People who've followed my blog (or my conversations) know that I despise going to Wal-mart and would gladly choose Target whenever possible.  I've always stated "I'd rather pay a few pennies more at Target than have to deal with Wal-mart raising my blood pressure".

Unfortunatly, I don't live near a Target, and I can walk from my job to a Wal-mart during my lunch break so I find myself going to Wal-mart more often than I'd care to admit.  This got me thinking today - do I really hate Wal-mart that much, or am I letting a few bad experiences color my impression.  Surely I've had bad experiences with Target too?  Plus, with a baby on the way I'm going to probably start paying more attention to "a few pennies more".

Starting today, I'll be running a new feature called "Craig vs. the Walmart Experience".  It works like this:

Each time I go to Wal-mart, I'll write a brief entry on what, if anything, made my visit annoying or pleasant.  If I have a positive experience, that's 1 for me.  If I have a negative experience, that's 1 for the Walmart Experience. 

Please note, I'm not tracking whether Wal-mart is bad.   There are so many factors involved that I can't possibly comment about how bad Wal-mart is, except for when I worked at the one in Greenville...that was too bizarre.  I believe the Wal-mart Experience is a perfect storm of dumb customers, unmotivated employees, and insufficient staffing.  It has little to do with Wal-mart as a juggernaut, and much more to do with how individual stores are managed based on the guidance given to them by their home office.

I wanted to start today because, much like in windows solitare, I wanted to save my score while I was up.  Today's trip was pleasant because it was entirely uneventful.  I went through the self-checkout with a handful of items, I didn't have to stand in line because most of the other people were using the properly staffed checkout lanes, and there was no struggle with the self-checkout computer to get out of the store as intended.

Today's score Craig 1, Walmart Experience 0

I'm adding a link in the navigation section which will link back to this post.  The link will keep the running total, but for newcomers, they can click on the link to refer back to this post, where they'll find the rules and explanation.  I plan on running this for at least a year.  I believe I'll find justification for not going to Wal-mart anymore, but I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised.