Economic Momma

I rarely go to Wal-Mart, even though I’m all about cheap.  I just always seem to have bad experiences when I go there.  I used to have the same problem with Albertson’s, but then all of the Albertson’s around here closed down.  This morning, though, I had a hodgepodge of items to acquire, so I thought that I’d save myself some time and just make one stop at Wal-Mart to get everything at once–BIG MISTAKE! (Btw–did you know “hodgepodge” is an SAT word?)

For starters, even though it was 10:30 on a Thursday morning, the parking lot was still pretty packed.  So, having 2 youngsters with me, I looked for a parking spot relatively near an entrance, but more importantly, with a shopping cart nearby.  I didn’t want to try managing an 11-month-old, a 3-year-old, and a diaper bag on my trek through the parking lot.  So, I ended up parking near the lawn/garden center in a spot by a couple of abandoned carts.  Of course, once I started unloading the kids, I realized that one cart only had 1/2 a buckle for the baby, and the other cart didn’t have any buckles at all.  Oh, well–I’d just have to wheel them in with that cart and switch to another cart once I got inside.
Fortunately, we saw an empty cart immediately upon entering the lawn/garden center–and, it had a full buckle to help keep Pucci from climbing overboard!  What luck!  I switched the kids and diaper bag over to the new cart, and we began our shopping expedition.  Since I rarely go to Wal-Mart, I had no idea where anything was located.  Actually, that’s a lie–I knew where lawn and garden items were, and I knew that groceries were all the way on the other side of the lot.  Sarah had toted Dora along with her, and for a moment, I wished we could call on Map to help us out on our adventure to Wally World.  But then again, we didn’t make it very far before I realized that we would need yet another cart.  The one we found in lawn/garden had a stuck wheel.  At first, being the optimist, I figured I could loosen it up, but after blindly searching a few aisles, it became evident that this cart was nearly impossible to steer, at least it was with over 50 pounds of kids in it! So, we made our way all the way to the main entrance of the store, trying our best to travel in a straight line to avoid summoning up the Herculean strength required to turn this particular shopping cart, and transferred ourselves to a 3rd cart.  Thankfully, since there was a much larger selection to choose from, I performed my own quality assurance tests before settling on an acceptable model.

At last, we could actually begin acquiring the items on our list!  I still didn’t know where to go, but at least I could get there easily with this new and improved shopping cart.  Our most important item was baby ibuprofen–good to the last drop, which Pucci drank straight from the bottle during a teething bout last night.  I remembered passing all the OTC drugs on our way to the main entrance, so we went back that way, but I didn’t see any signs for children’s pain relief.  So, I thought they might just keep it in the baby section–I thought I remembered another Wal-Mart organizing all of the baby stuff that way.
So, we wandered on, scanning our list and finding things we needed, along with some things we didn’t know we needed, and things we had forgotten that we needed, and piling them all into our cart.  We were doing pretty well until we got to the baby section and still couldn’t locate the baby ibuprofen, which seemed to make Pucci think that he really needed some right at that moment.  He started fussing and crying and wriggling and shaking to get out of that cart.  I went into mission mode and scanned the list for the most essential items so we could focus on getting just one or two more things before he became unbearable for us and everyone else in the store.  As we got to the toilet paper aisle, Sarah suddenly had the urge to use some and exclaimed that she needed to go potty.  Ahhh!  At this point, I was carrying Pucci, trying to slide the irregularly-shaped 12-pack of Charmin onto the bottom rack of the cart, and trying not to snap at the lady who just smiled at the baby and kindly asked how old he was.  I then calculated that had we been just one aisle further back in that corner of the store, we quite possible could have been at the absolute farthest point from BOTH bathrooms!  I chose to go for the bathroom along the back wall to avoid the crowds in the front.  As we raced down the aisle, another mother overheard me telling Sarah to wait until we got to the potty and stopped to tell me that this Wal-Mart only had bathrooms in the front of the store–ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  Fortunately, another woman walked by as I was expressing my utter disbelief and reassured me that there were rear bathrooms all the way down in the toy section–THANK THE LORD!

We finally got to the bathrooms, and the family restroom was out of order and the women’s restroom was being cleaned by a man with a machine that made a loud noise and had a long hose attached to it.  Fortunately, this didn’t phase Sarah–she just walked in anyway and sat on the first potty she saw.  She must have really had to go.  I followed her in, still holding Pucci, who is afraid of machines that make loud noises, and continued to hold him while Sarah stood on my bended knee so that she could wash her hands.  I gave up on the rest of the list and went back to the drug section to hunt down the baby meds, which were conveniently located in the foot care aisle, before making a beeline for the checkout counter.
And, for the grand finale, after everything was rung up, bagged, and back in the cart, I dug through my diaper bag to discover….NO WALLET!  Yes, I made a huge mistake and wasted our morning and endured a cranky baby only to discover that I would be leaving without any baby ibuprofen.  I wanted to cry.  I apologized and asked if they could keep my items in customer service so I could just come back and pay later without having to go through the whole ordeal again.  And of course, being so keen on customer service, the Wal-Mart associate quickly replied that it would NOT be possible to do that as she called someone over to help her void the transaction.

I think there are just some places that I am not meant to visit.  By the way, my mother thought this was hilarious, and the more I repeat it, the funnier it gets.  That’s why I had to share this story with you–to erase the anger and frustration and replace it with laughter and smirks.  Which stores are your hot spots to avoid?