The smell that conqured Wal-Mart

Well, apparently the bait cooler went down Thursday afternoon. No one noticed until Sunday, when they opened it up. The smell was enough to knock birds from the sky.

All the worms, frozen shrimp and whatnot all had gone bad. No one noticed. Thousands of dollars gone in four days.

They had to open up the entirety of receiving and all the doors on the General Merchandise and Grocery sides and try to get the smell out. It didn't work.

All the girls that worked in the clothing section were complaining because of the smell. Oddly enough, the customers didn't really care. I didn't get one complaint, perhaps because they didn't really stay in one spot too long - they shopped and then stood in line!

They had to send all the associates who worked in that side of the store somewhere else. The girl who works at the fabric table came into the break room as green as grass with her hand over her mouth gagging. I thought she was going to hurl right on the table. One of the assistant managers had to walk her to the front and get her some air. I think she wound up going home early.

I saw the Sporting Goods manager and three Assistant managers trying to figure out what to do. I think they finally got a bunch of male associates together and drug it out back and dumped it out. Still, it stank to high heavens up in there.

And to make the smell worse, some fool man returned a gas mower up to the service desk. He pretty much just dumped the gas out in the parking lot, then rolled it right in. I though the fumes were going to kill me. I told him "Look, could you please just roll it outside the Service Desk area? The gas fumes are going to hurt my customers. He gave me a real dirty look, but he did it."