and the “mess” and thanking me for bringing it to their attention. He said they discovered a problem with condensation in that cooler and were remedying the problem. In the meantime, he said he hoped I would continue to shop at Walmart, and if I wanted fresh margarine, it temporarily would be located in a bunker across from the faulty cooler.
I wasn’t familiar with the term “bunker” in a supermarket, so I immediately imagined military personnel guarding the margarine in an underground shelter.
When I did return to the store, sure enough, crisp, sturdy packages of my favorite margarine were neatly stacked in the cooler. Relieved, I bought three packages. When the cashier rang them up, I said, “It’s so good to see decent margarine again. It was really bad for a while there."
She said, “I know. After a customer reported it, they found all kinds of gross mold in and behind that cooler due to a problem with the condenser, and they had to replace the whole thing.”
I found that bit of information very interesting, especially since at that time, the Boar’s Head deli-meat recall had been all over the news because of an outbreak of Listeria, which sickened at least 60 people and killed 10. The cause of the outbreak was determined to be unsanitary product-preparation areas…but also condensation, mold and excess moisture in the cooler.
My first thought was the soggy margarine in the moldy cooler easily could have escalated into something just as serious. My second thought was that under the circumstances, I think the store should have thanked me much more appropriately for possibly saving the lives of millions of their customers (okay, maybe more like about 15 or 20).
So, Walmart, I’m still waiting for that $1,000 gift card…
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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