Wal-mart

Fuck.  I’m doing it again.  Headed to Wal-Mart to get a new tire on my car.  I would have gone elsewhere, but eighty-five dollars.  You can’t beat that.  I’m talking to you Pep boys.  Oh, wait. It was Tire Kingdom that charged me one hundred forty-five dollars for my last tire.  That was an emergency though.  I had lent my spare to a friend and was without it, so I had to get the jeep towed to the nearest tire place.  I still had a since that the Kingdom new I had no choice.  Tire Kingdom that’s how they ran it.  I guess I was lucky to walk out of their with my head on my shoulders.  After all, I didn’t kneel and kiss a crest with three grease heads on it.  Oh, nope that’s Pep boys again.  I’ve certainly had my share of car troubles.  

The initial reaction of deciding to go to Wal-mart is “No, not there, anywhere else.”  However, it’s hard not to want to save the extra cash.  Plus, they have everything.  After all, I was headed there for a tire.  They have a full auto garage at each location.  I wonder if their will be any mechanics in the future or just Wal-mart employees in blue vest that bid you to have a nice day even as they turn their backs on you. 

When I got to Wal-mart I pulled around to the side where they auto bays were.  The attendant was helpful, but after getting into my car he told be they would not be able to work with my car.  It had been stolen several moths back.  All that was missing was the CD player and the ignition key.  I had been starting it with a screwdriver; the reason Wal-mart could only help me so far.  They agreed to put the new skin on the tire, but I would have to put the tire onto my jeep myself. I rolled the tire to the attendant in the pissiest fashion to demonstrate my feelings. 

I knew it would be a while so I decided to see what I could get at Wal-mart to add to my eighty-five dollar tab.  My hair was getting pretty shaggy, so I decided to get a haircut, another American industry to come under the umbrella of the blue and gray.  If I had bad eyes, I could have corrected that as well.

After my haircut walked around a bit.  I noticed that this Wal-mart though familiar was still different.  I began to think about Wal-mart architecture, if you can call it that.  What is it with the design of these stores?  Why not make them all the same.  Instead some are mirror images of one another.  Some switch the frozen foods with hardware.  Some switch the jewelry section with boys clothing.  However, other sections are always located in the same place: customer service, electronics, gardening.  There are probably entire teams of physiologist who sit there and figure out where to place a rack of socks to sell a few extra pairs.  In my situation all, they had to do was make me wait to get more of my money. 

After walking around a while, I had picked up a four-way tire iron and filet knife.  I knew I had to get the tire iron, but I was just flat out tired of not being able to properly clean the occasional fish.  Plus it came with a sharpener.  Every knife in my kitchen was near worthless, so I convinced myself that the twelve ninety-five I was spending was really saving me money in the end. 

The total came to one hundred and thirty-six dollars and fifty-two cents.  Maybe it was the extra money I spent or the fact that I still had to change my tire, but I left Wal-mart uttering the same word of curse only my hair was shorter.