Aint No Party Like A Walmart Party

By Sean Patrick

I recently had the pleasure of devoting a good chunk of my evening at the local Walmart. Nothing makes me feel quite like a tortured war prisoner like spending some time at a Walmart shopping center.

Everyone complains about Walmart. If this were a hip website, I would make the surprising and humorous argument that Walmart was a great place to shop. I can’t do it. My fingers wont allow me to type it. Walmart is completely terrible, and my story will reveal some of the many reasons why this is true.

THE STORY

6:15 p.m.

Tuesday night I went to Walmart to pick up a prescription. For the sake of sounding cool, I am going to say that I was getting my penial reduction pills that are being forced upon me by the federal government’s gynecology department.  

Typically when I drop off a prescription, I’m told it will take about 10 minutes to get my order ready. And let me tell you, those 10 minutes are always the worst part of my year. But this time, I was told that it was going to take about 45.

45 minutes…

PROBLEM WITH WALMART

The Lighting

The electricians at every Walmart have been instructed to install hundreds of upsetting fluorescent light fixtures. This lighting makes everyone and everything in the store look horrendous. Zac Efron couldn’t even pull off that lighting, and he’s a dude that would look gorgeous covered in baby scalps.

Because it’s hopeless trying to look good in there, we all dress down before we even walk into the store. Next time you’re there, take a look around at what people are wearing. It’ll shock you. Then take a look at what you’re wearing. You’ll think to yourself, “Where did I get these yellowish-white sweatpants and this XXL Tweety Bird t-shirt?”

Not wanting to drive all the way home and back and unwilling to spend any more time in that concentration camp than I had to, I decided to cross the street and go to Target.

Ahhh, Target. What a refreshing breath of life. It’s like going to the Sybaris. The lights are turned down low, the cliental don’t look like goblins, and your soul doesn’t feel like it’s being ripped out of your ass. 

I walked around this heavenly store for about thirty minutes before returning to Walhell. It was almost 45 minutes after the woman told me my prescription would be ready, so I stood in line and waited to get my order. 

6:50 p.m.

Although the line was only three people deep, it took ten minutes to get up to the front. This was because only one woman, who was extremely friendly, was working the register. There was another girl that was available to help out, but she chose to sit in a chair and do nothing but watch us all die slowly in front her eyes. Her refusal to help struck me as odd, but at this point I didn’t really care. I was still feeling my Target buzz, and I knew that in just a few minutes I would be away from this giant gravesite and on my way home. But something was staring to bother me…

PROBLEM WITH WALMART

The Constant Airing of One Commercial

I understand the concept of advertising. In fact, I’m a fan of advertising. Without it, I would have no idea that people who use Axe Deodorant are dicks. But recently, Walmart joined forces with Dove Men’s Body Wash (finally), and the store insists to air their commercial on the television located in the pharmacy section every two minutes. That advertisement is this… 

For the rest of this blog, I will be posting it as often as I had to hear it. If you want the virtual experience of being at Walmart, feel free to play it every time you approach it.

I was in line behind a man who had something catastrophic happen to his eye. He had a huge bandage over his right eye, and when he got up to the lady working at the counter, he was informed that his prescription wasn’t ready yet. If he had two good eyes, he probably would have cried.

Now it was my turn.  

I walked up to the counter and told her my name. She looked up my information, nervously giggled, and told me it would be a “few more minutes”…

…now I was the one that was holding back tears…

The reason I went to Target was to avoid having to wait inside this poorly-run orphanage. But here I was, dressed in an undershirt and black dress pants, being forced to loiter around the pharmacy section of the store until they called my name. 

7:00 p.m.

The pharmacy section in any store sucks. Walmart’s is worse. There is nothing to entertain yourself with. I was quickly getting bored, and before I knew what was going on, I was in front of the condoms.

I don’t remember approaching the area, but all of a sudden I was standing there, in front of strangers, staring at condoms. I don’t know what it was. I was in a hypnotic gaze. I would spend a minute looking at one brand of condom, and then would slowly move onto the next one. I was like a kid in a condom store.

After seven minutes, I realized that I had been giving the prophylactics way too much attention. When I looked up, I saw One-eyed Willie staring at me with his functioning eyeball. He must have thought I was insane. But he was the one with the eye-patch, so the feeling was mutual.

7:20 p.m.

After twenty minutes, the pharmacy was packed with angry people whose prescriptions weren’t ready. One of these people was an old lady who had a cranky look about her. Her hair was frizzy, her jeans were white, and her mustache would make any seventh-grade boy envious.

Although she was angry, she had only been there for about five minutes. Including the time that I dropped off the prescription, I was approaching an hour. But being a dissatisfied customer at Walmart is way too trendy, and since I am the opposite of trendy (I LOVE MILEY CYRUS!!!), I kept my cool. 

7:35

Although I had earned the right to cut in front of everyone, hop over the counter, and strangle the girl behind the counter who was still refusing to help, I got back in line.

The line took another 10 minutes. When it was about to be my turn, Captain One-Eye cut right in front of me, stuck both of his hands down the back of his pants, and started feeling his own ass. 

This isn’t a joke.

In a bizarre act of protest that only punished me, this man cut me in line and stood three feet away from me while he massaged his butt cheeks. He had officially stopped caring, and to be honest, I respected him for it. Although I wish he would have chosen a different way to show his disgust, I happily let him get in front of me and respectfully looked the other way while he was having alone time with his backside.

Unfortunately for ass-hands, he got bad news. His prescription wasn’t ready. He was pissed, and he let the teller and anyone else in a twenty-foot range know just how unhappy he was. I felt bad for the teller, who was slowly becoming less pleasant. But now,

it was my turn. I was about to end this nightmare. 

Having given her way more than “a few minutes,” I was sure that my prescription would be ready. In fact, I thought maybe she would offer me a free bag of cookies or at least some Dove Mens Body Wash since at this point I had memorized the commercial.

I told her my name, she looked at the computer, and said, “oh, there was a problem.” Then she walked away. As she left I said, with my bottom lip trembling and in the saddest voice I’ve ever heard come out of my mouth, “….wwwwhat is it?”

She talked to a pharmacist for a few minutes, and then came back to me.

“We need your authorization to fill your prescription.”

I was confused.

“Uh, I mean, yeah, of course you have my permission.”

“OK. I’ll put that in the system, and it should be ready in 15 minutes.”

…………

I’ve never been stabbed in the chest with a sharpened toothbrush as my fingertips are being chewed off by Roloffs while I’m forced to watch everyone I know and love slowly being cut to pieces with swords by terrorists wearing Green Bay Packers jerseys… but at this moment, I caught a glimpse of what it would feel like. 

Of course they have my permission!!!!! I dropped it off to them!!!!! 

I was dying inside. I wanted to scream, but my scream is too feminine. To make things worse, as I left the counter, the mean old lady looked at me, giving me the “can you believe this?” look. I quickly looked away. I didn’t want to be associated with her. She’d been waiting for ten minutes, I was nearing an hour and a half. She had no idea. Plus, by the looks of her, it seemed like a good thing that she had to wait. She could use some time away from her overly-draped living room and her dozens of undomesticated cats. 

Fearing that I would faint from anger, I decided to sit down. I sat on a bench next to the counter and stared at the ground, trying to recall if I got into a car accident on the way to the store and was now in a crueler version of hell… 

As I was 

staring at the ground, a man walked up next to me and put his sandaled left foot into my limited line of vision.

His big toe… was not doing so well. I’m guessing that’s the reason he was at the pharmacy.

Attached to the big toe was the worst yellow toenail I’ve ever seen in my life. It was literally falling apart before my eyes. Like a Vietnam war vet, my personality has altered since seeing that thing. To make things worse, he smelled like expired taco meat. 

I got up and went back to my former safe haven: the condom section. I tried to get into the same trance as before, but I was rudely interrupted by the loud speaker making the announcement that “A little girl wearing a red shirt and brown pants has gone missing. If you see her, please bring her to the customer service desk.”

I thought about this missing girl. Either she couldn’t take it anymore and ran out of the store without her parents, or she was kidnapped and now tied up in the back of some creepy guys van. Both scenarios made me jealous of this missing child. 

Unfortunately for her, the girl was quickly found, and I was losing my mind. I began to realize that I was in a test of wills with Walmart. If I left without my penial pills, Walmart would win. If I waited long enough to get my prescription, I would leave a battered man*, but I would leave with my pride. 

8:00 p.m.

I got back in line. It was a long line, and if the end result was not favorable, I figured I may need to order blood pressure pills as well, which would extend this evening even more. After another 10 minutes in line, in front of a girl who was openly complaining that it had taken her over 5 minutes to get what must be her “bitch pills,” I was back in front of the teller. I said my name, she looked me up, and told me my order wasn’t ready. 

I was Pearl Harbor devastated. 

As I was about to walk to the gun section of the store, the teller stopped me and told me to stay up front. After 5 more minutes of waiting up there, it was ready. 

During my long wait at Walmart, I thought I would have to wrestle a swarm of gargoyles in order to get what I came for. But I just got my penial reduction pills and at that point and left. But before I walked out I heard this one last time…

*sounds delicious