Wal-mart has made me a meaner person

It's not like it's a surprise that Walmart has less than desirable customer service...but tonight really drove the nail into the coffin for me.

My visit started off rough because I was wearing flip-flops and it started to snow during my 45 second drive.  (Seriously, it is less than a mile from our house).  I get inside and try to zip around and get what I need.  After tripping over crates of food (at only 9:30 PM) I finish up and go to find a check-out stand with less than 1.5 million people in line.  But there wasn't one.  I did a quick count of items in my cart to see if I qualified for the fast lane which was supposed to be 20 items.  I had 25.  And I didn't care.  I'm pretty sure everyone else there was buying supplies for shipments to be sent over to Haiti or buying in bulk to SELL to Costco because the lines were long and everyone was buying an entire aisle worth of food.  It was more than slightly ridiculous.

So I get in the fast lane and start to feel the daggers being thrown at me by the cashier.  This was before she even knew how many items were in my cart! She just looked altogether irritated and inconvenienced by being at work.  I couldn't tell if it was her first day so she wasn't sure how to run an item across a laser or if she didn't want to break her Lee press-on nails but she just stared at each item curiously before handling it.  What was this? Wal-mart has a home brand? How many calories are in these 100 calorie pack cookies? I forgot to mention that she didn't bother to greet me.  I said hello and received not so much as a twitch from her stink eye.  I watched the line get longer and longer behind me and at first I started to get a little nervous that people were secretly creating voodoo dolls inside their jackets to stab me in the heart.  Turns out they were all staring at the cashier with agitation at her apparent lack of ability.  I felt them put their voodoo dolls to rest.  This was one for the books.  Now, I'm a sensitive person when it comes to people with special needs.  If she was an employee that deserved a more compassionate heart--I would have been more than willing to give it out...but when employees are just asleep while standing and getting PAID, I have a problem with that.  After 2 hours of scanning my 25 items she looked up to see that I had already slid my card, entered my pin and was waiting to hit "no" to the cash back prompt.  I wanted to say "Who died?" or "That bad, huh?" or "You're kind of a crusty person, you know that, right?" or "You probably should have called in mean" or "are you always this unpleasant?" but instead I gave her a big 'ol smile and said "Thanks! Have a good night".  She stared at me half with contempt and half with bewilderment that I was once again trying to communicate with her and muttered (seriously, totally under her breath) "You're welcome".  Nice.  Thanks lady.  Actually--she couldn't have been more than 20.

I was feeling a little disappointed with my interaction with this girl when I looked over to the greeter who usually welcomes and bids me farewell with a hearty smile (at least someone is happy there) but she was so engrossed in her tabloid that she didn't even look up.  Her sentence was something like "Have a gsodfijwelisfjdsl..................." and then she was reading or looking at pictures or counting the aliens coming out of Oprah's ears...I don't know.  I just know that she was totally into the mag.  Maybe she was reading the juice about the Bachelor? In which case--she is forgiven.

But now that I'm home, I'm feeling a little crusty myself.  Although, I do feel better after this diatribe...