I Hate Walmart

I hate Walmart. I hate the people that shop there. I hate the people that work there. I hate the people that slowly walk down the center of the parking lot lanes totally oblivious the the traffic pile-up behind them.... I could go on and on but that's not really my point.

Even with my obvious dislike of Walmart, I still buy stuff there. You really have no choice; they have the lowest prices, especially when it comes to tires. When shopping for the best deal on tires, you will always end up at Walmart. This brings me to my point. Walmart tire service sucks butt.

Now I realize Walmart isn't an oasis of mechanical genius, but for the price I was willing to take a chance. I ordered my tires on-line and had them shipped to my local Walmart. I got the phone call when they came in, and promptly ventured out to "my" Walmart to get them installed.

I didn't stick around to watch the tires get installed. I was at Walmart, I may as well spend $100. God knows, no matter what, you always exit that place minus a c-note at least. So after I had everything checked off the shopping list I dropped back to check the status of my car.

I saw that my car was still on the rack. As I got closer I noticed they had put "ford focus sized tires" on my Explorer. As I was banging on the window to get their attention, they were lowering my car. My Explorer now had a mere 4" of ground clearance.

I started talking to the tech that put the matchbox tires on my car. He said those tires were a valid alternative for my Explorer, and they were the ones I ordered. After arguing he dug through the trash to find the shipping label that came with the tires. Sure enough, they belonged to some other poor schmuck.

After 30 minutes they finally found my tires and in another 45 minutes they installed them. I didn't notice they installed three of them backwards until I got home. I guess its unusual for light truck tires to have a directional tread, so they weren't used to looking for the huge bold text that said "MOUNT THIS SIDE OUT" on the tire's sidewall. They closed for the night, so I had to stop in the next morning to get that fixed.

After two trips to Walmart and a combined total of 3:45 of waiting I finally have new tires, and I've learned a valuable yet glaringly obvious lesson. If you decide to purchase tires from Walmart realize one thing: The techs that will be installing them are as dumb as the tires you are about to have installed improperly.

The Bose Experience

Last weekend I was "down at the lake". Whenever you're "down at the lake" with a woman, shopping at some point will occur. The number of outlet malls, strip malls, and just plain old malls is too high to count. It’s like liquid crack for the female types. You dangle this many shopping opportunities in front of a woman and they can't resist.

During one of these outings, I came across "The Bose Store". Being an electronics junkie, I couldn't resist. As soon as I entered the store I immediately saw the noise canceling headphones display. I've always wanted a pair for work, and keep reading that Bose has the best ones available. I was dying to try them out.

As soon as I'm about to start the demo, the sales guy walks over to me and asks if I need any help. I just told him I was really interested in the headphones, and he quickly pointed me to another "much better" demo to try out. Ok. I walked over to it, put the head phones on and pressed the "start" button.

Immediately all the background noises of the store disappeared and all I could hear was a Dave Mathews Band concert. I was amazed. A few minutes into the concert I noticed my girlfriend, and the rest of the people in the store, looking at me as if my hair was on fire. What's going on, I wondered. Then the demo told me to lift the head phones off one ear. I did, and was instantly aware of the reason everyone was staring at me. The demo was simulating airplane noise in the store. There was a very loud rumbling going on. Very loud. With the headphones on, there was zero rumbling. With the headphones off, it sounded as if a jet was landing in the parking lot outside.

Being someone who likes to keep a "low profile", this kind of attention is unwanted. I quickly put the headphones down and started looking for the stop button. There wasn't one. I was forced to walk away. The demo continued on for the next 10 minutes, rumbling and all.

If only I had $350, I would have walked out of that store with a pair of those headphones.