Guest Post: There is no 'back' - only the back of my hand

Another guest post here - and another one from the wilds of Canada. Original material from "Hello Me Ducky" - with editing and rewrites by Behind the Counter.

People. Please. The only "back" in a Wal-Mart is the back of my hand as I slap you across your face when you ask that I "go to the back" and find you something that isn't on the shelf. Comprendez vous?

One more time. Let's go over this. THIS IS NOT A SHOE STORE. WE DO NOT HAVE A MAGICAL DUPLICATING MACHINE IN THE BACK. IF IT DO NOT BE ON THE SHELF, IT DO NOT BE IN THE STORE.

Let's take it from the top. I work in Howler Monkey central, Department 26, otherwise known as Infants. I put things on the shelf. I can help you, but only if you're not to stupid to breathe. Of course, you’re shopping at the House of Wal …

Pop quiz:

There are six pallets of freight out on the floor. All of it needs to go on the shelves by the end of my shelf. Do you:
a) edge around the boxes to do your shopping?
b) dip your head into my aisle, see that I'm busy and move on?
c) start opening boxes and pawing through them looking for a pair of socks for your godforsaken baby that looks like a prune cross-bred with a shar-pei and then laid in the sun for thirty-eight years
d) ask me "Is there any more in the back?"

If I dealt with you last Saturday, you perpetrated BOTH options C & D.

Ma'am, go die in a fire.

If all this stuff is lying in piles around me, what makes you think there is yet MORE in the back?

Please. Do I come to your house and rifle through your drawers looking for a knife to stab you with? Even though the very thought of such murderous violence pleases me mightily!

Do you really know what’s “in the back” of a Wal-Mart? Not much actually.

On the GM (General Merchandise) side, there’s rows and rows of huge shelves about fifteen feet high with four levels each. Each department has so many rows – based on how big the department is.

Theoretically, all the “overstock” – more of the same from the floor – goes into this area. It is supposed to be labeled by the date it was received off the truck and type of merchandise it is. In reality, it is a huge jumbled junk drawer of out-of-season merchandise that a team of trained managers couldn’t wade through with a shovel and a pricing gun. Most stock comes straight off the trucks and onto the sales floor.

On the grocery side, there's a little bit of cold storage for fresh fruit & vegetables and a freezer. The trucks for the grocery side come every day.

Cheetah Cheeto Momma and the computer that wouldn't turn on

We're changing things up today. The raw material for today's story of unacceptable customer stupidity, fashion tragedies, howler monkey mayhem and Wal-Martian managerial prowess comes from a reader and fellow Wal-Mart associate - Blue-Vested Canary - who sends dispatches from the frozen northlands of Canada. Many thanks.

As originally told to bbcamerican by Blue-Vested Canary. All flights of fancy, literary inventions and mistakes herein and forthwith are mine.
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My job thrills me. Seriously. Like how taking plunging your hand into a vat of boiling oil is “thrilling.” Me? I’d rather shove bamboo skewers laced with the toxins of a thousand blowfish under my fingernails than deal with the morons that waddle through the doors of the Wal-Mart.

My jobs today included running a regular register, trying to stop the rampant theft at the self-checkouts and covering breaks at the Service Desk – which is where all the fun began.

L’il Miss Fashion Tragedy Wal-Mart Barbie rolls up wearing a giraffe-print shirt paired with a cheetah print blazer. That’s too much print for a newspaper. Let alone the African savannah! Whole herds of bushmen would run in horror.

She’s got the Wal-Mart howler monkey special shopping cart – built with two child seats behind the buggy – and her version comes complete with two clinging howler monkeys. Now available at walmart.com and Wal-Mart stores nationwide!

Cheetah Cheeto Momma has a computer she wants to return, allegedly because it won’t turn on. Probably because your bratty monsters spilled a cup of juice, some cereal and a gallon of aquarium water on it.

She clunks the computer up on the desk and I ask for a receipt.

Cheetah Cheeto Momma looks right at me and bluntly says “I ain’t got none of my receipts for here.”

I look back, trying mightily not to make a comment on her furry fashion faux pas, and inform her that we’re not taking the computer back without a receipt.

She growls with a scream worthy of any predator. Maybe that’s how she landed a babydaddy? There’s a grunting vocalization of some sort and then “What kind of f****** place don’t take returns?” My guess? Any place you steal shop at on a regular basis.

Anywho. I ask if maybe she’s got the receipt at home or in the car or secreted in a hidden pocket on her handbag. (Thank God the handbag wasn’t in a zebra print or twenty-seven outraged Luo tribesmen would have jumped out and speared her to death right then and there.)


She said she'd go check. And she left.

WITHOUT HER FREAKING HOWLER MONKEYS.

This insane Cheetah Cheeto Momma just walked away from Customer Service for four minutes (which felt like forever) and left her children running around inside the House of Wal.

I should have called the police.

When she gets back, she’s waving a piece of paper that – MY STARS – resembles a receipt.

Turns out the receipts is from last December. Eleven months ago. This woman’s computer pre-dates the Britney Spears meltdown, resurrection and post-resurrection VMA meltdown.

I calmly explain (while trying not to be distracted by the cheetah spots) that Wal-Mart will not be taking the computer back. It was after the 15-day return period (well after) and the manufacturer would be able to assist her on repairing her machine.

That, of course, was unacceptable to Cheetah Cheeto Momma. She wants a manager (and some fashion sense).

Management orders me to take it back. Before I do, I open the box, inspect the computer and decide to plug it in – because she said it wouldn’t even turn on.

Whir lights powers on Lord love a duck, it powered on. Windows XP opened up and right there, on her desktop, staring back at me with their grubby little faces, were her two little demon spawn.

The terror in her eyes was magnificent.

I packed it back up and sent her on her way.

Thank you for our attempted scamming at the House of Wal. K thx bai.