Frenzy at the Wally World

About once a month, Brianna and I head out for a little Wal-mart adventure where I do my "big" grocery shopping trip. I don't particularly care for Wal-mart, so I do my major shopping there, then do weekly supplemental trips at our local grocery store.

I pretty much consider our monthly Wal-mart trip a necessary evil, and have been putting it off all week. However, we were rapidly running out of everything, so today we got up - and armed with my mile long shopping list - headed to Wally World.

As we arrived, the skies were overcast and there was a bit of rolling thunder in the distance. I was hoping to get in and out before the rain hit.

We had been in the store for almost an hour, making our way through the grocery section, when the lights flickered a bit. A few seconds later, the lights went off for about 10 seconds, but came back on quickly. I didn't think much of this and just continued shopping. Brianna said "Whoa!" and pointed at the lights saying, "yites? yites? (lights)"

In hindsight, we should have made a run for it, but I guess I was feeling adventurous :-)

So, after a couple more minutes pass, the lights go out . . . for good. It's pretty amusing to think back on the sequence of events that took place after the store went semi-dark (there are skylights throughout the whole place). First, people went really quiet and were whispering . . . kind of like in elementary school when the teachers would turn off the lights in the lunchroom to signal quiet time. Then, everyone started making phone calls, including the employees who stopped working the minute the power went out. THEN, people started to get worked up. I noticed several people leaving full carts and fleeing toward the door. It actually made me laugh.

UNTIL . . .

. . . a Wal-mart employee came over the loud speaker and said, "Attention all Wal-mart customers: Due to the power outage, all patrons need to make their way to the front registers and check out immediately." The power had been out for about 10 minutes at this point.

Why, why, why would they think that announcing that over the loud speaker was a good idea??? There were employees walking around telling people that same information, CALMLY, so people were slowly making their way toward the front. When the announcement came on, PEOPLE WENT NUTS!!! They were racing, yes, literally RUNNING with their full carts to the front of the store, ramming the carts into each other, SCREAMING, and acting CRAZY in general. One lady got in such a hurry that she literally RAN OVER her son (who was about 3ish years old) with her cart! He had wheel marks from the cart on his calves!

At this point, I will honestly say that I became a little frightened. People were being SO CRAZY that I was scared of what they might do. So, we get in line to get checked out, and even the cashier was being nuts. She was so distracted watching the frenzy of people fighting to get out of the store (the doors had to be propped open since they are automatic, so people were yelling that they were stuck in the store, etc . . . even though that couldn't be farther from the truth!), that she kept scanning the same items over and over, and she kept leaving the register. At one point, she insisted that she smelled fried chicken, and LEFT THE REGISTER TO GO FIND IT! ARGH. I just wanted to get my stuff paid for and GET OUT OF THERE.

We finally get all checked out and make our way to the parking lot. And guess what? It was just as bad as the store! It was really storming by this point, and people were running and yelling and driving all crazy (worse than normal :-). I mean, seriously? Talk about RIDICULOUS!!!

I'm not one to camp out in Wal-mart anyway, but I have NEVER been so glad to get out of the that store as I was today! Poor Brianna had no idea what to think of all the commotion. She just kept saying, "uh-oh" and "oh-no!" and "look!" (especially when the lady ran over her kid and he screamed for the entire rest of the time they were checking out).

Brianna has a book that says, "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." NO KIDDING!