So my original post from yesterday got flamed by the Admin. guy (dude!!), so here it is again, more or less . . .

Is it just me, OR . . .

People shopping at Wal Mart, Safeway, (insert name here), a lot of the time do not have a sense of the personal space of others, i.e., leaving their shopping cart parked sideways in the middle of the aisle, and then looking suprised when you ask them to move so you can get by them . . .

MH Lady, and anyone else, any comments or suggestions???

Ramming and an "oops, excuse me" is always fun.

I hate the "Shopping cart morons" that leave the cart in the space next to their car (you know, the one I'd pull into if it didn't have a freakin' cart in it!) rather than take it back to the rack. I may start approving of water-boarding (don't hold your breath) if it would apply to them.

I actually had to stick my elbows out from my body because this family somehow seemed to keep following me from aisle to aisle and ramming into me. They even ended up behind me in the checkout line, and the teenager kept bumping into me as I was inputting my debit card. I can only say 'excuse me' so many times when it isn't my fault. The elbow trick was quite effective. I also enjoy it when the offending person says, "oh, they don't make these aisles wide enough", and I respond, 'Yeah, especially when you park your cart sideways in the middle of it". The preceeding is always said with a smile and a nod of head and leaves them wondering, what the f***?????

I just don't shop there.
There was a life before Wall Mart, and there is a life after, too.

I don't care for Safeway... occasionally shop at Top Foods, mostly shop at Jay's, Marketplace, Swansons (local), and up in Olympia, at the Oly Food Co-op.

Target has all the stuff Wall Mart does, except less of it is made in China, and Target is owned by a liberal, progressive, union-loving company (Dayton-Hudson). I shop there occasionally, maybe 3 times a year.

The "shopping cart hogs" bug me as well. I'm a big-enough guy and I try to leave as much room on the other side (staying to the right) as I can and people still jam into me like I'm the problem.

This is also part of the reason why I go grocery shopping late at night (at Safeway). Less people and faster to get through everything.

On the rare occassion I must go to WalMart, I've found early morning wonderful!

I find:

*Lots of parking
*Easy going through uncrowded aisles
*Short lines, and
*Pleasent staff that haven't been tainted by a full day serving jerks

Woot! Except for the part about Oly Food Co-Op (although I wouldn't be opposed to doing that, too), I could have written this post.

Wal-Mart free for 3 years, 2 months!

Our worst shopping-cart nightmare was at Toys'R Us back when the kids were kiddies at Christmas time. The aisles were so packed you literally could only slowly follow the people in front of you. Even for people without a cart it was almost impossible to squeeze around everybody else. (Yeah, bad timing on our part.) One lady kept ramming her cart into Mr. Funky's back leg...as if he had somewhere to go to get out of her way!! Unbelievable! He eventually let her move in front of him which took quite a bit of maneuvering. It was all I could do to keep him from repeatedly ramming her in the back of her leg in retaliation. Gosh, I even think I had to buy him a toy to keep him occupied while I finished filling the cart.

Screw Walmart, let's talk about how cool tsunamitsurfer's photo is. Is that from the memorial committee? I went to their Lounge Acts show last year and am looking forward to this year's show.

Welcome, FR! But....naaaahhhhhh

My daughter's band tried out to play in the memorial concert slated for the 7th St. in the fall and didn't win. I'm boycotting all things Cobain.

(tease. I tease, Tsunami!)

! am of the same though as tsunamitsurfer, shop late and avoid most of the morons. For myself drive past Walmart and avoid all the morons

I ended up playing bouncer during the Battle of the Garage Bands and only heard, but didn't see, the bands. Only one band sounded horrible. The rest were pretty good.

Which band featured your daughter? (I couldn't vote anyway, but still...)

Fair enough... Late is great, especially the final half-hour at Wal-Mart. Sometimes it is quiet (too quiet...)...

Militias Mischef

Or is it Malicious Mischef?

They have some strange spelling but I don't recall just what.

Are they good? Heck, I don't know. Some good rythyms if you ignore all the screaming.

I actually remember them. Yeah, they were pretty good. You can tell they practiced and there was some talent there.

The screaming? Apparently, that's the thing with bands today. I think Beavis is more used to it, but I found myself trying to focus more on the music than the lyrics/singing.

The one thing about the Battle, as with other Battle of the Bands - the more people you bring, the better chance you get to win it. In a way, it is like a school election - popularity, baby.

Yeah, well...I've only heard them twice. I was going to go that night but then couldn't bring myself to sit through however many bands we would have needed to sit through in order to hear 'em.

Oy veh! Do I sound like an old lady, or what?

I actually enjoy the songs they've written more when they are fooling around singing them while playing them on acoustic guitar because then they don't scream.

I tend to go to Wally World @ around 2-3AM

(yes.. a supercenter not the aberdeen location)

Why go at all?

Golf (Rabbit) or Jetta?

My best car ever...78 Scirocco SE, Recaro seats. Mine had red pinstriping and red/black plaid seats. Stylin'

I still miss that car!

It is hard to pass-up the large box stores. Looks like both WalMart and Cosco's financials show that that is the case with customers new and old.

I read a WSJ article, oh, about a month and a half ago now about the prices at WalMart, opposed to 'normal' grocery stores. In it they claimed their prices were, essentially, staying the same while other grocery stores are on the rise.

I avoid WalMart as much as I can, but it has relatively little to do with WalMart's business model/practices... and almost everything to do with it's 'select' clientèle.

I do most of my shopping out of town (and not at WalMart).

We are always admonished to shop locally, but when confronted with the choices, they are not always viable; i.e, when I learned a local garden & pet store carried a certain product I had been buying on the internet, I decided to give the local store a try. They had exactly one each of the product I was looking for at MORE THAN TWICE THE PRICE THAT I PAID. Even figuring in shipping, it still was way cheaper to buy off the 'net.

Every time I hear Leroy Tipton on the radio telling everyone to shop local it just bugs me. Sometimes you just have to do the math.

Personally i like the Five Star adds telling everyone to spend 20$ more a week locally. Does the owner of 3 of the 4 major dealerships in Aberdeen even live in Grays Harbor?

Rich Hartman lives in Montesano and is/was on the School Board. Perfect? Nope. But, he's one of the good guys.

Sure. I probably spend 90% of my money locally and am satisfied with the prices I pay. I save the gas driving out of town which, right there, lowers my cost and means that if I pay a tad more for the items, I'm still usually ahead. Since I hate shopping, and the idea of going out of town to shop is a huge waste of time and a miserable way to spend my time, this makes it even more important for me to shop in town, even if I do pay a bit more. My time and enjoyment factor is worth a few bucks.

I do think shopping locally is important. I vividly recall a conversation I had a couple years back with a very frustrated, local business owner. One of the things his store provides is custom items (awards, trophies, etc.). While he has NEVER had any of the local schools purchase items from him, they ALWAYS hit him up for donations for fundraisers. He still always donates but it really rubs him wrong that they don't even contact him to bid on jobs. I think that's just wrong.

When you consider all the groups in the area that expect businesses to donate for the umpteen-million dinner/auctions/raffles...and, in my experience, these businesses are usually very generous in providing items for these things...it is sad that many don't give these generous business owners their shopping dollars, imho.

Not to mention that if we want our friends and neighbors to have jobs, we have to support local businesses.

But, of course, there is a limit to how much extra I am willing to pay for something. And that is when I usually shop via internet. I'd rather pay for shipping than spend time on that dreaded out-of-town shopping trip.

Was. Lost his seat in '06. His opponent used pretty ugly tactics with a certain DW as his campaign chair. Fancy that.

Lost his seat last fall-- in 2007.

?Dave Wilkins was Hartman's opponent's campaign chair? I didn't know that. (What else does DW stand for, since I assume you don't mean Daily World?)

I'm pretty sure it was '06. He attended an election night party we were at. While the party celebrated wins, he, unfortunately, wasn't one of them.

Of course, since turning 50, I have to qualify everything by saying "as best I can remember".

No, not Wilkins. You may PM me if you're curious.

WalMart must be one of the larger employers in Grays Harbor?

We shop at Jay's Veggie Stand, Swanson's, usually the little Ace Hardware/True Value in Hoquiam, the Paisley Penguin in Aberdeen (BOOKS!! OMG BOOKS!!), the Marketplace, and occasionally Sears/Penney's in the mall.
Larger grocery trips are to the Olympia Food Co-op, the requisite trip to Costco once every couple of months, and the Olympia Farmers Market.

Home Depot is a rare trip, if the local Ace doesn't have something.
I do shop online, mostly for clothes. It's really hard for someone of my size/taste to find things on the Harbor, or even in Olympia.

The Monte School Board elections in question were in '07.

"...as best I can remember..." Yeah, that's the ticket. It just dawned on me whom the DW associated with dubious campaign tactics would be. I thought he had left the area.

Were I to chair a campaign that used dubious tactics, it'd be a lot more fun. People would still be upset, but there would be an element of humor involved.

I don't hear a lot of laughing around election time

'07? I still vividly recall sitting with Rich Hartman on election night '06 at Geppetto's and commiserating with him on his loss over a stiff one. But it's not worth arguing about. Either way, he's no longer on the school board.

ETA....geesh. I am getting old. Just recalled that I was commiserating with him about something totally different that night. It was at some kind of event at the QBR last fall where we discussed the school board race. Still over a drink. I only drink, at most, once a month or so, so this really isn't the booze talking. I'm 50, I tell ya. The brain has gone seriously downhill the last year or so. Oy veh! So, yeah, it was '07. Sorry.

[quote=StriderI thought he had left the area. [/quote]

Only to East County. Not far enough?

Yup.

The guy who owns the rest of the dealerships lives here too.

Paisley Penguin has lots of books? I drove by and saw one shelf full. What's the deal? This town needs a real bookstore. Thank God for the internet.

Amen to that. I buy all of my books online, because there isn't a true bookstore here.

Jay's Stand is great, Levee Lumber gets my money on projects (unless it is seriously cheaper at Home Depot and in most cases, it hasn't) and, like someone else said, I shop for clothes online.

But not having a true bookstore in this area sucks. I have to get my fix when I go to Seattle.

Yup, definitely miss the bookstore, even though I got tired of working there (but I solved that by quitting ).

Buying books online is easy, but I really miss the new-book-smell that you get in person . . .not to mention the excitement of opening the shipments of all those brand spanking new books . . .

Ah, memories . . .

I've been known to drive to Olympia for errands and get virtually none of them done because I've just spent 3, 4, 6, 7, hours at B&N. I've stayed so long that I've had two meals at Starbucks!

I haven't bought a book in a bookstore for so long, I'm not sure I'd remember how.

I buy at Estate Sales. I've a rack of about 30 now on which I'm behind. Every other week or so I add two or three to the shelf at a buck or two each... ebay for an urgent, specific need.

This morning I was bagging an item that the cashier felt was better left to roll around in my trunk and while I was bent down with both of my hands tied-up trying to slip the 30 or so cans of pet food into a sack the jim lad shoved the receipt in my face telling me that he had my receipt. I'm not too suprised.

When he greeted me he asked how my day was going and I said greeeeaaaattttt, how 'bout yours? He responded by informing me it could be better, that it was a long day and he did not want to be working. Phhhhttttt.

I'm pretty sure that is not an approved response for a retail clerk. If one does not want to work with the public one should not be a retail clerk. Ditch diggers make pretty good money I'm told.

They should stick him in the stockroom where he wouldn't be around the public.

But there are so many (all?) employees that work at Wally World that shouldn't be around the public--I think that the stockroom would be SRO!!

Retail would be great if it weren't for the customers.