Yesterday, the 4th of July, I got up early to make a trip to Wallymart. First I stopped at the Big K station to gas up the car. You have to pay before pumping, but the folks who work there know me, so I'm allowed to fill up then drive up to the front door and give them a check.

I'm about to get out of the car when a black dude clutching a case of beer comes out the door. It was 8:30 in the morning and he was drunk as a skunk. He leans into the car window and says something like "Ju'von mumble mumble" and points to my gas tank. I say I didn't understand you. He repeats this slurred sentence two more times and I'm about to puke from his beer breath. A little guy standing next to him says "His name be Ju'von and he say he pump you gas for you if you give him a tip." It's already pumped I say, and Ju'von staggers away followed by his interpreter. Jeeze!

Then I get to Lucedale and go thru the McDonald's drive thru and tell the disembodied voice I have a coupon to try the new McDonald's oatmeal with fruit. I pull up to the window and the cashier looks at the coupon and frowns and says "This expired in March." Oh, okay. So I pull out another coupon and give it to her. She frowns again and says "This one expired in May." I was feeling like a worm by then, but handed her a coupon for the new McDonald's slushy fruit drink. The cashier really frowns then and says "This expired in June." I was so embarrassed. I swear I had looked at those coupons and didn't see any expiration dates. I should've went right back home at this point, but no, went on to Wallymart.

The store was crowded and busy, but like a lot of misguided managers, there was a skeleton crew working, thinking folks will be at home and not out shopping. Wrong wrong. There was one cashier at the express lane, one at the tobacco kiosk, and one cashier for everybody else. I got in line and nobody was behind me. I put my items on the belt and asked the cashier to get a stockboy to bring me three cases of the 35 count Great Value bottled water (I'm stocking up for hurricane season) and I would have maybe gotten it for myself, but the display was stacked as high as an elephant's eye and I couldn't reach it.

She calls over a black guy I'll call Pancho because he was wearing a sombrero, and tells him to fetch the water. By this time, people were lining up behind me. I apologize to the people behind me for the delay. Pancho ambles back with the water and the cashier rings it up and takes my check, then says "One of these bottles has a hole in it and water has leaked through the packaging." She summons Pancho to get another case. A little boy sitting in his mother's shopping cart yelled at me "Get out of here!"

Oh god--I had become one of those hated people in the checkout line--the one who is fumbling and bumbling and making everybody wait.
It seems Pancho must have taken that defective case of water all the way back to Bentonville Arkansas--but that wasn't the only thing. The cashier had rung me up, but when the sales slip started to print, her machine stopped ans sputtered and she had to call her supervisor. The cashier couldn't clear me till she got the register fixed. That always happens to me--the cash register always causes problems when I'm checking out.

It'll be a while before I go back to Wallymart--they probably have my photo on a poster in the lobby with a warning "BEWARE." I've had enough embarrassment to last me a while.

susil