Friday, January 7, 2011

10 Things I Hate About Walmart

I hate going to Walmart. And here are a few reasons why...

10. The prepackaged "fresh fruit" has some sort of additive on it that renders it completely inedible! I bought fruit salad in a container the other day and there was some sort of chemical on there (I'm guessing to keep the fruit from turning brown) and it was so harsh that it burned my mouth! It wasn't lemon juice, that's for sure. But whatever it was, it made the fruit so disgusting that I couldn't even finish one chunk of melon. I threw the whole thing away, essentially throwing close to 3 bucks into the trash. Not cool.

9. They often don't have some of the grocery items I'm looking for.

8. When you need assistance, tracking someone down is nearly impossible. Why? Because you have to trek all over the gigantic store to find someone and by the time you've hauled yourself over to customer service, you forget why you even needed help in the first place.

7. None of the associates, except for the greeter at the front, even speak to you (for the most part. If you are that exceptional cashier or customer service rep. that is friendly, kudos to you...we notice!). Managers are especially unfriendly (and unavailable) in my experience.

6. The aisle (at my Walmart) that says "calendars and planners" has nothing but notebooks and Crayola paraphernalia and not one calendar or planner is to be found. In fact, I couldn't find a daily planner anywhere in the whole store!

5. Trying to dodge the plethora of people in motorized shopping carts. I'm not talking about those of you who truly need them...the handicapped, the disabled, the elderly. But in my experience, it looks like there are quite a few that do not and could actually use the exercise of walking around Walmart!

4. I hate that they now have an entire room, right by the door no less, full of those brightly colored rides and games. When I was a kid, there was like, one gum ball machine and one mechanical pony ride. Now they have whole rooms of "Chuckie Cheese-esque" rides and games? As if we didn't spend enough money on worthless crap? Now you want us to plunk quarters into those stupid machines? And the shameless part is you position it right by the door so mothers with children HAVE to pass it as they walk out. You know they just call out to little children, "Look how fun it is in here! Scream, NOW, as loud as you can, then throw yourself on the ground because you're not going to take another step until your mother agrees to bring you in here! She'll be so embarrassed, she'll do it just to shut you up! Do it NOW!!" Like I said, SHAMELESS!

3. Items are often not placed in a spot that would make sense to the customer. For instance in my Walmart (and all of these complaints are generally related to this particular Walmart) the cleaning supplies are not located in the grocery section. They are a few aisles over, where the household items are. You'd think they'd make life easier for us, the customer, by putting the cleaning supplies in an aisle that is convenient to get to while we're doing our grocery shopping. But no. Again, we're not fooled by the shameless ploy to lure us over into another section of the store to entice us to buy something over there.

2. It's too big!

1. You can never leave without spending more than you intended to!

6 comments:

  1. Agreed...and it's not just your Walmart. Ours is equally bad, and I only go there if I absolutely have to for convenience, or shortage of time.

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  2. Oh, and don't get me started at the way the cashiers handle it when you use a coupon! They will not allow you to use 2 coupons of the same product even if you are buying 2 of the products! I rarely ever use a coupon there but I save lots of money using my coupons while shopping at Target. We don't have a Mega Target here though. That would be wonderful!

    And, don't get me started on how they ship in fresh foods from other countries like China and South Africa! That's probably where the fruit came from that you couldn't eat! I always look to see where their produce is from. I made the mistake last month and bought oranges from South Africa. I took them back! Then I scoured the store looking for oranges from Florida or California. They only had the other ones. I talked to a man there and he said it wasn't the season for them in Florida. Yes, it was! He also said that it would cost more to ship them in from Florida then South Africa!

    I'm with you about WalMart!

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  3. You took the words out of my mouth!!! I live in a small town and this is the only grocery store we have within 15 to 20 minutes. We had an ice storm a couple of years ago and the Walmart truck said it couldn't make it into town. People were calling all over town when the milk and bread was delivered just so the poor moms of babies and toddlers could run and buy it.

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  4. The Wal-Mart in Pikeville is horrible, I stood in line 37 minutes one day this week just to pay for my groceries and you are so right on about the fruit it tastes nasty. I have decided I would rather pay $5 more each week and shop at Food City, at least you get real fresh fruits and veggies!

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  5. *grin* I'm new to your blog and just kind of browsing around. The title of this post caught my eye. I haven't shopped at Wal-Mart in ... oh, goodness, it's been YEARS! I, wholly and truly, HATE Wal-Mart. It's such an unpleasant shopping experience.

    Plus, I hate their corporate mission and philosophy. They care nothing for their customers, their employees or the communities and environments in which they decide to build their behemoth stores. They pretend to care, but only when it might profit them, like adding a couple of "green building" features to some of their new stores - so that they appeal to the eco-freakos.

    Here, where I live, Wal-Mart was spearheading the building a new, big (and now, mostly, empty) shopping "park". It's basically a strip mall, but it's built like an industrial park, so the stores are too far from each other to walk, and they simply decimated all of this natural habitat - for no reason other than they wanted a bigger store. Anyway, that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that in order to build their "shopping park", they had to raze an entire neighborhood, including displacing this 60+ year old man from the home he'd shared with his, then deceased, wife for more than thirty years, where they'd raised their kids, and lived their lives, and Wal-Mart just wanted to take it all away - so they could have a bigger store. Nice.

    That's when I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart, and I've been very lucky to find all sorts of wonderful, small, locally-owned businesses. I've never missed it, not once, and neither has my family (or I) wanted for anything.

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