The great thing about Wal-Mart is that you know you can get what you want there. If you’re driving two-thirds the way across the country and you need ice cream sandwiches, Febreze, nail clippers, caffeine free Diet Coke and a cigarette lighter adapter for an iPod, they’ll have it all right there. You can be on the road in the middle of Nothingville, Nebraska and then suddenly–like a monolith of comfort–a Wal-Mart appears on the horizon to solve all your woes.
Another great thing about Wal-Mart is that they hire a lot of friendly people to work there. So when you don’t quite understand the self-checkout in Nothingville, Nebraska, a heavy-set girl in her mid-twenties will cheerfully bob on over to help you. When you make excuses about not being able to work the machine because it’s different than the ones in Tennessee where you are from, the heavy-set girl will talk fondly to you about her memories of a visit to southwest Tennessee and some small-town festival she went to while there. She’ll then tell you that she picks up accents really well because she was in the Nothingville drama club in high-school. And then she’ll prove it by doing the absolute worst “British” accent you’ve ever heard.
The bad thing about Wal-Mart is that they are hyper-vigilant with their security. So as you finally start to leave the store a klaxon will begin to wail and all of Nothingville will look at you like you’re Al Capone holding a barrel of the finest Canadian hooch. Yes, you may have paid for everything in your bag, but it appears that while you were distracted by Drama Club’s tales of Mule Days and Madonna-grade “British” accent, you forgot to swipe your cigarette lighter adapter on the alarm deactivation pad. This is when a short, gruff woman with a permanent gravelly whisper (what’s with the voices in this town?) will stop you, go through your bag and check every item against the receipt. She’ll look the receipt over front and back, not quite sure that you didn’t print it out in some dank basement in an effort to steal that adapter worth all of nine dollars and eighty-seven cents. She’ll then open a Book Of Possible Crimes Against The Bentonville Protectorate and write down all sorts of seemingly unrelated information, all while you stand there under the scrutiny of everyone else in the store.
At last you are free! You can hurriedly make your way to your father’s car, where everyone else is happily eating Klondike bars. (What happened to ice cream sandwiches? I guess your mother prefers the Klondike bars with bits of Heath in the coating. There goes your opportunity to make all those Arrested Development/Ice Cream Sandwich jokes.) You’re now embarrassed and extremely angry. Somewhere some charlatan is robbing old lady’s pensions or selling drugs to eight year olds. Yet YOU were detained. All because you were nice enough to make conversation with the locals. To add insult to injury, the stupid adapter is in one of those hermetically sealed packages that no one can open without a jackhammer or mitre saw.
Disgruntled, you shove the adapter in your suitcase. Two weeks later your husband will exchange it at Wal-Mart for the ingredients to make homemade salsa. You’ll stay home because you want to wait awhile before going through all that again.
Wow, Walmart (I think with the new logo, it’s officially Walmart instead of Wal-mart or Wal*mart) is tough on security in Nebraska. Next time you want to not steal something without all the attention. you should come visit ours. If the alarm goes off on you it’s not the loud siren type but the almost unnoticeable “We’re sorry, you have activated our inventory control system…” and the 80 year old they have guarding the door will generally just smile warmly and wave you on “Go ahead, honey. You’re ok.”
I had a friend who attended boarding school in Vicksburg, MS.
Those rich kids were total kleptos and their method of robbing Wal-Mart blind was to take all their stuff into the dog food section where there were no cameras… while in that aisle they’d stuff their lipsticks and other items down their pants and into their purses. I don’t think anyone ever got caught.
My only run in with security in a WalMart was when I walked in with a fountain coke in hand. The local gravelly voiced woman (walmart nazi) mumbled something to me that I might “spill it” – (note: this was one of the OLD Wal-Marts… nothing fancy here) — I promptly told her that I had quit spilling things at 3 years old and went on my merry way.
If you’re so caught up on the Klondike bar thing, then why don’t you MARRY AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH?
I’ve never thought of Walmart as comforting– the idea of all the fluorescent lights mixed with the crowds and the upset babies usually makes my introverted self go elsewhere if I can help it– but it does have a quality of constancy that is comforting, now that you point it out.
I try and limit my Walmart shopping as much as possible. If I have to go, I’ll go to the 24hr one before work.
So when you return one of those things that has the security doodad in it that actually was run over the magnet and Walmart restocks it, does that mean you can safely steal it without the alarm going off?
I greatly enjoyed your eloquent tale of a Wal-Mart trip gone awry. Just thought I should mention that the post-purchase receipt checks, while they may be store policy, must be voluntary in order to comply with states’ laws.
Merchants must have either probable cause or reasonable suspicion to detain a suspected shoplifter in the United States. Security experts interpret this to mean that someone must be seen selecting, taking and removing merchandise without paying. Refusing to show a receipt does not constitute reasonable suspicion of theft. The door alarms also fail to pass the smell test due to the high number of false activations.
Receipt checking is an unfriendly and confrontational tactic as well as an ineffective method of loss prevention. Honest customers should be insulted at the implication that they’re criminal suspects. I encourage people to walk past the folks asking to check their receipts with a smile and a polite “No, thank you.”
Corey Friedman
Gastonia, N.C.
http://www.indieregister.com