Wal-Mart at 8 AM

Have you ever been to Wal-Mart at 8 AM on a weekday? I have.

What, you may ask, is so blog-worthy about Wal-Mart at 8 AM on a weekday? Well, if you are asking that question, you have obviously never had that experience. Otherwise you would have already blogged about it.

Today I went with my mother in law to go grocery shopping. Rex and I are in Kalamazoo this weekend, and he left at 4 AM to go fishing with his dad. His two brothers went off to school (it is Friday, after all), and that left me and Rex's mom. She bought me breakfast at McDonalds (YUM!!), and then we drove over to Wal-Mart to go grocery shopping.

First of all, we showed up to an EMPTY parking lot. It was so empty that I wondered if Wal-Mart was closed. Then I wondered where all of the employees park. Anyway, it was empty. So we pulled into the absolute closest space to the door, parked, and started to eat our breakfasts. About halfway through, an OLD man pulled up into the parking space directly across from us. I mean, out of the thousands of empty parking spaces, he wanted to choose that one?! So Rex's mom was like, "Ahh! Don't look at him! He's glaring at us!" Naturally, I looked at him. The man was sitting in his car, watching us eat breakfast like a hawk watches a mouse eat seeds. I don't know what his problem was. I will say, though, that five minutes later when we finished our breakfast and went to go inside, the man was still inside his car staring at us. WEIRD.

When we went into Wal-Mart, the store was about as empty as the parking lot. As time wore on, a few more people started coming in. They were 95% senior citizens, though. You would have thought it was "Senior Speacial" day or something. So luckily, the aisle for laxatives was pretty busy but there was no line for Velveeta cheese. We got our shopping done pretty fast.

When it was time to go, we decided to go to the self check-out lane. "Welcome to Wal-Mart!" the machine whirred pleasantly. Because the store was so empty and quiet, though, it sounded like, "WELCOME TO WAL-MART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" It echoed off of the industrial walls, and I wondered if there was a way to turn the machine down. It was SO LOUD. I figured that usually with all of the hustle and bustle in the store, the machine needs to be that loud. In a near empty store, though, it sounded obnoxious. I guess it is helpful for all of the old people, though, because they won't even have to turn up their hearing aids in order to do the self checkout.

Who am I kidding. Old people don't use the self checkout lane. All of that "new fangled technology" is too much for their antique brains.

When we went out to the car an unloaded all of the groceries, I volunteered to go put the cart back. I was the FIRST CART in the cart pick up thingy! That has never happened to me before! I was the very first cart to be put back in the whole parking lot! I looked around to see if I won some sort of prize or something, but I didn't. Apparently that isn't as cool as I think it is...but I think it is pretty cool.

I need to do early morning grocery shopping more often.