Day 112

Oh New Year's Eve....at Wal-Mart. I was lucky, I guess. I only worked until 11:00pm. But my night faired so poorly I should have just stayed at my register. New Year's Eve is a weird time to work at Wal-Mart. Most people buy booze and party napkins. Sometimes with shopping cards from Christmas. My favorite is when people use their cards to pay for part of their groceries. Merry Christmas! Here's some frozen corn from grandma.

Go buy something nice, I want to yell. Or at least something selfish. Those are gift cards, dammit! Oh well. I am not the boss of you.

Day 107

Kind of busy today, with lots of gift card spending. Gift card sales don't show up on Wal-Mart's earnings until the cards are spent, not at the time they are purchased. So weak holiday sales will probably rebound.

Meanwhile, at the customer service desk, they had a hellish day, with half of the town returning gifts. People are so thankful and grateful for what they have been given that it makes me want to weep. Ummm....that was sarcastic, just in case you didn't catch it. Sorry.

Day 104

Worked in electronics tonight, with electronics girl. SO many people coming in or calling asking about PS2's and XBox's. We sold out days ago. Every Wal-Mart in the region is out. So many lunkerheads waiting until the last minute to buy a big present for their kids. Assholes. I did make almost $10,000 though. People were buying crappy shit like mad.

Day 102

Quote of the night, courtesy of CSM Bill:

"We're like a well-oiled machine; sometimes it works perfectly; sometimes it just sucks."

Amen, brother.

Day 101

Early New Year's resolution: quit this job before you die. Or at least before you are consumed by the chaos of retail.

Day 100

Day 100! And what have we learned so far?

1. People are bastards, when having to wait in line.
2. People are bastards, when being overcharged 14 cents for cabbage.
3. People are bastards, when failing to place their shopping carts in the proper bins.
4. People will buy anything, as long as it's priced to own.
5. We will sell anything, as long as it has nothing to do with Jon Stewart or George Carlin.
6. Our produce really sucks sometimes.
7. Our cd and book selections really suck all the time.
8. Salaried management is unpopular with the "in" crowd.
9. We get paid shit.
10. I work with the most amazing people in the world.

If we did get together, we'd make one kick-ass union. Oops, I just said the U-word. I will be fired soon. It was nice knowing ya'll.

Day 99

So many cheap plastic toys and ornaments! How do we sell so many cheap plastic toys and ornaments?!?

I saw an MSNBC special on Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, and was informed that the Bratz dolls we sell for circa $15 would cost $60 if the materials and labor came form the USA. So now maybe you understand why Bentonville pushes suppliers to move production to China. Awesomely crappy Bratz doll for $14.89, or the same crappy doll made in Bryan, Ohio for $61.79?

Americans make their voices know with their wallets. We like shipping job to China because we can buy more crap that way. It makes everything cheaper, even if we lose of few (million) lousy jobs. And this isn't just Wal-Mart we're talking about. It's the retail industry in general. We're motherfuckers. Sure you lost your job, but look at all the cheap shit we've got because of your sacrifice. Don't you want to shop here?

And the sad thing is, most people say "YES!"

Day 98

The beginning of five days in a row for me. Christmas time makes me popular.

I'm real torn about saying "Merry Christmas" to customers. Most cashiers say "Happy Holidays." I don't want to offend anyone, but "Merry Christmas" makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. And because Wal-Mart is Bible-Belt centric, we can say "MC" all we want. So I won't get in trouble or anything. I just don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

But I'm still gonna say "Merry Christmas," because of that old guy at Gelzer's hardware in Hillsdale, who ran the register and used it as a greeting and a goodbye. He was real sweet, and made a stupidly-cynical teenager smile every December. And I want to be him. So Merry Christmas, and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.

And put you effing cart in the bin!

Day 97

This message popped out of my receipt printer when I logged. Straight from the home office to my very fingertips!

Gift card activations will peak now through Christmas. Gift cards will be the number one gift item for Christmas this year. You can help make Gift cards a huge success this holiday season. Here a few suggestions that will help ensure that our Gift card season will be a success: *Make sure that you have extra quantities of Gift cards at your register. *Be aggressive on suggestive selling of Gift cards: ask the customer if they would like to purchase a Gift card for the "Perfect Gift."

Ha! I laugh in the face of perfect gifts! Real weird. Especially when we're just getting by doing the bare essentials of our job: smile, lift, scan, bag, repeat. Now we're supposed to be chatty and aggressively suggest gift cards in addition to the piles of crap customers are buying. And what the ef does it mean to aggressively suggest anything? Do we use bribery, blackmail, coercive force? To what lengths will we go?

We are dangerous ruffians, pushing gift cards in the faces of our customers, raping, pillaging and burning the countryside in our wake. All for Mr. Sam. Always for Mr. Sam.

Day 94

I almost got away with a whole night at the cash register tonight. But with 45 minutes left in my shift, they sent me off to zone the Christmas section, which is the absolutely best section in the whole store to zone, so I didn't mind.

Suckers.

Day 93

Carts again. It was a windy one tonight. Carts blowing everywhere. I heard a couple hit cars, though I never actually saw one happen. There was this big mess of carts in a couple of the handicap spaces where a few, brutish customers had made their own make-shift cart-corral. It was like cart-heaven for the wind, which sent carts flying off in every which way in its demonic quest for dented auto-doors. Listen up customers, take your freaking carts to one of the fenced off corrals or else suffer the consequences. Yeah, it's cold, but I've been out here for an hour-and-a-half. What's your excuse?


Speaking of cold, a few of the greeters have been blocking off one of the two doors at each entrance with carts to keep the wind from blowing in at night. It's cold, and they're old. So I didn't think anything of it. But I found out tonight that it's against fire code (hence, the law) for them to block the exits like that. Yet some of them are still doing it. One of the greeters told me that, so I'm assuming that's something they tell all of them.

So warm fingers come before fire exits I guess. Sounds like the recipe for an awesome disaster. I can't wait.

Day 92

Pink slip number 4 came today. This one's a personal record: almost 25 bucks short. Since the Cash Office never responded to my request for an explanation of pink slip procedure, my written explanation was, "I don't know." Followed by my corrective action, "Try harder."

Maybe that will get someone's attention. It's a cry for help, motherfuckers!

Day 91

I still have a crush on CSM Annie. The electronic's girl is a distant memory. Annie, on the other hand, is unbearably cute. Like Amelie, only American and with freckles.

Day 89

My fellow cashier Mike asked me if I had read this little Rick Warren booklet we have at some the registers. I tried not to puke, but told him I hadn't. He wanted me to read the first paragraph, so I did. I though he was going to say it was awesome. Instead, he just commented, "It's just another Bible."

This isn't a religion blog by any means, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say something. How the heck do we reach the Mike's of the world? He's around 20, works a crappy job, loves video games, and is wary of anything that sounds like the Bible. He isn't looking for the Purpose Driven Life, he just loves playing video games and works so that he can buy more of them. Obviously, this isn't Rick Warren's crowd.

I tried to say something about how Warren's just trying to answer the big questions in life. Who am I? What am I doing here? What's my purpose in life? Mike's response was that he was here to play every video game in existence.

If he's happy, how can I argue with that? Until he experiences some life-shaking event, Jesus really doesn't mean a thing to him, unless he was in a video game.

Note to self: stop pontificating.

Day 86

I called in sick today, so that I could visit my friends in the city.

I am such a bastard.

Day 84

I have another Wal-Mart crush, this time on my CSM Annie. Again, not her real name. I'm thinking Annie Hall at the moment.

She is very cool, with freckles and glasses. She has wonderful facial expresses and does weird things with her hands. She likes Star Wars and cute noses. This is really all I know about her. And that she has a boyfriend.

I hate him.

Even though I've never seen him in my life.