Waiting to check out in the ever-longer lines at Walmart today, I perused the headlines of the tabloid rack and amongst the mostly Trayvon shills saw a full page picture of a sad and bloated OJ Simpson under a headline that said he had only two months to live. Maybe it was 2 minutes. Anyway, they said he weighed 300 pounds and was dying of some mysterious disease. Well, if he's gained a hundred pounds, I'm guessing the mysterious disease is diabetes. I also had a passing wonderment how one can gain 100 pounds in prison. Is the chow really that good?
Walmart is experimenting to find out just how long their customers will wait in line before they just walk out. They are down to about 4 checkers per 1000 customers now. I'm guessing people would wait long enough for them to go down to 3 checkers, at least. Most customers are unemployed and on food stamps anyway, so nowhere to go. I wonder if it occurs to any of the unemployed to put in a job application at Walmart on their computer thingy by the front door next to the pizzas? Obviously help is needed. And at Walmart, employment comes with the perk that you don't have to actually work.
Apparently.
Try getting up early and shop before 8 in the morning.
ReplyDeleteI've tried to shop at 3am without success. The unwashed masses of customers are replaced by the stockmen blocking the aisles with pallets of this and that. (In case you are wondering where the reconquistadores work at night). Or do you mean there are more checkers before 8am? :)
DeleteThereare less checkouts before 8, but less customers also.
DeleteMost of our supermarkets are the same, plenty of tills, but nobody at them. More and more have self-scanning tills, which you might think would speed things up, In my experience, mostly not, because they tell you "Unexpected object in bagging area" or "wait for assistance".
ReplyDeleteUsually there's some sort of delay, an unreadable bar-code,or an item which requires age-verification. Dammit, I've been over 18 for a lot longer than I was under 18, and it pisses me off when some young kid has to come and scan her badge into the till, to tell it that she deems me old enough to buy a bottle of beer, or a kitchen knife.
We don't have self-scanning at Walmart yet, not in my town at least. We have do-it-yourself at Home Depot here. What a lark. I love progress, don't you?
DeleteSo... Where've you been? Canoeing up the Amazon? Hunting for Eldorado? Walking to Shangri-La? Climbing the Matterhorn blindfold? Orbiting the earth in a home-built space capsule?
ReplyDeleteTrying to replenish the old dwindling coffers, mostly. But, more than that, blogging sometimes loses it's luster and the desire to pontificate fades. Fits and starts. If only there could be a royal baby every day.
DeleteThe results of cost-cutting. Their experiment probably costs them more!
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I've thought that, but mostly I think it is just how being a monopoly works. After all, where would we go? Safeway? Albertson's? Nobody has that much money. :)
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