Our international students went to Walmart at 1 pm. They stayed there until 5 pm. After which they discovered that one of the group wasn’t there, started running around looking for her, couldn’t locate her, and then I got the message about it.
Can anybody explain what a group of young people could be doing at Walmart for 4 hours? There’s no mall there. It’s just Walmart. I can’t even think what middle-aged people can do there for such a length of time but young people? Our Walmart is grim. We have much MUCH nicer places.
You’d say it’s because they are international students and must have been curious about Walmart. But this particular group has already gone on their Walmart trip. It’s part of their orientation. (Don’t ask). They went on Thursday and also spent several hours there. 6 hours of Walmart in 3 days. I’ll be tortured in hell with this particular pastime.
These students were placed in a beautiful dorm in the woods next to a lake. There’s a large garden right there. A Starbucks is walking distance. A really cute ice-cream parlor. And they prefer to schlep all the way to the dank, somber Walmart?
I’d understand if they were straight from the 1980 USSR but otherwise, I’ll never get it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe the leaders of the group were carefully getting to know the place that will be their main supplier of necessities while in America, and the others were tagging along?
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You been in a Walmart lately?
Most Walmarts today are so huge and so disorganized as to which aisles their multitude of products are located that it takes a shopper with a long shopping list at least 4 hours to find everything.
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Did they ever find her?
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“Can anybody explain what a group of young people could be doing at Walmart for 4 hours”
Don’t Wal-marts have pizza places inside them now (or similar)?
Even the prettiest dorm is still…. a dorm… young people will want to get away from it (and thoughts of work you’re supposed to be doing) and just hang out together. So my guess is there are hang-out and talk spaces that you haven’t or wouldn’t notice.
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Grad students are also poor.
A Walmart is as big as a small shopping mall and is climate-controlled. It is open at all hours when one is free from work and school obligations. It is neutral space and easy to leave the group without being too close to home. Good for strangers! If one goes when it is absent hoi polloi, one can shop and talk pleasantly as one might do in a marketplace. And finally, one can afford to purchase some small thing that can be used as a pretext for the outing.
I still have some of the 25cent embroidery floss I purchased at the local WalMart equivalent when I was a graduate student.
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“It’s just Walmart”
Is it? I got curious and looked up the area on google maps and there were a few other shopping areas around it. They might say ‘Walmart’ but mean that general area and not just one store…
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I mean, if they went to Cato’s, I’d totally understand. I can live in Cato’s. But these are people who are way too young for Cato’s.
I’ll be speaking to one of them next week and I’ll find out the details because I’m very curious now.
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They have fallen victim to the infamous Walmart time-warp. They probably thought they were only there for half an hour.
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Exactly, this was supposed to be a short visit for a few basic necessities.
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It’s like Rip Van Winkle in there. One minute you’re walking down the pasta aisle looking for elbow noodles, next thing you know, you’re waking up from a zombie trance state somewhere in automotive, and when you leave the store, it’s unexpectedly dark outside, and you have to check your phone to be sure what day it is.
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“One minute you’re walking down the pasta aisle looking for elbow noodles, next thing you know”
There’s a name for it… the Gruen Transfer….. all large stores are intentionally created to try to induce it, some more effectively than others. That’s why big stores often rearrange where things are, they don’t want shoppers to be able to pick up the three things they want and leave, they want them wandering around looking for things to impulse buy…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer
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I hate it. I usually head for the register when my husband calls me on the phone to ask if I’m OK.
There are some things I genuinely like about WM– like the part where I can get windshield wipers for the car, on my regular grocery run. Plus, even if my hair is a disaster and my preschooler just barfed on me and one of my kids lost a shoe at the playground… I don’t feel weird going to WalMart. I’m not even the sorriest thing they’ve seen this morning. I can still go pick up milk, eggs, the emergency wasp spray and the new cactus I promised my 8yo for good behavior. Walmart won’t judge me.
But the weird lighting and the constant re-shuffling of departments and general sedative effect of the place… not cool.
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The Walmart we had in Indiana was nice. Bright-lit, clean, pretty. But the one here is a dank cave.
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Our nearest one– the ghetto walmart– is the dank cave variety, there are no cashiers, and navigating the parking lot gets pretty Wild-West when it’s busy– the lines are rarely repainted, and I’m pretty sure half the patrons are high. I try to park very far from the store, so there are no other cars near me when I leave.
But in the same town we also have at least two quite nice walmarts. So it’s all about how far you’re willing to drive. Me: not very far. We always end up at the ghetto WM.
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