Monday, November 12, 2007

First impression of the new Mega Wal-mart in town


For what it's worth, I had cause to go to the new Wal-mart mega store yesterday. It actually freaked me out a little. I’ve never had agoraphobia before, let alone inside a building. It’s total square footage is bigger than the town of Jasper, I think.

In the electronics department, they had an 8'x8’ cube of Blu-ray titles in the aisle, but no Blu-ray or HD-DVD players on display, not even demos. I have no idea what that signifies.

The store has only been open a week, and it already looks like shit. I'm pickier than the average consumer when it comes to merchandising standards, but Wal-marts always look dingy and gross. And this one is brand new.


Despite having a dozen self-serve checkouts, only half of them were open, despite it being a total Gong Show in the store. I realized shortly after that their precariously thin staffing meant that they couldn't round up enough clerks to supervise the self-serve checkouts when they go wrong (which happens about every 30 seconds).

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

The retail axiom has always been that to get quality, selection and service you need to pay the price. It seems that Wal-Mart has chosen to prove this to be true by ensuring they offer little or no selection, a truly incredible feat in a store that large, the lowest quality possible, and almost no service. It's like a "law of nature", like gravity, you get what you pay for. Happy shopping Wal-Mart drones!

"Voting with our dollars is the most democratic activity we are involved in daily." - BJM

Anonymous said...

"it being a total Gong Show in the store"

What a wonderful metaphor.

I can see Jamie Farr, JP Morgan and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine working the aisles in their little blue vests.

Way cool.