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ATTENTION Walmart Executives
June 7, 2009

For years I wondered why I succumb to impulse buying at Harris Teeter. Even when I go there with a very short shopping list of gourmet items I can’t find anywhere else, I end up coming out with 20 or 30 items that weren’t on my list. I can’t afford to shop at Harris Teeter like that. Their prices are so incredibly high I never understood how they stay in business at all. But they do.

I do my best to stay away from Harris Teeter, knowing in advance what will happen. Where else though, can I possibly find decent rhubarb, fresh-caught Alaska salmon or shallots? Common sense (and my wallet) tells me I should buy most of my groceries at Walmart where they cost a lot less.

Why Walmart? Well, Walmart is (or was) sort of my . . . Mecca. They got it right with the “everything in one place” concept. Why shop at three or four different stores when almost everything I need is at Walmart for less money? Hi. My name is Leon. I am a Walmartaholic. But for the last few years the intoxication has been wearing thin.

Why? Because every time I go into any Walmart, I walk out of the store incredibly agitated. Ten minutes into a Walmart visit I can’t wait to get out of there. It isn’t the long checkout lines because I’m already fuming before I ever reach the checkout counter. It isn’t the bad lighting because lighting is terrible almost everywhere but I’m never cranky anywhere else; just in Walmart.

Imagine becoming intensely angry and not knowing why. It happens to women all the time but I can explain that. When a woman can’t figure out why she’s angry or unhappy it’s either 28 days since the last time that happened; she’s discovered her husband is spending money for pornography on the Internet; or she’s just not getting enough hugs.

It is different for a man. A man gets out of sorts from insufficient sex, high gas prices or a woman who nags him incessantly. But at least a man knows the cause of his agitation. A man who can’t figure out why he’s angry is mired in a dangerous mental predicament. Because a man is supposed to know. A man is supposed to be in control.

Then came the day, about six months ago I stormed out of a Walmart feeling like I should run over somebody in the parking lot; or at least one of their shopping carts. I had abandoned my empty shopping cart in the middle of the produce section. If the old fart at the entrance had said “have a nice day” to me on the way out I would probably have cussed him out. Even then, I couldn’t figure out what set me off.

Driving home from Walmart and thinking, “screw Walmart; I’m going to Harris Teeter,” the lights suddenly and finally came on. The reason someone will sooner or later go postal in a Walmart and take out a number of innocent customers, a checkout clerk, the old fart at the entrance or possibly all of them at once is your god-damned, squeaky; bumpy; drag to the right; drag to the left; rattling and vibrating; lock up and stop dead in the middle of the aisle; hard to push, wobbly, piece of crap shopping carts.

These unwieldy, crippled carts make shopping at Walmart a wholly frustrating experience. It isn’t just the occasional cart. Every Walmart shopping cart I’ve used for two or three years suffered some type of malady or handicap that made it difficult or in some cases impossible to push around. It had been staring me in the face for years and I hadn’t noticed.

Nobody is taking care of the carts at Walmart. That causes a significant drain on Walmart’s bottom line. Because I don’t go to Walmart to work out. I go to Walmart to shop (and check out the chicks). But the cart that should contribute to a pleasant shopping experience forces me to work out. I refuse to work out in a Walmart. I’ll just buy my roasted chicken for supper and finish my shopping at Harris Teeter. Can you believe it? Forced to go bankrupt at Harris Teeter by a Walmart handicapped shopping cart.

20 minutes later at Harris Teeter I paid special attention to the cart that greeted me at the entrance. I was vindicated. This sleek and sexy, dark-colored shopping cart rolled so smoothly into the store I barely had to push it. I couldn’t believe it. I went back and tested another cart at random. It was just as good as the first cart. Mind you, these are not new shopping carts but somebody is obviously treating them with tender loving care. A shopper doesn’t become exhausted pushing them around or contract carpal-tunnel syndrome from constantly forcing them to roll in a straight line.

Unlike a Walmart cart, you can fill a Harris Teeter cart all the way to the top (or even more) and it just glides along as smoothly as it did when empty. Now I know why I always see so many half-full abandoned shopping carts littering the aisles at Walmart. It's because the weight caused them to lock up in place and the shoppers pushing them just got mad and left. Imagine how someone feels when their car breaks down in the middle of an intersection. No difference.

I was reminded of every single time I’ve tried three or four carts at Walmart only to “settle” on one that at least rolled straight even if it took three or four horsepower to push and sounded like a car with a flat tire driving on a rim. My daughter admits to being embarrassed in Walmart most of the time because our shopping cart makes so much noise.

Walmart; if you don’t think a sleazy, obstinate shopping cart can piss off a customer and curtail his or her impulse buys, you’d better hire a good psychologist to explain it to you. Management is supposed to know that “impulse” buying probably adds more to your bottom line than the shopping list buying. Right now, all my impulse buying is reserved for Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s where the shopping carts care enough to make me happy while I shop.

I’m not just theorizing here. For the past five months, my daughter and I (avid people watchers) have observed people intently wherever we shop. There is no doubt that the happiest, most impulse-buying customers populate the stores with the best shopping carts. If Harris Teeter had Walmart shopping carts, Harris Teeter would have folded long ago.

Walmart faces any number of potential disasters caused by cart rage. Customers “settle” for things that aren’t as good or as much as they want because in all reality they don’t have much choice. But they don’t like it and eventually one or more of them is bound to go over the edge. That someone might be a person who can’t control his or her temper. Walmart has the highest potential risk because Walmart causes more cart rage than any other store I know of.

So wake up Walmart executives. Spend some money on cart maintenance and quality assurance. The money you invest in your carts will be returned many times over to your bottom line by happy customers who desire to shop instead of working out. If you don’t address this problem soon, the first sign of impending disaster will be the dead carts in your parking lot that were run over by irate customers. When that happens, you had better start stocking up on body armor for your employees.

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