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Told me if I was to quit, this is the way to do it! LOL
read it all the way through, it is so funny I doubt it's true but who knows? :shrug:
I could never bring myself to do something like this to ANY employer, ever.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The Wal-Mart Story
8/2/2004 - Joe Peacock
Yes, that's right.
It's not A Wal-Mart story... it is THE Wal-Mart story. A tale so
sordid, so epic, that it is the only thing I can think of to write
about tonight.
I was in my first year of college at the time and was working for
Roadway Package Systems on the overnight shift. RPS was a cheap
knockoff of Federal Express or UPS, only without all the customers and
apparently safety regulations, as we had at least 15 employees out on
workers' comp at any given time. What THEY were doing when they got
hurt, I'll never know, because all I ever saw anyone do was basically
sit around and move a few boxes here and there to create the illusion
that we deserved our $7.00 an hour. My job function consisted mostly
of breaking open the occasional Nerf shipment and "playtesting" the
toys all night. Sure, that stuff was meant for someone else, but the
company's insurance would cover it. It was free Nerf as far as I was
concerned.
I decided to "quit" RPS one night (and by "quit", I mean to say that I
physically demeaned the 5' 2" late night security guard by rubbing his
head and calling him "cutie". This was met rather quickly by the blunt
end of his Mag-Lite and a veritable honor guard of an escort out of
the building), and since I had just lost my scholarship to college due
to sleeping in class all day - because of late night work, oddly
enough - and still had the futile intention to graduate, I was
desperate for a late-night solution to my funds-to-expenditure ratio
problem. I had to do SOMETHING for money. I thought about whoring my
body out to dirty old men or selling hash made from yard grass and
pencil shavings to high school kids, but I felt that as a future
writer (haha, right), I needed, for once in my life, to indulge in
something TRULY dark and evil... Something from which immeasurable
pain and embarrassment would come, so that I could have an experience
to draw upon for inspiration in the future. Naturally, Wal-Mart was
the first thing that came to mind.
I heard about the position from a friend of mine who, at his request,
shall remain nameless. He was working the early morning shift at the
time. He explained that the electronics department needed a full time
employee on the overnight shift because the last person who worked
there was caught masturbating to a Cindy Crawford workout tape at 2 AM
while the other employees were in the break room on "lunch".
I'm not kidding.
This story was quickly validated by the other employees on the shift
the day I started. In all honesty, I felt kinda bad for the poor guy.
He just felt an urge and decided to satisfy it, and I'm sure that it
didn't occur to this dynamo of analytic thought that even though he
was in the back corner of the department and it may have felt private
and fairly secure, it still placed him square in the middle of a
gigantic store chock full of security cameras (of which only 2 worked:
one of the registers and the shoe department were under constant
surveillence. The rest of the store, however, was shopliftland),
customers and employees. Once the charges were filed and he was
serving time for public exposure, I'm sure he learned his lesson and
will never ever do it again.
I decided to give it a shot, so I showed up one Wednesday at 2:00 pm
for the Wal-Mart pre-interview videocassette viewing. After that
hearty 30 minute nap, I was huddled into a corner of the room with a
manager to begin the actual interview. Believe it or not, the
interview process for Wal-Mart was pretty goddamned thorough,
especially considering the job paid 6 dollars an hour and entailed
wearing a blue schmock, cleaning up after dullards and answering, for
the 100th time in an hour, the exact same questions that should be
common sense. I cannot count the number of times this exact exchange
would take place on a given day:
Customer: "Excuse me, do you have a Toy Department?"
What I was thinking: "What??? Do we have a TOY DEPARTMENT??? What the
hell kind of question is that! This is WAL-MART, flapjack. The toy
department is only the biggest department in this store! Does that
extra chromosome impair your vision, too? Can you not see the gigantic
blue and yellow sign hanging up when you walk in the door that says
'TOYS'?!?"
What I actually said: "Yeah, it's down there."
No, I wasn't at ALL bitter.
Anyway, after a 2 hour interview, a drug test, multiple calls to the
references I listed and a 2 week waiting period, I was finally
accepted into the ranks of the Sam Walton elite: I became Joe "The
Overnight Electronics Department Employee" Peacock.
Oh sure, the title may SOUND all regal and exciting, but in reality,
the job was a complete nightmare.
First off, you absolutely must understand one crucial fact about life
- and this fact will remain constant forever: NO ONE NORMAL works the
overnight shift ANYWHERE. This is ESPECIALLY evident at Wal-Mart,
where not only are you working overnight in a gigantic wasteland of a
career path, you are doing so along side people who clean department
store floors and stock Liquid Dawn dish soap and various salty Golden
Flake snacks on shelves 8 hours a night for a living. IN GEORGIA.
These people weren't exactly what one would consider to be members of
the conversational elite. I would have believed that these people were
only a protein strand away from being considered single-celled beings,
except that it definitely takes more than one cell to produce the
smells that eminated from most of them.
Add to this conglomeration of educationally inept rednecks the fact
that they actually had quite an elaborate social structure built into
their little group, one that did NOT readily include people who
pronounce the word "green" with only one syllable or have, at any
point in their lives, read so much as the advertisement on a book of
matches.
It turned out that the overnight shift at Wal-Mart wasn't a very
stimulating work experience.
My first few weeks were rife with frustration, the likes of which I
had never experienced before and honestly haven't experienced since.
Because I was the new kid, and because I just did NOT belong in their
little social structure, I ended up the victim of several "funny"
little pranks. I was told that the electronics person on overnight had
to cover for the pet department, which was on the opposite end of the
store. I was also informed that during my down time I was to pitch in
and help other departments stock their wares. It was common for the
first few weeks to find me putting away stock that wasn't in my
department, meanwhile being paged back to my department every 10
minutes for customers who, according to the paging person, had
mysteriously "just left". Between stocking bars of Ivory, running to
my department every 10 minutes for phantom customers, and jogging over
to the pets department to scoop fish for people who had no intention
of actually purchasing them, I was pretty worn out every day when my
shift ended. It was about a month before I found out that neither the
Ivory nor the fish were my responsibility, and that since my
department was home to some of the most expensive and easily
shoplift-able items in the store, leaving my department was actually a
HUGE no-no. For all of my hard work and willingness to "pitch in"
around the various departments, I received a big fat "Needs
Improvement" on my 1 month probationary report - which, oddly enough,
only bothered me because of the idea that Wal-Mart actually had
1-month probationary reports for people doing such mundane tasks.
Once I learned the truth about my "extra duties" and subsequently told
those who asked me to do them to "fuck themselves", things kind of
leveled out and became actually quite simple for me. My daily routine
eventually ran as follows: I would arrive at the store about 10 pm,
help the 3rd shift person clean up, receive my stock about midnight,
put it all away by 1:00, and kick back and watch the brand-new digital
satellite tv network that had just come out, or some of the latest in
this new movie technology called "DVD" while doing my homework until 6
AM, when I left the store for class. I was becoming quite happy with
my routine, despite the fact that I was surrounded by undereducated
redneck mollusks who, while I was watching movies and the brand new
MTV2 network, were busy stocking detergent and mops that they, just a
few months prior, had a gullible and eager-to-please college kid do
for them while they sat in the back room and turned the walls yellow
with their 3 pack-a-day tobacco habit.
This is when things started going downhill.
As time progressed, my manager started noticing discrepancies on my
inventory reports every morning. Every night when I took over the
shift, I had a little note that reminded me to check the battery count
again or verify that the film count matched up with the printout,
because the rack was off by 1. I would count and count again, and the
counts would match exactly with the ones on the little inventory
printout I had just received from our handy dandy computer terminal.
It baffled me, why this man would keep insisting that I verify counts
on the inventory he had apparently counted just that morning, but I
didn't really pay much attention to it. I didn't spend too many cycles
wondering why the almighty computer system at a discount department
store was screwing up numbers. I figured "It's one goddamn roll of
film in one Wal-Mart. It costs four bucks. Our profit last year was in
the tens of millions. Sam WILL get over this."
But this was not a problem that faded away easily. More and more
inventory began disappearing overnight from my department with no
apparent cause. Over time, a roll of film or a pack of batteries
turned into several rolls or packs, which then graduated to video
games, printer cartridges, and eventually a television. It truly made
no sense to me, but every single evening I would get increasingly
terse notes that stated that certain areas of our inventory were
experiencing unaccounted for reductions. I would watch the department
like a hawk: Not a single customer made it in and out of the
department on my shift without my eyes glued directly to them, and I
never ONCE saw any of them scanning the area nervously while shoving a
television in thier knickers. The morning shift employee arrived at
5:30 AM for register count and shift change, So the theft couldn't be
taking place between our shifts. The disappearances were absolutely
not happening. Nonetheless, inventory was apparently vanishing from
the shelves every morning and reappearing every evening when I started
my shift. One morning, I was confronted by the overnight manager about
this situation. I, of course, was completely mystified and had no clue
what exactly was taking place. I walked over to the offending aisle of
printer cartridges and demonstrated for him that the count matched
EXACTLY with what was on his new morning printou… hmm. That's odd. It
actually WAS off by one. No one had even come into my department that
evening. There was no way possible that any of the inventory could
have left the department that evening. Something, somewhere, stunk.
Badly.
After a day or 2 of asking around on the overnight shift, the morning
manager, not surprisingly, received absolutely horrible reviews of my
performance from the other employees. The part that really fried my
turkey was the fact that the overnight manager, Darius, supported the
claims of the overnight staff that not only was I lazy but I was also
pilfering the stock for personal gain. I was FURIOUS! I did my job and
I did it well! I mean, come on... How can one suck at watching free
satellite TV?Many times an evening he would stop by and tell me so.
Why, all of a sudden, would he confirm such manure by these losers? I
explained my case - nay, pleaded - to the morning manger, to no avail.
Unfortunately, when an entire overnight shift at a Wal-Mart hates you
and their opinions get confirmation from the shift manager, anything
you say to anyone who isn't there to see the comedy of errors take
place just is NOT going to believe you.
Which leads to a deeper, darker secret than working at Wal-Mart: I,
Joe The Peacock, was actually FIRED from Wal-Mart. I would say only a
retard could get fired from Wal-Mart, but this isn't true: even the
door greeter with Down's Syndrome who once bit a female customer's
inner left thigh and refused to let go was still employed. I was
completely mortified.
I visited the store the following week to pick up my final paycheck,
where I met up that nameless friend from wayyyy up there in the
beginning, the one who initially tipped me off about the opening in
the first place. He had heard all the rumors and gossip, and
fortunately he was pretty tight with a few of the overnight employees.
Conversation naturally ensued and I discovered that, in an attempt to
frame me for theft, some of those magnificent meat-heads were using
the inventory gun to go in and scan items, then increasing the
inventory by 1 in the computer every morning for the morning printout
so that it looked like we had unaccounted for shrinkage in inventory.
Pretty crafty, I must say, especially since at that time the inventory
system didn't record what time a change was made if it had been
manually entered. It only paid attention when things were scanned in
from the truck or scanned out at the register and went out the door.
The worst part of the entire conversation came when it was revealed
that the overnight manager, Darius, who works at the Morrow Wal-Mart,
was actually in on the whole scam as well (I only mention his name for
literary effect. I would never encourage anyone to take this
information and look up the phone number for the Morrow Wal-Mart and
call to tell that shithead how much he sucks).
The only validation of my personal character came when I asked him
what I had done to piss them off so badly. He replied: "Dude, you
didn't do anything. These are simple people who are not worthy of your
hatred. You don't belong in a job like Wal-Mart. Everyone knows it.
One day, you will become a famous writer and amass a huge following.
People will adore you and look at you as an influence for themselves
and their children. Statues will be erected in your honor. A car will
be named after you. You will eventually evolve into pure energy and
understand the true nature of God."
He really did say that. Honestly. No kidding. You could ask him
yourself, but since he DID ask me not to reveal his identity, I can't
give out his name, so you can't ask him. He can never ever deny that
he said any of these things. My word is law. Disbelieve at your own
peril.
Truly, hearing all of this stuff about the conspiracy made me a bit angry.
Naturally, when anger is involved, revenge is not very far behind. At
least, in my world it's not.
I truly felt that a company who would engage in these nefarious
practices deserved some heavy duty payback. After our conversation, I
went home to plot out one of the most glorious plans for revenge ever
conceived - well, maybe not ever conceived by, like, everyone.. but
definitely the most glorious ever conceived by ME.
I need to make it absolutely clear that for legal reasons, neither Joe
Peacock nor Mentally Incontinent can recommend that anyone ever
reenact the following descriptions of my actions If anyone chooses to
take it upon themselves to reenact the following plan, we cannot be
held liable for the outcome. (We do, however, heartily endorse them if
you do them. We won't accept responsibility for your actions, but we
WILL send you some awesome greeting cards and pat you on the back once
you are released from jail.)
The day after Thanksgiving is notorious for being the single busiest
shopping day of the entire year. Naturally, every single Wal-Mart
store in the nation is completely swamped with parents hoping to find
great deals on stupid toys that their children will completely destroy
within 4 minutes of opening the package. This fact does not stop them
from coming in DROVES to hand over their hard earned money for the
cheaply made knickknacks. Knowing this, I set upon planning the
ultimate revenge which would take place on that infamous day.
Being the guy who set up just about everything in that department for
almost 7 months, A few small advantages were mine and mine alone. For
instance, I was the only one who knew the lock out codes for the
DirecTV system, which was located in the demo cabinet that was
actually a floor model of an entertainment center we sold in the
furniture department. Along with the DirecTV system was the demo DVD
player (which happened to play Video CD's that could be made on a
personal computer, should one feel so inclined) and demo VCR.
Incidentally, I was the only employee that even knew that there were
keys for that cabinet because one evening I opened the cabinent to
find keys hanging from a staple on the inside of the unit. I grabbed
them and put them on my keyring, figuring that since I was pretty much
the only person here capable of reading the labels on the buttons and
therefore was the only one who would ever access the cabinet that they
would come in handy. We never ever locked the cabinet, so i quickly
forgot the keys even existed. Very conveniently, I happen to
accidentally keep those keys after I left the company (the only copy
of those keys, actually, which adds to the overall humor). I also
happened to be the only one with all the CMOS and screensaver
passwords to all the demo PC's in the department. My major advantage
was the knowledge that, while there were 2 department phones present
on the counters near the registers, there was actually a 3rd line that
was active but unused under the main CD rack in the center of the
department.
Thanksgiving night, the store closed from 4:00 pm until 12:00 am. At
12:01 am, I entered the store and began working on my plan. The
morning manager never got around to filling my position, and 80% of
the workforce had the night off for the holiday, so the store was
literally my playground.
First, I glided over to the demo machine cabinet and verified that it
was unlocked, It was, just as I figured It would be, since I was the
only one with keys. I immediately attacked the DirecTV system, locking
out every channel except for "The Hot Network", a hardcore pornography
channel which I then ordered a full day of programming for. While in
the cabinet, I inserted a special Video CD I had burned that afternoon
especially for this occasion into the demo DVD unit, then I put a
special VHS tape I made into the VCR. I turned off all the units so
that the screens for the televisions would just show black. I then
locked the demo cabinet up and stole all the remotes for the systems
from the front drawer. After that, I turned up the volume on every
single TV to Max. I moved on over to the PCs and changed a few
settings on all of them, then rebooted them to lock the passwords in.
Finally, I took a cordless telephone from the department and plugged
it into the aforementioned vacant store phone jack, hiding the base of
the unit with boxes of inventory. I ran over to the pharmacy section
to plug in the remote charger and phone receiver so that it would be
fully charged for the next morning. Everything in place, I left the
store with a gigantic smile on my face.
Naturally, the store was FLOODED starting at 6:00 am that morning, the
time at which all the special sales were to begin. The traffic in and
out of the store was absolutely astounding. There were lines
specifically to wait for a place in line for the registers. Around
11:00 am, I showed up and easily breezed through the store. Due to the
volume of customers in the store, I blended right in. Not a single
person there recognized me at all. I went over to my rigged
electronics department to do a final survey of the area. All the
televisions were on, screens black, a small message at the bottom of
the screen said "signal unavailable". All of the demo PC's had rolled
over to their screensavers, which scrolled in blue text on a red
background "I AM A LUCKY COMPUTER! TAKE ME HOME!". Moving the mouse or
using the keyboard would not disable the screensaver since it had a
password. Everything looked ready.
I ran over to my secret hiding area in the pharmacy, the only
department not completely ravished by the holiday shopping crowd, and
pulled out the cordless phone. I tested it, it worked.. I entered the
code for an overhead page and blew into the receiver a few times. Lo
and behold, my little puffs were clearly audible over the intercom.
It was time for the festivities to begin.
Using the paging system I had just hijacked, I announced in a clear
and resounding tone: "Greetings, Wal-Mart holiday shoppers! Thank you
so much for coming out this wonderful day to take advantage of our
special deals! One of our unadvertised specials is taking place RIGHT
NOW! For the next 30 minutes in the electronic department, if you see
a computer with a message scrolling across that says ""I AM A LUCKY
COMPUTER! TAKE ME HOME!", that computer's model is 70% off the already
low sale price! These computers are first come, first serve, so hurry
to the electronics department and as always, thank you for shopping
Wal-Mart."
The flood gates opened.
I made my way along with hordes of bargain hunters to the electronics
department to witness the lucky shoppers search for the computer
models that were "on sale". Astounding! Every single machine had a
demo model which scrolled the magic phrase! Wal-Mart's policy is to
honor any advertised price, and in-store announcements certainly
qualified as an advertisement, so this would naturally put a gigantic
dent in their normal operational activity. But my actual intention was
not to screw Wal-Mart on the price of their crappy Acer and Packard
Bell computers; it was to build an audience for the actual revenge.
As the department reached a capacity bordering on critical, I pulled
out my stolen remotes for the demo units and turned all 3 of them on.
Immediately, the top row of televisions, at full volume, flipped to
images from the DirecTV system which was locked on hardcore
pornography, the middle tier of televisions were showing images from
the VCR which contained a movie cleverly entitled "Where The Boys
Aren't Volume 12 - Sorority Sleep Over", and the bottom row of
televisions were playing footage from the DVD system which contained a
Video CD chock full of downloaded German "Scheiße" films from various
newsgroups across Usenet (if you don't know what 'Scheiße' means,
click here for a translation. It's German. You can figure out how to
do the rest.).
There is absolutely no way I can describe the resulting chaos better
than you are probably imagining it, so I will leave it alone,
mentioning only that I barely managed to crawl out of the store
because I was doubled over from laughter.
What a happy holiday season I had that year.
I heard later from my nameless friend that the store had to honor the
"advertised" sale on all of the computers and that the television
"wall o' filth" actually played at full volume for the better part of
an hour, as the department was so packed with spectators that
employees could barely move through to the demo cabinet, which they
obsessed over unlocking instead of simply turning off the televisions.
Overall, the panic and unrest went on for longer than 6 hours. He
continued working there, and about 6 months after that glorious and
most holy event, he told me that they still hadn't figured out how I
had hijacked the paging system. I have been tempted to pull the entire
stunt once again, but in my efforts to leave the store, I neglected to
take the charger for the phone with me, and the battery has long since
died.
The best part of it all: They accidentally paid me for another 2 weeks
after I had been fired. A few weeks after mailing me the check for the
work I didn't actually ever clock in for, they sent a letter
explaining that this was an error in the payroll system and requested
that I send the money back.
I wrote the word 'Scheiße' with a chocolate bar on the letter and
mailed it back, wondering if they would get the joke. I then put the
money into a tech-heavy stock portfolio which about a year ago lost
every cent that it made for me.
Oh well. Easy come, easy go.
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