My First Rant of ’09

Walmart is not my friend this week. Well, really, I can’t blame Walfart…it’s not the corporation that I’m fed up with, it’s the ignorant, common senseless, rude, annoying customers and employees that are causing my ire.

I should have know it was going to be a bad day when I got in the car and yelled, “I hate everything”. Not a good way to start the day. Oh, did I mention, I’m premenstrual. Yeah. That explains it all. So, as I pull into the Walfart parking lot I’m quite happy to find a fairly decent parking spot seeing as we have a billion tons of snow and negative wind chills. I pull into the spot and start to exit the vehicle. I hear a horn honking but think nothing of it. I hear it again and again, getting more frantic and louder. I then realize that the honking is coming from a minivan that is reversing toward me as I get out of my car. The minivan pulls right up next to me and my daughter as we begin our trudge to the store. And what do we see? A psychotic female driver, one hand still on the horn, the other flailing wildly in the air as she mouths something I cannot understand. She continues to yell and point at my car. I realize what she is trying to tell me through the rolled up windows of her minivan. I took her parking spot. WHAT? Seriously lady? She continues to scream “YOU TOOK MY SPOT”, without ever rolling down her window. I’m completely fired up at this point and scream right back at her “LADY, YOU WERE HALFWAY UP THE ROW. I DIDN’T EVEN SEE YOUR VEHICLE UNTIL YOU ALMOST RAN ME OVER! I’M NOT A MIND READER. I DIDN’T REALIZE THIS SPOT HAD YOUR NAME ON IT.” My child starts snickering and I grab her by the arm and we head toward the store. The frickin’ lady starts beeping her horn AT ME AGAIN. Oh man, I was SO ready to turn and run at her vehicle and offer her some more words of advice. But, I bit my tongue and walked away seeing as the little one was with me. And guess what mini 2LD tells me to do? She says, “Give it to her Mom…give her the finger!” The woman sat in her vehicle for a few moments…I think she actually thought I was going to climb back into my car and offer up the spot. Ha. Not so much. When she finally realized she was out of luck she sped past us, still yelling and flailing.

Now, I’m thoroughly annoyed and don’t quite feel like shopping but I’m on a mission. I need paint for my bedroom walls because, you see, I found a picture in Pottery Barn of these lovely brown walls and I decided I just HAD to have that color…TODAY. Thing is, the Pottery Barn paint is Benjamin Moore paint. We all know I’m little miss thrift and I’m certainly not going to spend $30 on a gallon of paint – especially when I’m only going to paint two walls. So, smarty me – I go to the Benjamin Moore store, get a swatch of the color I want and take that swatch to Walmart so the paint person can color match it. Wooooo!…..saving me about $17.  I’ve had a custom color made before, it’s no big deal; the swatch is scanned and the computer comes up with a match. I proceed to have ‘Larry’ the paint guy make me my oh-so-lovely brown custom color. Apparently, it was Larry’s first day with the color match system. The color that Larry reveals when he opens the can makes both me and my daughter cringe. It’s not brown. Oh, no. It’s a washed-out sort of cranberry color. I explain that I will certainly not be painting my bedroom walls red, to which Larry replies, “It’s a custom color, you have to take it.” I respond, “The color you’ve made does not MATCH, and doesn’t even come close to the color on the swatch that I brought in so I would certainly hope I wouldn’t be required to purchase it.” Larry’s response, “Well, then you can go argue with my manager about it.” Me (trying very hard not to yell),  “Oh, you bet I will, just point me in his direction”.

I guess Larry didn’t feel like getting reprimanded on this particular day because as soon as those words came out of my mouth his tune changed. He was going to go out of his way to ensure I got the color I wanted. He fiddled around with the swatch a few more times, ran it through the computer again, added some more colors and finally…an almost perfect match. He was suddenly very apologetic and thanked me for being patient. Damn skippy, Larry, ’cause I was gonna turn your ass into management.

Momma’s all happy now that she has her cheap, almost perfectly matched paint, now all we have to do is check out and we’re home free. Check out is usually not a problem because we use the self check-out. Momma can swipe those barcodes waaaay faster than those checkout gals! Except today. Wouldn’t you know. We get behind some freakish girl who, with only a few items, takes almost 10 frickin’ minutes to check out. Why? Because she has to put her gloves on to touch the screen, then she takes her gloves off to bag the item, then the gloves go back on to touch the screen, and so on, for the next 5 items. I stand there gritting my teeth, trying to find a magazine to look at to distract me. The girl can tell I’m obviously agitated. Gee, ya think? Who the heck goes through these crazy maneuvers just to check out? But wait, it gets better. After she scans her last item, she carefully removes her gloves,  fishes in her purse and finally retrieves money. And guess what? She doesn’t have enough money for her purchase. OMG. She has to call an associate over to remove her supersize bag of Doritoes. I’m so flippin’ agitated at this point I’m quite sure my face is pure red. The girl turns to me and says, “Thank you for being so patient”. I smile (now I feel bad for being such an uber-impatient/intolerant person). On top of it all she makes sure to tell me to have a great day…and I, of course, tell her to do the same.  Geez…can’t a girl just be agitated for ONE stinkin’ day without some nice person ruining it?

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