I have written a before of my distaste of the rude Wal-Mart shoppers at the Wal-Mart stores in Tyler. Now I am talking from a whole different view.
The other day I went to Wal-Mart in Lindale by myself, which is very odd because I usually am balancing two screaming children and trying to get groceries at the same time. I decided to do the most annoying thing that Wal-Mart shoppers do, I stood in the middle of the aisle and looked on my phone. I tried out different places in the store to see if I got different reactions. Since this mission was during the extremely busy holiday season, I stood between the canned yams and the canned French-cut green beans. I pulled out my phone and leaned over the cart. Soon enough a little old lady stood staring at the canned goods. She tried not to look at me and just stood there waiting for almost a minute, not saying anything to me. She tried to act like she could not decide what sweet potatoes to use to put in her candy yams. I began to feel bad, so I moved on.
My next stop was the diaper aisle. My victims were the young moms. Being placed in this category, myself, I embraced for the worse. As I stood there blocking the infant diapers, half looking at the products and half looking at my phone. As I expected it wasn’t long before a young mom walked up to me with a small child sitting in the back of the cart surrounded by groceries. She had no patience a quickly snapped at me with “um, excuse me”. This was about the reaction I would give, and have given.
Wanting to get each variety of each Wal-Mart shopper, I headed to the electronic section. I stood in front of the new release DVDs and Blu-ray discs. I had to wait a while before someone actually came and looked at the movies. My cart was blocking most of the movies on the self. As a middle aged man walked up her just asked if this was my cart, I nodded “yes” and he slowly moved it out of his way to reach for what he wanted. I felt like this reaction was appropriate, I wasn’t moving and I wasn’t moving or touching my cart.
My last stop of this experiment was the toy section. This was the section I looked the most forward, because of the crowded and insane holiday shopping. I stood in the middle of the “pink aisle” in front of the beloved holiday Barbie, and the Disney princesses. This time I did the most famous of shopping moves, I talked way too loud on the phone that everyone could hear my conversation. No one said anything to me, even though I am obviously in their way. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was on the phone and people didn’t want to interrupt my obnoxious conversation, or if it was that they were in to much of a hurry. People reached around me, I was getting hit in the back with a purse, and my car was being pushed around, and people were reaching over my cart or reaching under it. So it was as if people were being rude, pushing my cart out of the way, while trying not to be rude and interrupt my phone call.
My last act of rudeness to blend into the mold of the typical shopper, was talking on my phone and walk extremely slow down the middle of the store. People sighed in frustration loud enough for me to hear and people quickly speed-walked right past me, shooting me a bad look over their shoulder. The world of the rude shopper is very intense. The Wal-Mart shopper must be fearless, and heartless, and most importantly, oblivious to the people around you.
Through my experience of rude shopping, I realize how hard the art of rudeness is. I also realize how often rudeness is repaid with rudeness.