SUPPORT YOU LOCAL RETAILER ? WHY?      

      

     Today, a possibly imaginary couple, Neil and his wife Dorothy, who we’re acquainted with, stopped at their local Wal-Mart store to pick up a couple things. This is how I remember their report of what happened. Neil can be prone to exaggerate some, so take this report with that in mind. But I’m sure the encounter has some basis in fact.

  Dorothy recently had surgery on her foot, so has a cast from her knee to her toes. To get around she uses a scooter. This thing has four wheels, handlebars, brakes and a long seat that she kneels on with her bad leg and pushes herself along. It’s a nifty contrivance.

     As they entered the store Neil went to get a cart, and Dorothy scooted on ahead. By the time Neil found a cart that didn’t have at least one wheel flat enough to make the thing want to go darting off at odd angles whenever it thought the pusher wasn’t paying attention, Dorothy was already in the entryway of the store talking to an older lady leaning on her walker.

     As Neil came up, Dorothy said, “This is Mildred;” pointing to the lady’s nametag, “she’s the store greeter.”

     Neil and Dorothy thought it a little odd when Mildred looked down at her name tag and muttered like she’d just remembered something, “Oh, yeah.”

     Dorothy continued, “Mildred says that I can’t use my scooter in the store. She’s not sure why, but has called a Customer Service Specialist to do---ah---Mildred, what’s this Customer Service Specialist going to do?

     Mildred looked confused but then brightened when a young man came striding up and asked, “Welcome to Wal-Mart, what can I do to enhance your shopping experience?” Neil thought, “Oh boy, that’s right out of some handbook.”

Then after the Customer Service Specialist looked at his nametag, he said, “My name is Will.”

     Dorothy and Neil looked at each other. This was the second person who had to look at their nametag to see who they were. They were both thinking, “What’s going on here?”

     Dorothy asked, “Mildred here has told me that I can’t use my scooter in the store. And I’m just curious as to why?”

     “Oh, it’s a matter of liability. We don’t know how safe your scooter is. You’re welcome to use one of our motorized carts,” offered Will.

     “But those are for people who can’t get around. I can get around just fine.” And with that Dorothy did two quick laps around their little group to show just how well she could move around.

     Will watched and said, “Yes, I can see. I actually think we have a scooter much like yours that you can use in the store; let me check.”

     “But, Will,” Neil offered, “she,” pointing at the person in question, namely Dorothy, “is used to her scooter---how it rides, how the brakes work, how it handles in the turns.”

     Will had an answer for that. He got on his radio and asked somebody---“Jerry, where is our scooter, you know the one for one-legged people to use?” Then after listening, he turned to us and said, “I’m sorry, but our scooter is on back order, it seems that the boat it was on went down in a typhoon last week.”

     “But,” Neil said, “I thought that Wal-Mart only bought and sold, or in this case used items made in America.”

     This seemed to put Will is a sort of trance as he just stood there staring off into space. Neil addressed him, “Will, Will,” and then louder, “Will.” There was no response. He was sort of mumbling like he was reciting a list of some sort. (He later explained that he had been going through a list to get the right answer to my question.)

Neil finally reached out and touched his arm, just to make sure he wasn’t having some kind of spell. On feeling Neil’s touch he jerked away, jumping a good foot in the air. Neil apologized and asked if he was okay.

     “Oh yes, it’s just that after the last big reprisal scare of 2013 we’re all a little jumpy, besides my real name isn’t Will.”

     Dorothy and Neil again looked at each other with the same questions in their eyes, “Reprisal---real name?” They knew they had to come back to both those intriguing comments, but first Dorothy asked, “We were asking about your policy of buying, selling, or using American?”

     Everything we buy, use, and sell, is made in one America or another,” Will said, his voice trailing off to a near whisper.

     “One America or another?” they both said in unison.

     “Well,” Will said, “it’s like this, in the case of the scooter it comes from America---Bangladesh.”

     “America---Bangladesh?”

     “Yeah,” offered, Will, “you see, in Bangladesh, there’s a large manufacturing city called America. They make most of this stuff,” waving his arm around to encompass the store.

     He could see they were stunned. “Sure, check the pharmacy, our drugs? That’s right; America, Mexico. I understand it’s down close to Mexico City. They ship drugs all over the world. The best part, America, Mexico has a suburb named, get this, Canada.”

     “So, when we get drugs marketed as being American made it could be coming out of Mexico, and when people buy Canadian drugs, there also coming from Mexico?”

     “Yeah,” beamed Will, “tricky, isn’t it?”

     “So, Will, why can’t I use my scooter?” asked Dorothy.

     Will took a deep breath, “Because our insurance don’t know how your scooter has been maintained.”

     “But how do you know your maintenance is better, remember, Will, I’ve used your carts,” said Neil.

     “Cart maintenance is handled by a different department then anything that our customers ride on. With those we are much more careful. The department who does the carts has only a little budget, and their sloppy besides. When I become store manager that will be straightened out.”

     “So, what’s this reprisal thing all about?” Dorothy asked.

     Will went on to explain that in 2013, some folks had attacked a Wal-Mart employee in his back yard. Knowing his name, they had tracked him down. What set them off was his continual snarky attitude toward older people. “It’s amazing how much damage several walkers can do to a guy in a short period of time,” continued Will with a nervous laugh.

     “And that’s why your nametags have false names on them?”

     “That’s it.”

     “Isn’t that sort of confusing?”

     “Oh,” laughed, Will, or whoever he was, “around here that doesn’t even make the top ten ‘confusing things’ list.”

     Then Will got serious and said, “We’ll let the scooter thing go for today. Could I help you folks find something?”

     “Yes, first of all we need a computer print cartridge,” Neil said.

     “Okay,” offered Will, “we sell a boatload of those so they would be back in that far corner of the store,” waving in that direction.

“So, if you sell so many, why have them in the back corner of the store instead of toward the front where it’s handy?”

“Well, that’s another thing I learned in Wal-Mart marketing 101. Get most of the traffic to traipse through as much of the store as possible. You see, it’s a proven fact that a Wal-Mart shopper can’t take twenty steps without putting something in his or her cart, whether they need it or not. So the further you can make them walk, the better.”

“Is that why you have these bins full of candy and such sitting around in the aisles?” asked Dorothy.

“Exactly.”

Dorothy continued, “But these bins are so big, do they ever get emptied?”

“That’s a good question. The answer is yes, we empty them at least once a month, especially after what happened in Lodi, California, last year.”

Will looked around us, to see if anyone had heard that last comment.

Dorothy and Neil both said, “And?”

Will hesitated, then in a low voice, “In Lodi, they were getting complaints that one of the candy bins had a strange smell to it, so one evening when there was little traffic in the store, they emptied the thing and found a fat, and very hyper, five-year old sitting on the bottom. The kid had been missing for about a week, and was just living on candy. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. However, bodily functions being what they are the tote was rather messy.”

Dorothy offered, “Another thing we need is some hand or body wipes. I’d think they would maybe be in the pharmacy.”

“Yeah, you’d think so wouldn’t you,” said Will. Then he thought for a minute while turning 360 degrees scanning the store as if he might be able to see them from where we were standing. He offered, “They could be anyplace, but I’d start in the pharmacy area. You see, our person who designates where the incoming freight is to be shelved in the store has a reading disorder, so you can find anything anyplace. If you don’t find the wipes in the pharmacy I’d look in automotive, other than that, your guess is as good as anybody’s.”

“Reading disorder?” asked Dorothy.

“Yeah, but he only works thirty-five hours per week        ---no benefits.”

As we were about to start our trek to the back corner of the store for a print cartridge, Will offered, “I’ll be working right around this area. When you’re ready to leave, flag me down and I’ll check you out myself. Otherwise goodness knows, it’ll take forever to get out of this place.”

Dorothy exclaimed, “Yes, and why is that?”

“Well, it’s for several reasons. One, Wal-Mart wants it to look like the store is busy and they feel that lots of people in the checkout lines accomplishes that look. And two, it’s hard to find old people who want to work as check-out clerks, for low pay and less benefits.”

“But, Will,” Neil said, “you’re working here!”

     “Oh, that’s different, I’m on the management fast track, so I get paid a reasonable salary and benefits with the promise of more to come, if the economy doesn’t go into the toilet, I maintain a 60 hour per week schedule, and I don’t screw anything up.” Then standing taller and puffing out his chest he added, “I’ll be running this store some day.”

     “But, Will,” insisted Dorothy, “back to this check-out line thing, don’t people get mad at being made to wait, when they see all these check-out stations without any clerks?”

     “Oh, sure they do, but the Wal-Mart assumption is that these people will forget how bad it was this time before they come back next time, and it seems to work.”

     Dorothy and Neil---well---Neil walked and she pushed herself along on her scooter, which got them to the ‘Electronics’ section.

     Once there, they perused the shelves of print cartridges and didn’t see the one he wanted. Neil looked around for a clerk without any success. He strolled around the section, and neighboring sections, and still no one. Once back in ‘Electronics’ Neil went behind the counter, picked up what looked like a house phone and said, “Hello.”

     His voice came back to him over the store PA system, “Hello.”

     Well, this was fun so Neil tried, “Hi, I’m back in ‘Electronics’ and am looking for a product, but there’s absolutely no one around this part of the store. I would like some help. And oh, by the way, there’s a service dog urinating on TV.”

     In about thirty seconds, three clerks came running into the department. Two of them had pails and mops, the other had a large net. They skidded to a stop, and looked around. “Where’s the dog? shouted the leader.

     Neil pointed toward the TV displays. “Right there.”

     He got a blank look from the three Wal-Mart employees.

     “Right where?” yelled the leader.

     “It was on TV, a dog was peeing on TV. I think it was a commercial.”

     The leader was getting more than a little agitated, “But you said a dog was urinating on---TV. His loud voice was back to its regular volume as his comment ground to a stop. It was plain that he had figured out where he and his two companions had misinterpreted the message.

     The leader talked into a walkie-talkie. “Office, we have a 232 here in ‘Electronics’, please call the police.”

     Neil said, “Well, I think we’ll be leaving now.”

     “Oh no, you’re not!” shouted the leader. “You’re not going anyplace.”

     “You mean you’re holding us here against our will?”

     The leader was really getting into this apprehending-of-a-store-rule-violator. His tone was arrogant and loud, “Of course I am, and you’re under Wal-Mart arrest.”

     In about three minutes, two policemen and two Wal-Mart Suits had joined the festivities. The policeman asked the Suits, “What’s the problem here?”

     The older of the Suits answered, “I’m not sure, we just got here,” motioning to his fellow suit.

     The leader of the three responders stepped up and proudly said, “I’ll tell you, we have these two under arrest.”

     When the older Suit heard the word ‘arrest’, he winced like he’d been touched with a hot iron. He said, “Ned,” (that was evidently the leader’s name), in this Wal-Mart we’d learned that you could never tell, “you didn’t tell these folks they were actually under arrest.”

     Ned was not bright enough to catch the warning tone in the Suit’s voice. He puffed out his chest and said, “I sure did Mr. Edwards,” (evidently, the Suit’s name), but as they’d learned---well, we’ve been through all that.

     Dorothy said, with more glee in her voice than a good Christian should have had, “Oh yes, Ned told us we were under arrest, and when we tried to leave he told us that we couldn’t.”

     The older police officer held out a hand and said, “Okay, people, Ned, is it? Just what did these folks do to get ‘arrested’ by you?”

     Ned was getting the idea that he might be in trouble so didn’t quite know what to say. Finally he plunged into his story and got it mostly right.

     The older police turned to Neil and Dorothy and asked, “So you said,” the corners of his mouth were twitching as if he might be having a spasm of some sort, “over the store PA system, that a dog was peeing on TV?”

     Dorothy and Neil looked at each other, and then replied, “Yeah, that’s about it, except we used the word urinating; we’re not crude.”

     The older police officer’s partner was laughing behind his hand. “And the dog was not peeing on a TV, but was actually just,” and here his voice started to slow down, “peeing   on   TV.” By this time it wasn’t a question any more.

     The two Suits were looking a little green around the gills. Ned and his two compatriots were edging away, and looking for all the world like they were going to make a run for it. The Suit leader shouted at Ned. “No you don’t, get back here. You owe these good customers an apology.”

     Neil said to the Suit leader, “Sir, that won’t be necessary.”

     “Well, that’s most kind of you, but what were you looking for in this department?”

     Neil answered, “I need a 564 black printer cartridge. It seems you’re out and I want to know whether to wait for you to get more, or to get one someplace else.”

     The Suit leader turned to a young man who was strolling into the department, hands in pockets, and whistling to himself. “Jim (his nametag said Blair), when are we going to get more---what was that again?” turning to me.

     Neil explained, and Jim said, “Don’t know. We never know. One day we have some product and the next day we’re out and never know when we’re going to get more.”

     The younger policeman exclaimed, “That’s right, I can never depend on you guys having what I just bought here last week. And no one seems to know why or when you might be getting some more.”

     The older policeman was energetically nodding his head in agreement.

     Neil turned to the older Suit, “Could I have a business card please?”

     The Suit looked a little puzzled, but handed one over. Neil looked at it and said, “Thanks, so our attorney will know who to call.”

     “Attorney?” The Suit’s voice had gone up an octave. “Why?” he squeaked.

     Neil answered, “Well, maybe false arrest and kidnapping,” looking at the two policemen who were both nodding their heads and looking unsympathetically at the Suit.

     So that’s how Neil and Dorothy came to own $500,000 worth of Wal-Mart shares. However, they think they’ll sell them. The name on the certificates say, ‘Wal-Mart’, but with them you can never be sure.

     They bought a print cartridge at Freddy’s on our way home.