Welcome To Wal-Mart

Many companies have been downsizing and outsourcing. There's no breaking news in that statement. Some of the outsourcing is taking place right under our noses. Wal-Mart, for example; Some of the jobs previously done by their employees, are now done by the customer. I think it started with those nifty scanners scattered throughout the store, the ones that will scan a bar code and check the price of an item. How convenient. How thoughtful of Wal-Mart to give customers access to that. That's one less employee they need to hire. That persons job, doing price-checks and providing customer service, has now been outsourced, to you, the consumer. Then came "self-checkout." What a great concept. Who wants to stand in line when you can quickly and easily check-out on your own. The problem with that is; it's not always easy. God forbid something should go wrong, like an item was scanned twice. Now you need the super-secret code to remove the item from your total. So your stuck waiting for the elusive Wal-Mart employee to come and rescue you from "self-checkout" hell. And that's not my only beef with self-checkout. I'm also unloading my cart and bagging my own goods. All in the name of self-checkout. I'm paying to be my own checker, my own cashier. Let me repeat that; I'm paying to unload my shopping cart, scan the items I'm purchasing, bag said items, and put the bags back in my shopping cart. Talk about outsourcing! So, needless to say, I forgo the self-checkout as much as possible. I want to be waited on. But even then, much of the customer service has gone by the wayside. I still have to put my items on the conveyor belt and put the bags back in my shopping cart. There is a very rare occasion when I'll run into a checker who's willing to go above and beyond the call of duty and will take the time to put my bags in my cart. So, a couple of days ago I was standing in line at Wal-Mart, already irritated because it was 5 o'clock and there were only 4 lanes open. There were two people ahead of me, a man behind me, and a woman behind him. The cashier literally yelled at the man behind me, "Sir, could you tell that woman she's my last customer." WHAT?? AS IF!!! She should probably be glad she didn't ask me, because I would have responded with, "Yes, for a fee."