Walmart - The Original Evil Empire

Since my mom worked for Kmart for the first 16 years of my life, I was raised with a healthy dose of disdain for Walmart. Now that she no longer works for Kmart (and since I was until recently just a poor college student), I have lowered my standards and accepted the Evil Empire into my life. Shopping at Walmart - or as I call it, exploiting the American worker - is never a joy, but in California, it is downright awful.

Perhaps it's the sheer volume of population in this state, or maybe it's a symptom of the current economic conditions, but the Mountain View Walmart is always a total mob scene. Just finding a parking space is a nightmare, as the sub-par intelligence level of the typical Walmart shopper leads them to park themselves in the middle of an aisle waiting for someone to load their 12 bags and 5 kids into their car, which inevitably takes 20 minutes.

Things don't improve once you finally make it into the store. There are so many people you can barely move, bumping into carts, sniveling children and other shoppers at every turn. To top it all off, the store is out of half the products you are looking for, leading you to resort to more expensive substitutes, which defeats the whole purpose of suffering through Walmart in the first place!

Today's shopping trip was the last straw. I've decided that now that I am a working woman, it's time for me to upgrade my shopping standards. From now on I'll be doing all my shopping at Target, which here in Mountain View is conveniently located just across the street from the Evil Empire :)