I’ve never jumped on the “Wal Mart Sucks” bandwagon but I’ve never been a Wally World devotee either. I can take it or leave it although I did shop there more often after Target made it onto my shit list. (They still owe me $20 damnit!)

But Wal Mart and I just haven’t been getting along lately.

It started earlier this year when I took my car in to replace a flat tire. Being the macho woman that I am, I managed to get the spare tire on and get my car up there and drop it off. As always, it took forever which I expected because, ya know…it’s Wal Mart. So that wasn’t so bad. What pissed me off was the fact that the technicians or whatever they’re called didn’t even bother to put the spare back in its little space underneath the carpet and plywood in the trunk. Oh no, they just THREW it in there and knocked over a gas can in the process. A gas can that still had a little bit of gas left in it. Not much but just enough to make my entire car reek of gasoline every time I got in it. Did I mention it was summer? Oh yeah. Try driving around in a car that smells like gas after it’s been sitting parked outside with the windows up. I had a headache for a week straight. Three calls to Tire & Lube Express resulted in three promises to have a manager call me back. Not actual calls….just promises. I hate to say it but I gave up. Partly because I have very low expectations when it comes to Wal Mart and partly because, after a couple of months, the smell went away and it was no longer worth the hassle.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I happened to be in Wal Mart again, picking up one of those “site to store” orders – a Christmas gift from my Mom to my Munchkin – and on my way to the back of the store, I walked through the toy section just to see if there was any chance they might have some of the Zhu Zhu Pets which, as most parents know, is THE toy this year. You know what that means…stores are out of stock, prices on Ebay and Amazon are three times the retail price, etc.

Well, as luck would have it, I saw not one but TWO of the furry little creatures on the shelf. Score! I even tweeted about it. So I tossed them in the cart and headed back to pick up my order.

Ok, so I’m sitting there waiting for an associate to come back to the counter….and waiting…pushing the call button… waiting… pushing the call button again… waiting some more. Fifteen minutes I sat there. Not happy, Wal Mart people. Not happy at all.

I finally pick up the package and head to the checkout line. The clerk and I are talking about the Sookie Stackhouse book I was buying – the second one – when her register beeps at her. It’s the Zhu Zhu hamster. It’s coming up “sale not allowed”. So she tries the other one. Same thing.

Now I’ve been through this “sale not allowed” thing before. I tried to buy Munchkin a new pair of jeans only to be told they couldn’t sell them to me in spite of the fact that there were about 100 other pairs just like them out on the sales floor. But whatever.

So she calls a CSM over to see what the problem is. The CSM says “Oh yeah we can’t sell those.” Wow. You’re a big help. Why? She has no idea so she calls a manager over. This guy informs me that the Zhu Zhu Pets are a “blitz” item and they can’t be sold until the day after Thanksgiving a/k/a Black Friday.

Excuse me? So he really expects me to hand these toys back over to him so they can hide them in the back and sell them to somebody else? Oh no. Not happening. They were on the shelf, they’re for sale. “Well someone made a mistake. People make mistakes. Surely you can understand that.” Yeah, I know people make mistakes. But I didn’t make this one. Go explain that one to whoever put the things out on the shelf.

Now anyone who knows me well knows I don’t usually take “no” for an answer if I don’t feel I should. And I wasn’t taking “no” nor was I taking the $5 gift card he offered me. Seriously? What’s a $5 gift card supposed to do? Sorry, sweetie, Mommy couldn’t get you the Zhu Zhu Pets but here’s a $5 gift card instead. Um….no.

So I go to customer service and get a phone number for a regional manager. I call him up. He tells me it’s “in the system” that way and they won’t be able to ring it up for me. Well someone had to put it IN the system so someone has to know how to take it OUT of the system. Put that person on the phone.

Finally, after getting an earful of my thoughts on the whole hoarding toys subject and how greedy and evil Wal Mart is to use a popular child’s toy to lure people into their store on the WORST shopping day of the year just so they can bump up their profits, he takes my number and tells me he’ll call me back in 5 minutes.

Not two minutes later, the CSM from earlier walks out, very rudely grabs the toys from my cart, and snaps “Well we’re gonna do it.” Good. I think it’s safe to say she’s one of those people who doesn’t like to be proven wrong. I can understand that. Neither do I. But then again, I’m not in retail customer service and there’s a reason for that.

So there you have it. That’s how Wal Mart got on my bad side.