My Dear John letter to Walmart

Dear Wal-Mart,

As a rule, I do not visit you. Your store is too big, too loud, too crowded, too overwhelming for me. The other night I was in a rush and out of desperation, I stopped in to buy a few needed items. From the moment I walked through your automatic doors (which are backward, I might add), my senses were assaulted in more ways than I can possibly name.

My first stop was in produce to grab a bag of celery. It turned out to be a relatively harmless experience and I made it through that maneuver unscathed. Next stop was butter, strategically placed at the very back of the store. After dodging and darting between other shoppers who appeared equally as dazed as I, I grabbed my needed box of butter. Navigation to the front of the store was a bit trickier. With displays, carts, and stands of cookies, chips, seasonal candies – all set right at eye level, stationed tactically in the middle of your very narrow aisles, it was impossible to make it from point A to point B. I’m sure this is a carefully thought-out plan because in my trip from point A to point F down to point Q and then finally to Point B, I passed a multitude of colorful displays of all sorts of things I don’t need (and can’t imagine who possibly could!).

On my way back to the register area – so that I could check my own order—I could barely function with the horrific brain-dulling garbage playing from every possible point. In the health and beauty aid section, at the end of each aisle, was some type of video advertisement giving instruction on everything from the best allergy medicine to use and how to use it to the benefits of Viagra (I swear!). I felt as if I were trapped inside a pinball game.

Aside from the anti-Wal-Mart rumor mill, I have my own reasons for our break-up. You offer just too many choices for my small mind. After working all day listening to other people's problems, I want simplicity. I want to be able to just walk into a store and pick up milk. Period. Just milk. I don't want to have to choose from 4 different producers. I just want to get it and go.

Wal-Mart, your designers are very savvy-that is true. But I have the same amount of hours in my day as everyone else and I choose not to spend those precious minutes standing in front of a shelf full of 97 different variety of black beans and trying to decide which can I want when I could be outside with my kids or my animals breathing in our country air all the while being perfectly happy. Wal-Mart – you will always be there silently smothering to death every small hardware store, every mom and pop general grocery, all to provide us humans an endless selection of things that we could very well do without. I am sure that you are the perfect store for many people but you are just not for me.

We are over now, Wal-Mart. You will not be seeing me again.

But if you start selling time, let me know. I may come back.