An Open Letter to Walton Enterprises

Dear Walton Enterprises,

As your lawyers have probably informed you by now, you own both Walmart and Sam’s Club. Congratulations on that! Well played. That probably makes you a few bucks each month. Good for you!

As you may recall, last August I gave your Sam’s Club checkout tool, Scan & Go, a glowing recommendation. It’s a fabulous piece of technology that makes me actually look forward to shopping at your store. Again, congratulations on that!

I’m writing today, however, because of the insane dichotomy I’m experiencing recently between your two store brands. While Sam’s Club continues to be an absolute shopping joy, Walmart seems to be sliding the other direction at break-neck speed.

As I mentioned back in August, you still seem to be positioning people who want to check my receipt at the exits of your Walmarts. While that is sensible and necessary for your Sam’s Club Scan & Go system, it’s just flat-out annoying at Walmart, where I have already unpacked and repacked my cart at the checkout. So, no, I’m not stopping again and retrieving my receipt out of my wallet so the person at the door has something to do.

But apparently, your Walmart self-checkout monitors, your actual checkers, and that person on the stool by the door can’t seem to stem the tide of Walmart shoplifters. I assume that’s the reason you seem to be locking up all the merchandise?

Which brings me to the reason for my letter to you today. The locks. I noticed it starting a few years ago. And don’t get me wrong, I understand the glass doors and locks on the small hand tools. But even back then, when the only things you were putting behind locked glass were the tools and small expensive electronics, it wasn’t always easy to find someone with the key.

Fast forward to today and you are completely out of control. Now it seems that every aisle has something behind glass, and I dare you – I double dare you – to find an employee within 700 feet of what you’d like to buy. And if you do, I’ll personally give you $100 if they actually have the key. It’s like going to a store that’s closed, so all you can do is peer in the window at the things you wish you could have.

I was in my local Walmart on Monday and you had a locked glass door protecting the laundry detergent. The laundry soap!! Why are you making it hard to buy soap? Has fabric softener become a hot item for the thieves? How in the hell is anyone shoplifting a two-gallon jug of Tide?

I went to automotive. You locked up the antifreeze. It’s an eleven-dollar jug of neon-green liquid. Again, same question as the Tide. What the hell??

But probably the craziest thing I saw – and I’m including all the other Walmart shoppers in that – was the locked glass door in front of the socks.

THE SOCKS!

I didn’t bother to check, but how much could your most expensive, high-end pair of socks actually retail for? A dollar sixty-eight? What’s the matter with you? Mind you, the boot display was wide open for me to put my hands all over – and my feet in – as many pairs of work and casual boots as I pleased, but there was no way you were going to let me anywhere near those high-dollar socks without the help and watchful eye of a completely non-existent employee.

Seriously?? Who are you worried about? Based on the number of employees who work there versus the miniscule number of them that were trusted with a key, I almost think you’re trying to keep them away from the merchandise as much as you are me.

I’m no fortune teller, but this situation doesn’t require such mystical powers. It’s very easy to see where this is headed. Now, I understand why you haven’t implemented the Scan & Go system at your Walmart stores. It’s a largely different shopper demographic than your Sam’s Club stores. Many of your Walmart regulars might not have access to a smartphone, or the ability to find and use the app, or even all their teeth.

But you need to figure something else out, because the glass door road is a dead end. The way I see it, you have only two choices going forward. Either take down the glass barriers that are keeping us from doing our sock and detergent shopping, or hire two hundred more employees at each location so we can all have our own personal key bearer.

If you don’t do one of those things soon, the only people you’re going to have left “shopping” at your stores are the shoplifters. Again, I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2025 Marc Schmatjen

 

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These Guys Sound Fishy

A long time ago, in another life, I worked in the construction industry. I was pretty good at pretending, so it took a number of years before anyone figured out that I had no idea what I was doing, and I was forced to become a humor writer instead.

At some point along the way, I worked with a guy named Ivan. As you can imagine from the name, he was Chinese... wait, no, Russian. He was Russian. He and his cousin had moved to the United States from Russia (or maybe one of the ‘ias, or the ‘stans – I don’t remember exactly) when they were in their early twenties. He was (and I am hoping, still is) a fun and enthusiastic guy, a hard worker, and an interesting fellow to talk to.

I had a lot of great conversations with him about his move to America and settling in. When he arrived he was most amazed about the amount of choices for everything at the grocery stores. He said in Russia you could usually find what you needed, but there would only be one brand of each thing. No wonder he moved. That’s just no way to live.

Fortunately, we have a lot of Russian immigrants, so he had an American-style selection of Russian ladies to choose from when it came to dating, and he was married with kids when I met him.

One day at the job site he was on the phone discussing his wife’s birthday present - with his black market hedgehog dealer, obviously. Because it had simply never occurred to me to own a hedgehog, I had no idea they were illegal to keep as pets in California. Apparently, the way he told it, every person from Russia loves hedgehogs, so it was going to be the ultimate gift for his wife.

I’m not one hundred percent sure what would happen if I gave my wife an illegal hedgehog for her birthday, but I’m certain she would have a less-than-Russian reaction. She might even report me to Fish and Game, or whomever is in charge of trying to thwart illegal hedgehog smuggling. No telling.

He had some good stories, but none better than the one about his first trip to Walmart.

He and his cousin had just arrived in the U.S., and wanted to gear up to go fishing. They were looking to purchase waders. (For those of you from New York and LA, waders are rubber overalls with attached boots, sort of like a prophylactic for your whole body. Instead of standing on the bank of the river not catching any fish, you can wade out into the water up to your chest and still not catch any fish, but you’ll be dry, like you were on the bank.)

Ivan and his cousin spoke almost no English at this point, and they were at the sporting goods section of a Walmart, which did not carry waders. This was before the internet (yes, kids, there was a time before the internet when we all had to talk to each other – dark times indeed), so with severely limited English, the two Russian twenty-something males were attempting to ask the female Walmart clerk where to go to buy waders.

That’s all well and good, and might have turned out fine, but the problem was that between the two of them, the only English fishing-related word they knew was ‘hook.’

They did not know the word ‘waders,’ nor did they know ‘boots,’ or anything else that might have described the uniquely-purposed item they were trying to source. All they knew was the word ‘clothes.’

So here are our heroes, both pantomiming the writhing, thrashing, yanking, and pulling required to actually get a pair of fishing waders on and pulled up to your chest, occasionally throwing in a whipping motion to simulate casting a fly rod, all the while repeating the same phrase they have expertly assembled in English to get their point across to the female clerk.

“We need hooker clothes.”

She called the police.

When the police department’s Russian interpreter peeled himself off the floor after his fit of hysterical laughter, he explained the misunderstanding to both parties, and everyone had a good chuckle. No charges were filed.

Learn the language, kids. (Or always have the internet handy.)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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The People of Safeway

As I was walking out of Safeway the other day, I passed a woman who was walking in wearing one of those front-mounted baby carriers on her chest. Nothing odd about that, except the forward-facing passenger was not the usual requisite five-month-old baby. This lady was papoose-ing a tiny little dog. (Either that, or it was the ugliest five-month-old baby ever, but I was pretty sure it was one of those little yappy dogs.)

Now, I was raised right, and as a result, I have never been one to make fun of people. I grew up with the Golden Rule, and I am trying to pass that on to my own children to make sure that they always treat other people the same way they would want to be treated themselves.

But the shock of seeing a lady who had mistaken her pet for a human, and as such, was bringing her cutsy-wootsie, cuddily-wuddily little dog inside the grocery store, got the better of my better judgment. My hand instantly went for my cell phone in an attempt to get a picture of her.

The cell phone was half-way up to ready position when my good raising kicked back in and I stopped myself.

A moment of awkward subterfuge ensued as I reversed the course of the rising phone back down to “just checking my messages” elevation, and pretended to be interested in the screen in case she had seen me.

As I passed by her, staring at my blank screen, I was mildly disgusted with myself. Apparently, due to owning a smartphone, I am dangerously close to crossing the line from civilized adult to thoughtless, totally cyber-connected web monkey. My first reaction upon seeing this woman was, “Man, I’ve got to get a picture of her and post it on Facebook!”

I’m quite sure that when that lady woke up in the morning -- presumably with her yappy dog snuggled up next to her head on her pillow, licking her face in that super-adorable way that he does -- she never could have known that she would cause me, a complete stranger, to have a pretty serious moment of introspection. I walked past her thinking to myself that I am more than mildly hypocritical in this area of my life. The “People of Walmart” area of life, that is.

If you do not know about “People of Walmart,” it is a website dedicated to posting pictures coupled with hilariously sarcastic comments of various Walmart shoppers. With the possible exception of the “everything is a dollar” stores, Walmart seems to attract more human train wrecks per capita than most other stores. A long time ago, people began snapping secret photos of them with their cell phones and posting them online. The site is chock full of people shopping with their underwear on the outside of their clothes, people shopping in only their underwear, and people shopping in the opposite gender’s underwear. Generally, it’s people who have serious underwear issues, or don’t own mirrors, or both.

Here’s my problem. I think the “People of Walmart” site is hilarious. The things some people wear in public cracks me up. (Emphasis on the word “crack.”) So, if I enjoy the website, I should be willing to be a contributor, right? There’s where I got into a serious moral dilemma. When it came time for me to provide content for my own “People of Safeway” Facebook post, I couldn’t do it.

My first thought was not necessarily, “That isn’t a very nice thing to do.” The way I figure it, if you leave the house with a pet strapped onto your chest, you get what you get.

My first thought was, “What am I going to say if she catches me taking a picture of her?”

“Ma’am, can you please hold still so I can take a picture of you to post on the internet in hopes that my friends find your brand of ‘crazy dog lady’ as entertaining as I do?”

There was no way that was going to happen.

So, I guess what I learned about myself is this; my brand of Golden Rule has a lot of personal responsibility attached to it. I will enjoy seeing the picture of you on the internet if you decide to leave your house wearing a dog, but I am not willing to be the guy who personally makes you feel insecure about, or ashamed of, your choice to do so.

I’m still not 100% sure how hypocritical that makes me, but I really don’t care. I’m comfortable with it. I mean, if I ever got so far down the “my pet is a person” road that I was carrying Fifi around in a Baby Bjorn, or if I was going out in public wearing shorts that were eleven sizes too small, I couldn’t honestly expect you not to mock me. In some ways, I would hope that you would. Maybe that would be the kick in the vastly overexposed butt I would need to get back to reality.

I think I just need to get stealthier with my camera.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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