People Of Wal-Mart - Page 2

I sketched this to understand a bit more what is going on in that picture.



Her whole skeleton is sitting on a pile of fat, like a cushion, so it's not flat against the floor as the picture would suggest. Kind of fun trying to figure out where her skeleton is underneath all that lard though.

Now I get what Rob Zombie has in mind for his Blob remake.

Great drawing, Cap!

First of all, I think that the problem is that these folks are trash based on region not shopping habits. Any Wal-Marts I've been to here in NW NJ have nothing like these people roaming about. We do have a unique kind of hillbilly here, though. We've got the poser rednecks. The ones that drive the unecessarily large pickups with no actual need for the bed space and sport all sorts of hunter-insinuating gear, yet roll into plush homes with large tvs and PTA signs.

Second, a place like, say, Paramus' Garden State Plaza, which is ground zero for the snooty overcoddled and self-entitled Bergen County crowd, generally has more retards per square foot than any other shopping venue I've been in on the eastern seaboard. Maine has the least informed populace I've ever encountered, Pennsylvania has the worst drivers on the planet but Jersey has everybody else licked when it comes to haughty blockheads. The honor!

As far as Jake's shame about his mother, well that's just silly. At least she's working. I don't doubt that there are enough loud mouths about that haven't done an honest day's work in some time.

Now for the real culture shock for the doyens of this forum: Americans are the absolute worst people to serve in any consumer or service circumstance. You bitch and bitch and bitch about folks behind a counter but fail to realize that you are, quite frankly, no better. I guarantee that anyone in this forum who's done even a little time in a retail situation will agree without reservation. The sense of entitlement that burdens the average American consumer is flabbergasting.

I know some of you might have a little religion in you, and someone like ElCapitan must as I think you'd need it to justify bringing children to a Palin rally. Keep in mind, there but for the grace of God go YOU!

Your problem isn't Wal-Mart. It's Americans. Welcome home, kids.

While I enjoy ElCap's artist rendering, I prefer this idea.

Huh?

Not sure about that, but I do know some people are acting like classist assholes of the worse kind, but nobody seems to have a problem with that around here.

Cap, not even an uber-centrist like yourself can deny that there's such a thing as an objectively awful existence. There's nothing to celebrate in those goddamn photos.

Also, Firefox flags "classist" as a misspelled word; "asshole" gets a pass. Discuss.

I <3 Phil.

Having worked in service jobs, I always treat people I as would expect to be treated. I agree that Americans are, in general, entitled bitches. However, I also expect that the people working in service jobs to be competent at their job. There are different levels of competencies, but if you can't push a button on a machine that does all the counting for you, you shouldn't be working the register. And if someone asks a question about something on your menu or a product in your store, you shouldn't act like its a burden or that the customer is wasting your time. Its a two-way street.

That comes down to training, though. Most retail/service establishments that have competent managers and training programs will generally fire individuals who cannot do the job. From what I understand, WalMart has a very minimal training program: they just give the new people a blue shirt/vest and put them on the floor.

Heh ... and I think the US has some of the best customer service in the world. The concept of returning items to the store that you don't like is unheard of in most countries.

Just to put in context, I come from a country (and this is not that unusual in the "3rd world") were you can't even enter a store with a bag. You have to check it in before coming in the store, makes you feel like a criminal right off the bat.

Not super impressed with customer service in Europe either, but I've yet to visit France which I hear they love to treat customers like kings over there :-)

They never make you do that at Wal-Mart. TA-DAH!

The original point, I think was that the emphasis on customer service in the US causes American customers to act entitled and disrespectful to employees. So saying we have great service is both the point and totally not the point.

Ow, my brain.

This is completely true. I used to work in retail and a lot of the customers would massively take advantage of policies that had been put in place to protect them (for example, all electronics had a 1 year guarantee. We also had a policy that if an item was brought back and reported not to work, we had to replace it even if it worked in store if the customer said it was 'temperamental'. This led to a lot of 11 month old 'broken' items being returned and replaced to keep the guarantee). The whole "the customer is always right" thing leads to a lot of shitty behaviour.

Sasquatch Sighting

Uggh. Not Suitable for Life.

US customer expectations and entitlement works... in the USA. The problem is, that sort of behaviour is absolutely incompatible with virtually anywhere else in the world. Smart US citizens know that and adjust accordingly, maybe bringing back home a story about a bored, crappy salesman from Rome, but unfortunately, not everyone is smart.

I dont even argue the concept of "customer is always right" is wrong. Its just not in use to that degree anywhere outside the USA

Mind you, there are enough cases of customers considering the retail salesman/woman in front of them their personal slave here in europe too. They just dont get very far with that attitude

The concept of customer service does not exist in Spain.

I remember going to an information booth at the airport and they couldn't be bothered with us, nor knew where the nearest payphone was (or pretended not too).

Our taxi driver had a big no smoking sign and was too busy smoking to read it. When I tell him I have asthma I would rather he didn't smoke, he cracks open his window a bit and starts puffing smoke out of it.

What really drove my wife over the edge was in Barcelona. I didn't want to use the hotel phone to make an international call, I asked them in the front desk to please give me some change. The guy actually starts questioning why I would to use the phone outside instead of my room one, I had to justify and explain this to him over and over before he handed me out some change!

Today's update has an old man with breast implants.
No, let me correct myself - an old man with very large breast implants.
And a beard like Santa Claus.

There are holocaust survivors with more of a sense of humor than ElCapitanAmerica.

Put out that cig NOW is a better follow up than bitchin online, wouldn't you say?

This is really interesting; I noticed that retail workers in Europe (Britain, Italy, France, and Spain are the only European countries where I've travelled, but my experience was similar enough in those four that I'll unfairly extrapolate some sort of universal trend) were somewhat ruder/less deferential than those in the US, but I assumed this was just because I came across as a pretty obviously unilingual American and the culture/language/accent gap made communication more difficult. So, in a way, I'm glad to learn that it wasn't me, it was them.

That said, I think the American notion of absolute "customer service" and our deification of the consumer as some sort of economy-and-therefore-nation-powering force is perverse and encourages a sort of sociopathic and fetishistic view of money and an exaggerated link between money and social entitlement (among entitled consumers on the micro-level, but I think it's this same uniquely "American" tendency that facilitates and encourages Enron-and-Madoff-type fiascos, too).

I'm probably just bitter because I work and have worked for many years (full disclosure: right now, am out of work) as a clerk at mid-to-high-end retail stores. And I just get treated like the worst kind of festering shit; 95% of people are fine, but 5% are full-on egomaniacal-megalomaniac-sociopathic children who'll berate you and belittle you over a few cents here or there--just because they can. And they can because they hold the dollar, the (uniquely) American symbol of power, autonomy, and the "American dream." "The customer is always right" boils down to nothing more than a perverse and absolute celebration of currency as power; to hell with that, whoever is RIGHT is right. If money is nothing more than an idea, why do we celebrate those who have money over those who have ideas?

I'm a pretty full-on Social Democrat; I feel that most European counties with high tax rates for the rich and generous benefits for the poor are far more hospitable than is America and, furthermore, encourage healthier and happier social behavior. But America is too big and diverse a country to succeed under an European-style government, so I won't get into all that...

But I will say that, as much as we love to be treated (and behave) like children when we go shopping, ultimately the entitled American consumer is a narcissistic/regressive personality type. The same sick view of money that leads to the uniquely "American" customer service we love is responsible, on a macro-level, for our current economic crises. We love acting like little babies getting our way at the return counter, but there are bigger babies returning their mistakes to Washington (to the tune of $1.5-2.5 trillion). Fuck working retail; I can't support myself on $8/hr.

It's like she's riding a really fat horse, that's made out of her own fat ass.

I think that partly explains how she can do that split, she's just sitting in her own fat and God knows what pose her skeleton is suffering.

It does make me wonder if fat people are not more suited for life in space, with that much fat around all your organs it almost seems like you wouldn't need much of a space suit.

As for the customer services stories, I'm not bitching about it, just providing some examples. As somebody that is used to non American "customer service", I'm actually quite happy with it and wish other countries would copy it.

Lol poor people!

As someone who's forever been part of "American customer service" and doesn't really have the means to escape, let me tell you: I hate it and everything it stands for.

Oh lighten up sweetheart. Look, I like laughing at the half-shirted as much as the next guy, but the site irritated me when it showed a guy in his forties buying ramen and the caption was something about "HAHA! What college do you think he goes to??HAHAHAA!". Yes, website, it's hilarious that's all the man can afford to eat. I'm not blaming you for finding it and showing it, but for all the sites wit (and granted, it did make me laugh a couple of times), they're kind of assholes. Not you, mind you, but the Web site.

Maybe the guy just likes Ramen.

Τo the people complaining about classism. I'm not poor now ( although I probably will be once I'm laid off) but there have been times when after making rent and utilities I'd have to get by for days with having literally a bag of peanuts to eat. And when I had money there wasn't all that much anyway. But I would never leave my house looking like a damn hobo. I'd always put on proper clothes and fix myself up even to go as far the corner shop because no matter how bad things were I had respect both for myself and for others. If you can afford a 10 mpg truck you can afford to spend 15$ for shoes, pants and a shirt from the same store you're buying your 4 gallon bucket of ketchup. If you choose not to I'll choose to ridicule you without an ounce of guilt.

Here here. I grew up poor, and not once did I ever allow my ass to hang out of my pants. Self-awareness is not an expensive commodity.

Here in China, there are no hambeasts in the local Wal-Mart (yes, Wal-Mart Megastores in China)... but, there are old ladies. Old ladies back home tend to be sweet, nice people, right? Here they'll elbow you in the gut while rushing past you at the queue.

That said, customer service, like everything else in this country, is bi-polar. You can go to a hotel and be treated like an emperor. I've had experiences here in China where the wait staff at a restaurant go the extra mile as they never would back home in Canada. I remember my time at a sushi restaurant where the staff of admittedly young, good-looking girls would chat with us and really was the most pleasant experience I had in a restaurant. And mind you, these girls were working part-time while studying in college for no tip whatsoever. (No tipping in China except for international hotels). In contrast, wait staff in Canada is perfectly friendly most of the time, but there's a very obvious sense that it's for the tip.

Flipside of course, and where most funny stories come from, is the absolutely DISMAL service you can get here... Just last week eating at a Korean restaurant with my girlfriend, we had forgotten to order a drink with our meal. When I managed to flag down a waitress and asked for a can of coca-cola (asked very politely and in chinese), she snapped back "Why didn't you order it before?!"

Usually the worst service here is offered in the convenience stores, but it's a parochial thing: if you're not a local, they talk to you in the local dialect, throw your change on the counter, or even try to charge you twice for the same item (and then, when I point out that what they did was very obvious, and that the last time I was here they also tried it out) they give a shit-eating grin. Foreigners get it worse, some black people in China get treated like they carry the bubonic plague. (I'm Portuguese-Brazilian, very slightly tanned, and once had a student call me "a smelly african" in Chinese, I understood it, but pretended not to hear it... there's no point, really.) Sometimes however, being a foreigner, or "white" gets you extra special treatment, like you're very delicate, and that can make me feel guilty because other locals wouldn't get that same treatment. Once in a bank, a teller waved me on first (the concept of waiting in line is totally new), but I let some one else go first, it was actually embarrassing... like being some colonial official or something...

*Additional story... Aussie lady, co-worker of ours, went to the convenience store and the clerk hands her a box of condoms. Stereotype being western women are "loose" or Russian prostitutes.

Sorry I wrote so much...

Working at a family store where I have absolutely no fear of being fired (and sometimes would rather welcome being fired... hohoho), I go by the philosophy:

"Nooj is always right... until he's not. And if I like you, I'll admit it."

Whoever said that 95% of people are cool while 5% are terrible, isn't far off. But in cases like this, that 5% is just so much more memorable in the worst way.

Those 5%, I will openly treat like shit and not let them get away with a thing. And just try to use the "Fuckin' jap/chink/gook/slant, if you don't like it, go back to your country" line on me... and you'll see me make an absolute ass of myself and completely overpower you in volume with nonsensical noises. Not because I'm offended by the easy racism. Mostly because that line is so tired that I'm more pissed you didn't think of something better.

It all comes down to the fact that I'm an utter fascist when it comes to my family's store.

So I've got to ask. I'm pretty black. I'm thinking of getting a job in China, Shanghai probably, Hong Kong maaaybe. Am I going to have deal with a lot of bullshit?

My local Walmart is frequently full of 12,13-year-old girls dressed for the Bang Bus.

I make come faces too!!!

While I'm sure they're lovely, I don't think we need to see those, though.

Well said.

Ha!

"Error establishing a database connection"

Was about to start a thread.

http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/man...235.html?imw=Y

"The 2-year-old victim sustained slight redness to the face"

The Crime: SLAP. Condition: Ruddy.