Tossing Salt Presents:
A Day of Dougie
Misadventures at Walmart, aka Walmart SUCKS!
DougMaynard.com
Doug Maynard

Welcome to a very special edition of A Day of Dougie. Yes, just like the after-school specials in the 70s and that one episode of Different Strokes, this one is slightly out of the ordinary and for mature and adult audiences only. Aw hell, who am I trying to kid? It’s about Walmart and how they pissed me off last night. Please ignore the occasional dirty words because, believe me, I was most likely thinking much worse last night.

So blah, blah, blah… Day of Dougie, etc. Now, let’s get to it. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that we were getting low on water and also needed some cat food. No big deal, right. I decided to get on the computer and place an order at Walmart for the Curbside Pickup to get the items we needed. Notice it’s called “Curbside Pickup”. That matters. This was around 2:30 in the afternoon and my order would be ready for pickup between 6:00 and 7:00 pm. No big deal. That’s cool.

Well, around 5:30 pm, the sky fell open and it began to rain. It was fast, heavy, and coming down hard. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate driving in the rain so I took note and watched carefully, waiting for a break in the bad weather to go pick up my stuff. At 5:50 pm, I got the notification that my order was ready to be picked up. The rain was slowing down and starting to taper off so I hopped in my truck and headed to Walmart.

I arrived at 6:00 pm and pulled into my designated parking spot, messaging that I had arrived. Parking spot #4. I got the notification back to wait in my car and an associate will be there shortly. So I turned the music on with my phone and waited. I figured since it was wet, they might take a couple of extra minutes so I was content to just chill, listen to the sounds of Alice Cooper and Waylon, and wait.

And I waited. And waited. The rain hit again for about ten minutes but then slowed down again. I saw a face come to the door and a dude poked his head out, looked around, and vanished again. And I’m waiting. I had noticed a couple of the cars around me that had pulled up had gotten out of their cars, walked around to the front of the store, and came back with groceries in a cart, but I didn’t think too much of it. I regularly see people park over in the Curbside Pickup area to do their shopping so it’s not a big deal and didn’t concern me. And I waited.

I glanced at my phone and had been waiting for almost an hour at this point. This is freaking ridiculous so I got on my phone, looked up the number for the Walmart, and called the Curbside Pickup/Delivery extension on the phone. No answer. I called again. No answer. One last time. No answer. A dude walked up to the door where they come out from to bring the groceries, the same door where an associate had poked his head out earlier. He had lunch for someone and I hollered at him to ask the associate that came to the door if they were bringing out stuff or not? He asked the girl who came to the door as she took her lunch and she looked around and didn’t say anything before heading back inside.

And I’m still waiting, sitting in my truck. And my phone still says, “Don’t leave your vehicle. An associate will be there shortly!”. And I am getting more and more pissed off. I’ve had enough so to hell with this. I’ve already paid for my order so I can’t just say screw it and leave. I get out of my truck and go to walk inside.

Just to clarify for those who don’t know. I only have one leg. I wear a prosthetic on my right side, but it’s just one leg there. Nothing more. And my other foot? I had a toe removed a couple of weeks ago and it’s heavily wrapped in gauze with a Wound-Vac machine attached. So I’m supposed to stay off of it as much as possible while it heals. That’s the reason I started using the Curbside Pickup to begin with. But now, I’ve been waiting in my truck for an hour and 22 minutes. Screw being patient or nice. I want my stuff so I can leave and go home.

And I walked inside the store to the customer service area. And yes, my foot got wet due to the rain and was throbbing quite badly by the time I got inside. And there was no one at Customer Service. A few minutes later, a girl came from the back and she was indifferent at best. Not rude, but not friendly at all either. Of course, I wasn’t in the mood for friendly and I think that was pretty obvious. She called the people in the Curbside Pickup/Delivery department and a young man came out with an order for another woman who was standing there. The woman went and got a shopping cart and they loaded up the cart and she took her groceries and left. And the dude left. I’m standing there and the dude just walks away.

I can feel the anger rolling off of me and I think the woman at the Customer Service desk noticed too. She didn’t improve her behavior or try to help, but she was watching me. And a woman walked up as the guy from the back came back with a cartload of stuff. This woman had knocked and pounded on the door at the side of the store until someone answered and they told her that they’d meet her in customer service to bring her stuff to her. No curbside delivery as they’re supposed to do, but they were bringing it to her.

I stopped the guy before he could leave again and inquired about my groceries, the ones that I had been waiting for since 6:00 pm. He asked if anyone had called me. No, they haven’t. He looked at his machine and finally went to get my stuff.

Long story short, mainly because I’m getting tired of writing and need to go get ready for a doctor’s appointment in less than an hour, but I complained to the woman at Customer Service, as well as to a couple of customers, that if they weren’t to bring the groceries out to the car, they should have let someone know. It was just sorry as hell to let someone sit there waiting with nothing to let them know what was going on. And the whole having to walk inside, come to customer service, and then continue to wait for my stuff to be chunked into a shopping cart without so much as a “Sorry about the wait!”, or bit of empathy for someone who has difficulty walking, but had to make the walk into the store, wait around, and then push a cart full of groceries out of the store, load them into the vehicle, all while in absolute pain and hooked up to a machine, all because the Walmart associates didn’t want to get their hair wet.

I’m just pissed. Hell, that was last night and I’m still pissed. Suffice it to say, hell will freeze over and Joe Biden will tell the truth before I ever step foot into that Walmart again. Yeah, I am that pissed. Food Lion does the Curbside Pickup and I like them better anyhow. My prescriptions go to Walmart Pharmacy, but I’ll be on the phone later today and change that as well. The only thing left is my banking since I use Woodforest, the Walmart bank, but I deal with them 99.995% of the time online and I won’t change that… yet. But everything else? Walmart just lost a customer and even though I know they don’t care, just a simple notification on my App or an associate coming to the truck, as they were supposed to, and saying that I needed to go to Customer Service to get my stuff would have been okay. Instead, I waited patiently, got ignored, and enough was enough.

And there you go. My misadventures from Walmart last night. Screw them. They can kiss my ass from now on. I’m through. And with that, I need to close this up. Take care and thanks for reading. Comments, thoughts, and any questions are always welcome and appreciated. And now, I need to get my butt in gear for the doctor’s appointment in 41 minutes. Be good and I’ll see you on the flip side.

Ubuntu!