So it seems to be the case that the Waynesboro Wal-Mart is that special place where managers’ careers go to die…
4 minute read
November 27, 2009, 11:03 PM
So Katie and I had fun today, running around Staunton and Waynesboro doing part trolling and part shopping. After I picked Katie up, we first went over to troll the Waynesboro Wal-Mart, where we used to work. After saying hello to some of the people we used to work with, we also ran into the new store manager. The manager is now a guy named Nathan, and he looks like he should be wearing a pinstriped suit and a fedora rather than a Wal-Mart name badge. Seriously, he looked like a prohibition-era gangster.
So with Al Capone as the new manager, the question becomes, what happened to the previous manager, who was there when I was still there? Turns out that he is “no longer with the company”. In other words, he probably got canned, because when management types say that someone is no longer with the company and leave it at that, you know that someone’s career had a “fiery” end. Otherwise, if they left on good terms, people will generally say something like, “Bob left to take a new position at Company XYZ.” When I visited my ex-store not long after getting hired at my current job, I found out that the management at the store was saying that I was “no longer with the company”. I personally wish they would have just said that they fired me. Let’s be honest now, since I’m pretty open about it. Especially since in my case, they made stuff up and rammed it through a coaching process. Really ethical people over at Wal-Mart.
But anyway, that means that the Waynesboro Wal-Mart is three for three. Their current manager is number four, and the last three all did not leave the Waynesboro Wal-Mart with their Wal-Mart career intact. Thus the Waynesboro Wal-Mart seems to be the place where management careers go to die. No one’s career leaves there alive, it seems.
However, while Katie and I were there, we did encounter an amusing label:
Yes, they have a money-back guarantee that ladies’ underwear will not ride up and give you a “wedgie“. Their “comfort fit promise”, guaranteeing a “wedgie free” experience. And I always thought that adjusting one’s underwear was just one of life’s little annoyances. Now it seems that attempting to eliminate it has become a marketing point. I always figured that the way to avoid that underwear wedgie thing was to just not wear any. Thus you would be presented with the dilemma of choosing whether to put up with the underwear getting up in places where it doesn’t belong, or being one of those heathens that doesn’t wear any underwear.
Still, I would never have thought to market underwear based on its ability to stay out of one’s crack.
Otherwise, we also swung over to Stuarts Draft so Katie could say hello to my parents, and then we also hit Staunton Mall to look for a few things. Katie was looking for fragrances, and I was looking for some clothes. Meanwhile, the mall was remarkably quiet for Black Friday. I don’t know if it’s the recession, or just that no one wants to go to Staunton Mall, but the place was pretty quiet. The stores were neat, and there were no lines. No sign of hordes of cranky shoppers looking to save five bucks on a television set or anything.
Otherwise, I got a picture from our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday that was particularly amusing:
Yeah… cranberry sauce… from a can. See, that’s what I call cranberry sauce. If it doesn’t look like the can it came out of, it’s not cranberry sauce. I remember one year when we went up to New Jersey for Thanksgiving, Uncle Bruce served real cranberry sauce – not the gelatin-like stuff that comes out of the can – and the group actually panned it. The next year, the cranberry sauce looked like the can it came out of, and people just ate it right up. Meanwhile, this year, Dad and I each took a whack at the cranberry sauce. The goal was to get it out of the can intact. As you can see, we ultimately succeeded, but we had to have been amusing for someone to watch. Shake-shake-shake-shake, tap-tap-tap-tap, whack-whack-whack-whack, etc. It wasn’t until Dad took a knife to kind of persuade it a little bit that the cranberry sauce finally came out of the can and onto the plate, pretty much like you saw it in the photo.
So there you go, I suppose. Then on Saturday, Mom and I are going to Charlottesville to do a little clothes shopping. I’m going to be doing the photography for my sister’s wedding, and so we’re getting some functional-yet-fashionable clothing. And Sis is letting me wear the Metrobus tie that one of my coworkers gave me. It’s maroon and has the Metrobus logo on it, as well as little Orion V’s all over it.
Song: Another sale, this time for a refrigerator. I wonder if the lady with the bloodied face about 30 seconds in has a negligence case against the store. Still, if you expect your sale to be so rowdy that you dress your employees in helmets for it, then it might be a good idea to reconsider what you're doing...
Quote: "Well, I wasn't even thinking about it until you said something, but now I have to. *honk honk*" - Me after Katie said something to the effect of "don't even think about honking the horn" in regards to the way I sometimes find the car in the parking lot. What I do is I hit the Sable's remote to make the lights flash and the horn go off so I can spot the car in a crowded lot. Leaving the restaurant where we had dinner, I had a front row space and didn't need to activate the alarm to find the car. But since Katie mentioned it, why not? The way I do that reminds me of the episode "Moods" on Today's Special. Sam was looking for a rubber chicken in the Computer Room, and couldn't find it. TXL volunteered to help, saying, "Just leave it to me, Mr. Crenshaw." Then the dancing "Yo He Ho" speaker popped up (as was the case whenever the Computer Room went crazy), and things started falling from the ceiling until Sam found the chicken.
Categories: Food and drink, Katie, Thanksgiving, Walmart, Waynesboro