In spite of the insanely bad experiences I had at Walmart, it exposed me to some of the best people I ever worked with. The worker base at Walmart was extremely diverse; we had latinos, caucasians, LGBT people, and Haitians. However, the most memorable co-workers were Jennifer (Partner In Crime), Mark and Bob (Guardians of Electronics), Jack (The William Wallace of Managers), Maximus (Womanizer and MMA fighter), and Rochelle (Cleaner of Ungodly waste).
As I stated previously, I met Jennifer on my first day at Walmart. We went though training and experienced The Hoards of Darkness (the customers) together and our shared love of comic books and all things science fiction created a near unbreakable bond of friendship at the time. Every time I saw her and her adorable son Doc (he looked like a little doctor) I knew the day was going to be a little bit better. I remember on the days when customer sadism was too much to take, she’d always cheer me up with some pop culture jokes. Examples included the possibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Batman and what it would be like to hear him say in his Austrian accent “Put that cookie down Robin! It’s a trap set by the Joker!” Or what it would be like to roll your windows down in heavy traffic and blast Ludacris’s song “Get out the way.” Everyone at the store loved her 8 year old son Doc. He had a very calm and studious appearance about him, like you could picture him figuring out the cure for cancer in his tiny head. The bond of friendship between Jennifer and myself continued long after she became a manager (almost a year later) when the store work force started hating her. I gladly took the insult of “kiss-ass” to remain friends with her. She was the only co-worker who I hung out with outside of work. As as far as how she’s doing now, last time I heard from her she was the Assistant Manager of another Walmart and was doing just fine!
Whenever I walked into electronics during the first year, I’d hear a guy in the commercial for Invizie Animals screaming “Noooooo Timmy!” That was my favorite sound in the store because it meant that I’d just reached the safe haven of electronics, the territory of the hilarious Mark and Bob. Mark was one of the tallest guys I’ve ever seen in my life and he was a huge video game/superhero fan. We’d always debate about which games were good and how much crazier the customers could get. The both of us loved the challenge of these debates. Bob was a red-headed comedic genius. He made me feel at home on my first day after he started playing the song ‘I Just Had Sex” by Lonely Island on his phone. He started rapping alongside the song and I joined in. We then proceeded to get louder and louder with our horrible rapping, as several co-workers walked in and called us lunatics and stupid! This was one of my favorite memories working at Walmart. However, Mark and Bob hated each other because they disliked their respective working styles. Sometimes I heard them yelling at each other, shouting names like “Lazy Motherfucker” and “Asshole,” even though I never knew how two people with so much in common could have so much disdain for each other. To this day, I miss working with them both.
After meeting the electronics duo, I met the battle-hardened Jack, the only manager who listened to us and knew how to combat The Hoards of Darkness. I think he and Jennifer were the co-workers I talked to the most. He was also the only manager that was professional enough not to avoid the question “Why are we so understaffed?” If you’re wondering why we’d ask that, the fact that only 3 out of 30 registers were ever open would frustrate us with the extra work it brought. His answer was that all stores had a very strict hiring limit and with the amount of cashiers scheduled to work, we could only have two or three registers open at a time. In fact, he revealed to Jennifer and I that the former store manager got fired for hiring us, since customer complaints led him to violate the store hiring limit.
Back to Jack, I saw him successfully talk down extreme couponers, scammers, and customers ready to attack. I remember hearing a story that he successfully talked down a customer who threw a 2 liter coke bottle at a cashier. Whenever a cashier was sick or not feeling well, he was the only manager that was kind enough to either send them to their lunch early or send them to the liquor store portion of the building (Paradise). I’ll get more into that another time.
Maximus was a co-worker that if he had an action movie tag line it would read “He’s got the looks! He get’s the women and sort of… beats the bad guys!” I refer to him as Maximus because in hindsight he reminds me of the Maximus Decimus Meridius character in Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator. He was a 5’10 extremely built caucasian guy who worked with us part time and jumped into the MMA ring after work. I have fond memories of him, but the rest of the male employees didn’t, due to the fact that he’d get with all the female cashiers. He was a closeted nerd. We’d talk about Star Wars and lots of sci-fi related stuff, but the moment a woman who appealed to his taste walked in the sci-fi stuff would drop immediately. Most customers didn’t get pissed off at him that often, and I believe it was because they could tell that he was an experienced fighter. However, if I ever got into any customer trouble he’d always back me up. The last I heard from him, he moved to Orlando and was debating on Facebook how Star Wars: The Last Jedi was the best Star Wars film ever made. He finally had the courage to come out with his geekdom!
Lastly, we have Rochelle, one of the nicest women ever with the meanest face you could imagine. Everyone in the store thought she didn’t like anyone and was always angry due to her expression. Unfortunately, I was guilty of believing this too. I thought it was because she was a janitor and had to clean some of the most disgusting places on earth (The Restrooms), making her hate her job. She did hate her job, but once I talked to her she quickly put those other inaccurate beliefs to bed. She was a very intelligent and nice woman who’d always ask if the customers were too much and insisted that the customers only took advantage of me because they could tell I was a good person. However, she actively told me to stay nice or they’d win in the end. We never got to talk that often, but like the Heimdal character in the Thor films, she was always watching in the back.
I never forgot how unique and nice the majority of my co-workers were at Walmart. I never really heard from most of them again, but I hope from the bottom of my heart that they are all doing well. However, aside from Jennifer, the brother in arms that had the biggest effect on my life from was Walker, the liquor store cashier. Stay tuned for the next blog where I talk about my experiences in Walmart’s liquor store and my friendship with one of the best people I ever met.
Ricardo Lugo 