Merry Effing Christmas

I have a love-hate relationship with Wal-Mart. I love it so much, and at the same time, I have fantasies about it burning to the ground half the time. (Call off the dogs, paranoid people....I'm not about to burn Wal-Mart down)

Last night is a prime example.

A few days ago, I had to put a few things on layaway. GREAT idea.

Another great idea, thanks to the brilliant minds at Walmart, is that all Christmas layaways have to be picked up by December 15th, regardless of when you actually put it on layaway (for example, I didn't have enough money on me the other day to get something, so I wanted to lay it away so that no one else would swipe it up. Even though I only put it on layaway on the 10th, it still had to picked up by the 15th, or it would be put back on the sales floor). Which means that there is sure to be 15 million people in the layaway department in and around December 15th.

I suppose I should give a short preamble so that those of you reading will understand my passion about this particular layaway I'll be talking about.

I don't have to explain to my friends about the "Cars" oddesey. It consumes the lives in the MacDonald household. Rory LOVES that movie, and I'm not talking regular love, I'm talking obsession love. We started buying him all the little die-cast dinkies with the characters from the movie, and it became a collection. Problem is, some of them are really hard to find, and they always go really fast. So when there is new "Cars" inventory, I have tried to buy it right away, since I know that the new "Sherrif" or "Luigi" will be gone next time I'm there. That was the case with these two layaways. One day I went it and there were 2 new ones there, and a few days later there are 8 new ones there. If they were cheap, I would have just picked them up, but the little suckers are like $5 apiece. So I had 10 "Cars" on layaway at Walmart, and they had to be picked up by the 15th. I couldn't just leave them there and re-buy them, which is why it was so important.

Aaaaanyway....I dropped on on Wednesday to pick them up. BIG mistake, since it was family allowance day. I would have had to park in Tamarac.
When I went on Thursday, it was just as busy, so I left.
So last night I had an hour or so on my hands, we were bored, and I decided to brave the lineup and get it overwith.
Well what a huge mistake.
The lineup for the layaway department was all the way over to the freezers (for those of you who don't know the layout of the Port Hawkesbury Walmart, let's just say it was insanely long, put it that way). Luckily there was a woman in front of me that I knew, so that helped pass the time. Her kids were going to and from the toy section go get things to occupy Rory (who was with me.....what a great idea THAT was.). I couldn't understand what the hold up was, but I found out when I finally got to the counter (A FULL TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER).

The layaway department only had ONE PERSON working. ONE PERSON FOR THOSE 5 MILLION PEOPLE WHO THEY SHOULD HAVE COMPLETELY EXPECTED SINCE IT WAS ONE OF THE LAST DAYS TO PICK UP CHRISTMAS LAYAWAYS. I was furious. The guy behind the counter was understandably frazzled.

Then it occured to me that, not only was the linup for layaways, but it was the "Tax Exemption" line. So basically every friggin Indian from here to Eskasoni to Chapel Island was in that same lineup buying cartloads of stuff and picking up THEIR layaways too, since the front cash registers didn't do their tax exemption. Now it's not their fault, I'm sure they all would have went to a regular cash if they could, but they couldn't.

Now don't you think, knowing that the natives get their cheques on a certain day and that they'll all be doing their x-mas shopping on that day, that Walmart would have made arrangements to do the tax examptions at the front cash to ease the congestion at the layaway department, especially knowing how busy it was going to be on December 14th?

PISS ME OFF.

Many of you are probably saying "I would have just left", but someone on staff had already told us that the lineup would be much worse today, and I HAD to get those cars for Rory. HAD to.

Just picture me. In a lineup. With a cranky Rory in my cart. With a million people around me, all with screaming kids and cartloads of x-mas crap. It's hot. It smells. There are people bumping into you with their carts and people trying to get by. For two and a half hours. Me. Of all people.
I thought I might kill someone.
But I somehow managed to control my homicidal urges, and no one got hurt.

So Walmart, listen up! Number one, let people pick up their layaway within 30 days, just like any other month. That way, you won't have a million cranky people like me arriving on your doorstep over 2 or 3 days, you'd have them spread out more.
Number two, when you ARE expecting these million people, have more than one person working in the layaway department, instead of having 5 employees gathered in electronics talking about who won the Leafs game. We know you're great at standing around and being useless, but Christmas is not the time for you to practice that.
Number three, look at the effing calendar. If I know to avoid Walmart on the 13-15 of December b/c it's family allowance day and Indian cheque day and layaway pickup day, then YOU should know that too, and prepare for it.
Number four, ring in the tax exemptions at every cash. Use your head. Not in the layaway department during one of the busiest days of the year.
Number five, go to hell. All of you. Whoever comes up with these policies should be allowed to have a job. Or a wife. Or a life. Or anything. They should be shot with a ball of their own shot and sent home to ponder how stupid they are.

Anyway, that's my daily dose of bitching and complaining. I was not impressed.