I have the best job in the world right now working for myself from home. But even the best job in the world has its drawbacks. The one big drawback of buying cheap junk and selling it for more on Amazon is you have to shop at places that sell cheap junk. And no place in America is better at selling cheap junk than Wal-Mart.

Because of this, I spend five hours at four different Wal-Marts every Wednesday. This is about four hours and 55 minutes longer than anyone should ever have to spend in Wal-Mart. Every week, I see, hear and smell things that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Before I quit my full-time job, I’d make Wal-Mart runs with Deserae all the time. I enjoyed having someone who could point and laugh at all the crazy with me. Now that it’s just me, I have to keep my comments to myself when a lunatic wearing a cape cuts in front of me.

Last week, the thought occurred to me that maybe I could make things a little more bearable by recording the crazy at Wal-Mart and sharing it here with you. So I present to you the first edition of Things I Saw at Wal-Mart. Don’t worry, there will be plenty more. When you spend the day at a dump, you see a lot of garbage.

Steelyard Wal-Mart

The Steelyard Wal-Mart is the worst Wal-Mart in America. That is not an exaggeration or a personal opinion. It’s a recent headline from Cleveland Scene magazine.

Of my 10 worst Wal-Mart experiences, eight have been at the Steelyard Wal-Mart. And I think I’ve only been there like six times. Just in the last few weeks at the Steelyard Wal-Mart I have:

• Been offered a stolen iPhone
  While walking out the door, I passed a suspicious youth whacking one of those machines that give you money for recycling your phone. “Come on!” he yelled. Then he saw me. “Hey! Wanna buy an iPhone for $40?”“NO THANK YOU!” I said and scooted away as fast I could.

• Encountered a super intimidating grandma
  “Hey!” the little white grandma standing next to me shouted at the large black man pushing a cart with a kiddie pool.The large black man did not turn around. She ran after him.“HEY!!”He turned around.“That’s my pool!”They locked eyes. He contemplated his options for a second before saying, “Oh.”She snatched the cart away from him.

  “Get your own.”

  The big black guy and I both scooted away as fast we could.

• Survived a noxious cloud of B.O.
  I think the nicest aisle in the Steelyard Wal-Mart is the deodorant aisle. This is probably because the deodorant aisle doesn’t see a lot of action. A few weeks ago, Cleveland had an especially hot Wednesday, and I almost didn’t make it out of the Steelyard Wal-Mart.

As bad as the Steelyard Wal-Mart is during the day, it’s 10 times worse at night. If you enter the Steelyard Wal-Mart at night, just know that you’re basically walking into Arkham Asylum. You can expect a 200-person death march to the only open cash register, packs of screaming, feral children roaming the store and the Joker leading a band of criminals through the automotive department burning tires.

Eagleton Wal-Mart

The Steelyard Wal-Mart is to the Strongsville Wal-Mart as Pawnee is to Eagleton. I always plan my route so I can hit Strongsville last and truly enjoy all of its splendor. After spending an hour at Steelyard, walking into the Strongsville Wal-Mart feels like stepping into Saks Fifth Avenue.

Because each Wal-Mart only installs as many self-checkout lines as it thinks its customers can handle without stealing half the store, you can quickly tell how nice a Wal-Mart and its clientele will be by counting the self checkout lines when you walk inside. The Steelyard Wal-Mart, of course, has zero self-checkout lines. The Brooklyn store has four. The Strongsville Wal-Mart? Strongsville has 10. Ten! It is paradise.*

*Please note that the Strongsville Wal-Mart is still Wal-Mart and therefore a dump. Everything is relative.

He Chose…Poorly

My life every time I try to pick the shortest checkout line:

Two weeks ago, I stood in line for ten minutes while the cashier beep…beep…[yawns, scratches self]…beeped her way through a never-ending conveyer belt. Then, four lanes down – “Register two is now open! No wait on register two!”

I ran to register two. Unfortunately, a woman with a half-empty cart beat me. No problem! But then she pulled out four Wal-Mart gift cards from her pocket. “Can you see how much is left on these?” Then she pulled out twelve more from her purse. Then she found another two in her pocket. Then she argued about the amount on Every. Single. Card.

I waited for ten minutes before switching back to my original lane that was now almost empty. Everyone I’d stood behind before had made it through. The only person between me and the cashier now was a woman buying two dozen jars of baby food with 14 food stamps.

The Rusty Musket

I wouldn’t be so upset with Wal-Mart cashiers for going slow if I’d never been to Aldi. Have you ever been to Aldi? I could spend an afternoon at Aldi just watching the cashier check people out. An Aldi cashier can process $700 of groceries in 45 seconds. When Aldi cashiers check people out, their scanner sounds like a laser beam machine gun. Bee-bee-bee-bee-beebebebebebebebe!

If the Aldi scanner is a machine gun, the Wal-Mart scanner is a rusty musket.

Boop.

Boop.

Boop.

“Excuse me, I know I have a lot of Downys. I think you might be able to scan the first one and enter a quantity of 22. I counted them.”

Silence.

Boop.

Boop.

Boop.

The other day, my (especially slow) cashier saw people running to an open register. She shook her head. “I don’t know why everyone’s in such a hurry,” she said.

Boop.

Boop.

Boop.

“If they’re impatient now, they’re going to be in real trouble soon.”

Boop.

Boop.

Boop.

“Christmas is coming.”

Who’s Your Friend Who Likes to Play?

A few weeks ago, I did that awkward thing where you try to pass someone who’s walking down an aisle too slow, but then you end up barely squeezing past them because you overestimated how much room you had. Then you have to basically run the rest of the aisle to justify the great lengths you took to get around them. I feel like this might not be as common for other people as it is for me.

Anyways, I’d executed this maneuver around a lady and made it all the way to the end of the aisle before noticing Bing Bong. Wal-Mart, if you were not aware, sells a Bing Bong toy from the movie Inside Out that sings a happy song. After spending five hours in Wal-Mart, I need a happy song. So every time I pass the toy, I press Bing Bong’s bowtie and make him sing the song. I make no apology for this.

Well I saw the toy and forgot about everything else. I had to press the bowtie. Unfortunately, Bing Bong was out of batteries. I tried two more Bing Bongs behind him before getting the song. In the middle of the song, while I was smiling and staring at a singing plastic toy, the slow lady from the beginning of the aisle caught up to me. I turned. We made eye contact. She smiled at me like you’d smile at someone stuck at the mental age where they’d sprint down an aisle to play with a toy.

I did not apologize.

LIFE LESSON #88

Crazy people: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.