Surprised I’m Not Banned From Walmart

Today I offered a woman a dollar not to buy a donut. Before you think I have come up with a new diet scheme based on paying people not to eat let me tell you what this is all about.

Carter’s school advisory is involved with a “share your Christmas” situation that precipitated ten kids and their teacher needing to go to Walmart this morning. As room parent I volunteered with my friend Cooper to drive the gang to purchase the presents a ten year old boy wanted for Christmas. On a slow Tuesday in the middle of February I don’t want to go to Walmart, but on a Friday at the beginning to the month in December I would rather put needles in my eyes than go there. But I was just the driver, right?

In the car on the way there Carter asks me if I could buy her hair elastics since she had two big basketball games today and tomorrow and was out of hairbands. Get the needles out, I thought, but in Carter’s defense she had let me know two days ago she had run out of hairbands.

While the kids divided the gift list and went their opposite ways in the store looking for sheets, books and a tennis racquet, I went to the hair care aisle and bought the “shit load” of hairbands Carter asked for. I double checked with her friend Libby about exactly how many a “shitload” might be and she told me 30. Amazingly enough the packages come in 10 or 30 hairbands. I could have guessed that 10 was not the right number.

With my one item in hand I went to the checkout ocean. At least twenty checkouts were manned with lines of three or four people all with huge overflowing carts in them. I searched for a self checkout lane, something I usually avoid because they take longer than a checkout professional, but there were none to be found. I settled on the 20 items or less lane. Twenty seemed like a lot, why were their no 5 items or less.

I found out that no Walmart shopper can count since the woman in the front of the lane had at least 50 items and the next one had 40. For some reason a not-to-be-found-onsite-manager put all the untrained checkout people on the 20 items or less lanes. When the 40 items in her cart woman got through cramming all her stuff up on the tiny little counter, you know you don’t need a belt for the fast lane, the checkout person miss rang one item.

“Oh no,” Mrs. 40 Items, screams at the checker. “You can’t charge me $4.59 for one donut.” It was clearly a mistake, but one the checkout person could not figure out how to fix. After calling over the other trainee they had not been able to void the $4.59 dozen donuts but had added a nonexistent cantaloupe to the bill.

This is when I offered Mrs. 40 Items a dollar not to buy her donut. She told me that it didn’t matter now since they had to subtract both the dozen donuts and the fruit. I left the lane and went and stood behind someone with a giant cart full of stuff, but a real belt to put them on. Eventually I was able to buy Carter’s three dollar hairbands.

Just as I was finishing my transaction the advisory kids came up to check out. The teacher handled the Christmas stuff, but of course many of the kids had found candy they wanted to buy. Sure we might never get out of the store before the new year I convinced Carter just to buy everything all the kids wanted in one transaction. As we were leaving the store I walked past my original lane and Mrs. 40 item was still there. Moral of the story, if someone offers you a dollar not to buy a donut, take the money and run.