Welcome to Walmart 2: Zombification

For the first few weeks (or two years), the main problem I dealt with was Walmart’s customer base. “Extremely aggressive” is the only way I could describe them when they called me an “Asshole” and a “Lazy Fuck” on the first day; well, they were like that every day…all day! They broke us down from the moment we clocked in to the moment we clocked out. In the first hour of work, we’re okay. By the second hour, we become what most of the world see’s us as: Zombies!

The store I worked at was a 24-hour Super-Center and whenever I had an early morning shift, I’d come in at 7am. Even at that time, tons of people were grocery shopping! Most of my coworkers there were the hardest working people I ever met, but by the end of the first hour, we’d be destroyed and have no energy for the rest of the day. On top of having to ring up countless people, there was this crazy ratio of jerks to scumbags. For example out of a line of 30 people, 25 of them would be assholes and out of that 25, 15 of them would be scum. Meaning, 15 people would mess with you for no other reason then that they could! Whatever problems they had going on in their lives, they would take it out on you because they knew you couldn’t do anything about it.

Now, I know what you’re asking “Well why didn’t you just talk back?” Well, I knew four guys who talked back and they all wound up on the street. You might also be asking “Why didn’t you just quit?” Port St. Lucie back then was much less developed then it is now. During the entirety of my employment at Walmart, I was applying for countless other jobs and I didn’t even get a call back!

However, there were some benefits to working at Walmart. I’m not talking about the 10% discount they give to all employees (after two months of working there)! I will say working at “The Bronx” (my new name for Walmart), cured whatever prejudices I had. There was no demographic of customers that was the worst; there were nasty old people, white people, kids, black people, fat people, Hispanics and even nasty disabled people! Assholes are a race in and of themselves, and it’s the largest racial demographic in the world!

My first unique customer experience working at The Bronx was on my fourth day. I was ringing up a woman with seven kids and two full carts of items. The woman appeared to be in her mid-30s and she had four girls and two boys with her, all between the ages of 8 and 11. I was ringing up her stuff as fast as I could because I was still determined to do my best at that time. The kids seemed very excited about something! When I was almost done scanning the first cart of stuff, I rang up a childrens movie which cost about $13.00. As soon as the woman saw this she yelled “I thought that was supposed to be $5.00!” I told the woman I’d have to do a price check to confirm it. She responded “Take it out.” As soon as I took the movie off of the transaction, all of her kids started crying and screaming at the top of their lungs in unison. It was so loud, it put a Dragon Force concert to shame! In a desperate attempt to finish the transaction and get these kids out of the store, I got into an adrenaline rush and started ringing up items faster than Goku throws punches!

However, this surge of energy was for naught, because the other cart was full of clothing. At Walmart, clothing tags are never in the same spot twice. Even if the Flash was ringing up these clothes, he’d be slow. The crying seemed to get louder and louder with each passing minute and all the cashiers in the store were staring in disbelief at what they were witnessing. The rest of the transaction took 15 minutes to complete and the kids were crying all the way out of the store. I remember staggering away from the register when I finished my shift, in shock after being insulted all day and dealing with an orchestra of crying babies.

I never got used to these drastic incidences, but I did learn a calming technique to deal with these problems. I call it “Walmart Mode!” Imagine someone is insulting you and cursing you out as loud as they can, but you have a remote that allows you to put them on mute. Even though the person is still ranting and raving, you can only see their gestures and not hear them. That’s what I’d do every day, except my mind was the remote and I’d just pretend these people were muted. However, even this Jedi technique couldn’t save me from the other terrors I encountered in The Bronx!

Image by Charles Thompson from Pixabay