“I’m really starting to like this place.” My Mother says, as another woman breaks my heart.
We walk in to the giant store’s giant exit. A old woman with a smock throws us a welcoming, if defeated, smile. Right in the front is a giant pyramid of Pasta Sauce with a large cardboard sign declaring it’s magnificent price to the world: 3 for $2!!!!
“See,” she says, “that’s half what we pay at the other place (her usual tiny grocer)”
“Right, but that’s because the people who stacked that pyramid don’t get health-care. Or visas.” I reply, almost needing to say it.
Funny thing is, I don’t really care about health care. I don’t have health care. As a freelancer, I’ve always had to pay for my own health care. I wish I could sympathize with this the way a good East-Coast liberal should, but I just don’t. We keep moving and I’m still wondering why I said it.
It is inarguable that Wal-Mart is cheaper, faster, and more efficient than any other store in America, in the world perhaps.A s someone who has little concept of money–when I have it, I spend like a Republican; when I don’t, I starve like a monk–I have to admit that even I am shocked by the prices I see when wandering this megalopolis. Stereos are the price of Walkmans, entire bed-sets are the price of pillows, and I’ve paid more for some pairs of sock than the clothes there cost.
But the items aren’t the only thing inside that are cheap. So is that atmosphere. It’s a beautiful Sunday and people have brought their whole families inside what is, essentially, a thinly veiled warehouse of lower-priced shit. This morning, for hundreds of people, this giant box has become their park, their baseball game, and I dare say–their church; a way to connect with their disconnected children and inexplicably distant spouses.
Wal-Mart and, to be fair, many, many, many other such places have adopted the technique of Casinos: Don’t make it a part of your customers day, make it the day. People take a break from shopping to eat in the store’s self-contained fast food restaurant, topping it off with desert from the store’s own ice-cream vendor. You can play with your children at the coin-operated indoor rides or leave them with the day-care center in the back–free, of course–while you shop without the annoying sounds of their wants and needs. Aisle signs made to look like mock street-signs point you in this direction and that, not asking what you need, but telling you, informing you, helping you in your confusion at this world of goods and choices.
Wal-Mart is increasingly becoming as American as apple pie or, better yet, America is becoming as Wal-Mart as cheap tube socks: Big, efficient, mass-produced, and soulless. Everything looks real, is painted with the essence of realness, but, on further inspection, is not really real.
But I guess we’re all really starting to like that place.
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
You should have told me that you were in town, I would’ve bought you a hot dog and gone halfsees on a hunting rifle!
Funny, I saw my first Wal-Mart when I was younger on a drive through the South. Within an hour, I’d seen my second, third, and fourth Wal-Mart too. At the time, there were only a few in the North and they were far away, but lately they’re becoming just a prominent here as there.