Why can't I stay away from this place? It's like a bad boyfriend that you know you shouldn't hang out with, but you keep going back. It's not like we don't have comparable stores here in town, but I can't NOT go there. It's like a moth to a flame. Is it the good prices? The well stocked shelves, especially of Krispy Kreme Smooth coffee? The fact that you can get a cup of popcorn chicken at the deli, when you're starving after work, and walk around and eat it while you shop? Is it the perfectly priced clothes for kids who grow out of them in what feels like 2 days? Or maybe it's because you can grocery shop and shop for clothes in the same store?
Now, shopping at Walmart has its good points, but I have some suggestions that may help to make the shopping experience A LOT better, especially for parents. Because I'm going to tell you, right now, it's complete torture to go in there with my kids.
Here are my suggestions, and they are only suggestions, but I think they are pretty dadgum good ones:
1. For the love of dixie, open up more registers!!! If you aren't going to open all or at least half of them during your busiest hours, then don't build as many registers. It's a waste of money, and it's frustrating to look around and see that 40 registers exist, yet only 3-5 are open at any given time. This is the time that our kids really start pitching fits, especially since you keep saying no to the 100 pieces of candy and toys that they've picked up while waiting in line. They are getting antsy waiting in a line that is 8 people deep, all with buggies FULL of groceries. So, the frustration level was just taken to the next level. Also, please teach the cashiers to at least speak to the customers. They hardly even smile, which I find sad. Do you need to offer them some type of incentive so that they want to look happy? Sometimes, it's hard to even get them to smile. Now, I do understand that everyone has hard days, even hard lives, but please, if someone speaks to you, speak back. That is just simple manners.
2. Provide childcare. For a small fee that is. I would spend the extra money for the care just so it would take me 30 minutes, and not an hour and a half, to go shopping. There also wouldn't be random toys or bags of candy that mysteriously appear in the cart. Oh, and having to pull at least one of my kids off of a shelf, or trying to get them to quit fighting with each other, or ramming the cart into the back of my ankles. I honestly don't know how I have made it this long without having to have surgery on my achilles tendon. I'm totally serious. And the tears and yelling because I'm not letting them get 100 different kinds of cookies or cereal.
3. Serve Xanax or a stiff drink to the moms/dads that enter the store with kids. I promise you would see a lot more smiles from the parents. Or here's another good idea. Just give free wine and beer samples in the wine aisle and at the beer fridge. You would see some parents who were a lot less stressed and a lot more excited to go into Walmart. You would probably also have a lot more customers, period.
People wonder why it causes me anxiety to take my sweet, precious children shopping with me until they see me in the store with all 3 of them. Then they don't wonder anymore. Ask the friends who saw me walking around Walmart yesterday with my 4 year old. It's not a pretty sight. Seriously!
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