5/21/07: You Know What Really Grinds My Gears

May 21, 2007

We are familiar with America’s most well-known monopoly, Wal-Mart. It’s loosely known as “America’s Store.” I’d like to share with you, my most recent trip to Wal-Mart.
The odd trip begins as soon as you walk into the door and you have an awkward encounter with the greeter. You’ll notice that the greeter is probably old enough to tell you about the first Wal-Mart ever built.
What really bothers me is that the greeter doesn’t even greet. They have one job, which consists of saying one word, hello, hi, welcome, or any generic greeting; and they somehow fail at this difficult task.
The next thing that always seems to get to me is the wide variety of diet, low-fat, fat-free, or sugar-free items. Why do we really need all of this? Can we just make maybe one of them?
The dumbest thing to me is there are all these for chocolate and other sweets. It blows my mind that people would subject themselves to an awful taste just for the brief satisfaction of knowing it’s healthier.
The whole point of chocolate or any kind of sweet is that you eat to have an amazing taste that you wouldn’t normally have in a whole meal. I’ll just add that, I accidentally had Splenda one time; Splenda is definitely not sugar.
Some random thoughts I had while walking down the spices aisle were, number one, who would need all these spices? And two, do you think that the salt and pepper people work in the same building?
It’s always packaged together, but its two completely different products. I don’t think that peanut butter and jelly come out of the same complex.
How about the whole roll-back prices scheme? I suppose that there is always a price reduction in a size of store such as a Super Wal-Mart. The prices might be rolling back inside, but what about outside the store?
Wal-Mart is self-handedly corrupting the economy of America. It’s driving the “mom and pop” stores out and killing any kind of local businesses any town has. So the next time you buy 36 rolls of toilet paper for $5.95, it might be more than the price on the receipt.