Shopping

Megan will tell you that I am surprisingly one of the most opinionated, difficult and pickiest shoppers you will find. When it comes down to it, there's some stores that I love to go to and others that I loathe and would drive way out of my way to avoid. Recently my list of places to avoid has seemingly common themes. I will tell you the stores, and you tell me if you can relate to what I think they have in common...

The stores I hate shopping at are:

1. Wal-Mart
2. Lowes
3. Walgreens

SUDDEN DISCLAIMER: If you or anyone you deeply and lovingly care for works at these stores and if you are easily offended, please don't read past this point. I have a lot of inner grief that will be relieved through this post.

What they have in common:

1. Unhelpful Staff
2. Unfriendly Staff
3. Never quite the right item
4. Cheap crap from China (identical items across the stores)
   
5. A million cash registers that aren't open
6. What I need is always in the far back corner of the store
7. Bad reputation

Since they have so much in common, it is a common misunderstanding that Wal-Mart owns Lowes and Walgreens, but I guess they don't.

Though I find shopping at theses stores extremely frustrating and un-enjoyable, I make it a point to go there one or twice a year so I don't forget why it is that I don't like going there. In fact, on Saturday I was really worn out from doing sprinkler work but needed more parts to finish up and since the Lowes is closer than the Home Depot, I thought I would go there. This is what ensued:

1. As I parked the car some other person in a whitetrashmobile was trying to leave the parking lot by pulling straight through my chosen spot. It was awkward, but I didn't back down cause I totally got there first.
   
2. I entered the store and was immediately surrounded by a barrage of ugly and worthless seasonal lawn decorations. There was so many, I was suddenly overcome with bewilderment and fear as if I was being entertained by a group of angry clowns that were closing in on me from all directions, closer and closer...
3. I regrouped my thoughts and then said OK, I know where the sprinklers are at Home Depot, they are near the front and very easy to find. So I walked toward that area of Lowes, but no, there were no signs indicating sprinklers in that area of the store. I quickly turned around and walked toward the clown mob, thinking that sprinklers are somewhat seasonal and they might be near the rest of the seasonal garden equipment.
   
4. I searched row after row of foul cheap imported garden decorations and by then I could smell the clown halitosis and I got dizzy.
5. Just then I saw someone carrying forth sprinkler parts from the back corner of the store. My beacon in a sea of grossness, I headed toward thence he came.
   
6. After passing light bulbs, vacuum parts, shower inserts and toilet bowls, I finally found the sprinkler parts along a dark aisle in the back corner of the store.
   
7. The selection was very disappointing. I found some of what I needed. What else I needed was a RainBird rotary head (part number 22SA) that is interchangeable with the 1800 series bodies that I bought a few weeks ago. After diligently searching I found they had the rotary head already connected to a body. But all I needed was the head!!!! I was getting frustrated.
   
8. I picked up the head+body and walked around 25% of the store looking for someone to help me. No one. Not a soul.
   
9. Finally, I met an "associate" that was heading toward the back break room or something. I asked him if they sell just the head. He said, "if we don't have it over there then we don't." Oh c'mon! What kind of a stupid answer is that? I told him again that I had looked all over and not seen it, but I wanted to know for sure because I didn't need to buy the body and just wanted the head.
   
10. So he did what must be basic "Hello, I-work-at-Lowe's-and-I'm-an-idiot" training and he radioed for backup.
    
11. Another "associate" came after a while, who knows where he was hiding, and I told him my same predicament. He had to look at the shelves but then told me it came in the head+body package only. I told him Home Depot had it as a head only and he didn't care. He didn't even offer a price match. At Home Depot they will do that and they will take Lowes' coupons.
    
12. Then I walked all the way back to the front of the store, past the toilets, shower inserts, vacuum parts, light bulbs and hideous garden decorations to find that all 35 cash registers were closed except for the self-checkouts. I hate self-checkouts. Have you ever tried to buy a lot of tiny, seemingly weight-less sprinkler parts at a self check-out? I hate those scales. One time only the self check-outs were open and I was buying really heavy bags of gravel and I was so mad that a real person wasn't available to help me that I totally piled all the gravel on those stupid bagging scales and I jacked that machine up good. Next time I will sit on it and jump on it if doesn't work good. HA!
13. Anyway, I am angry.
    
14. The lady that was helping the self checkouts was scary looking
15. I left the store and came home and finished my sprinklers and stayed out working on them under some big halogen lights til midnight. It was like a football field, it was so cool. Then I was really tired. While I was doing that Megan went to Walgreen's to get a prescription and they were closed before the closing time listed on the door and then she got really mad and she swore.
16. then today we went to Wal-Mart, but we decided to go to the new one in Cedar Hills and that one was not ghetto like the others. It was ok but the price check scanner in the middle of the aisle wasn't working so I unplugged it and after a few minutes it worked again. It was an OK Wal-Mart visit.
    

So now we don't have any more money, but it's ok because we don't like shopping at those stores.

END OF RAMBLINGS

fhe

We went to Liberty Land to play mini golf for family night. It was a ton of fun. Liberty Land is an amusement park like a mini-Lagoon except Liberty Land actually has a theme where Lagoon just makes me think of sad teenagers doing bad things. Anyway, it's right by our house and Monday night is half off after 6:00 so you can do lots of fun stuff for pretty cheap.

I thought I would make a video to show something pretty cool inspired by tonight. Check it out. Turn up your sound and go to full screen if available:

Clark Howard?

The other day I was driving home from the grocery store and the Clark Howard radio show came on and I was captivated. I was completely enthralled. When I got home I sat in the driveway, in the dark and listened to his show. Most of his advice is pretty simple, but is so smart. I love it!

And I've been craving a Subway sandwich for like 2 weeks.

Economics by Dan

I want to blog, but then I think about how long it will take to write a bunch of stuff out and then I think, "No, I'm too lazy to spend that much time finding and referencing sources to make myself sound smart". So here is a quick thought with no proof of real founding:

Sometime last week Warren Buffet, who apparently knows a lot about money, said something like that we are not yet out of the recession and it will take a little while longer, but things will be better than ever when we come out of it.

I started thinking about that and I agree. I think that we can look at the car manufacturing industry as an example of what he means. The following explains my hope of how this will happen.

To this point in my life I have been a Toyota and Honda guy. I've owned 3 different Toyotas and 2 different Honda's and I loved every single one of them. But you know what car we had that we hated? It was a Saturn. That thing was too cheaply made. Sure it got decent gas mileage but that was only due to 90% of it being made plastic (that's an exaggeration), having a tiny engine and being a 5 speed manual.

When we were done with the Saturn we could only get $500 out of it. My Toyota truck died in the same fashion and we got more than 6 times that much out of it. Then our Honda Accord died and we got $1,000 out of that one. The resale/scrap value is one example of why it doesn't make sense to pay big bucks for an American car when you can pay the same amount for a nice foreign car.

Additionally, in my experience, ALL the Fords/Mercury's that I have driven or had family members that drove had electrical system problems. The seats in most Dodge's seem to be molded for short, fat Americans and they have issues with transmissions, steering mechanics or overheating. General Motors vehicles are cheaply made with bad plastic trims and are ugly. Any General Motors car that is decent looking gets horrible gas mileage. If anyone's interested, ask me, and I can explain my personal experience with these problems.

So back to how things are going to be better than ever… For Dodge and General Motors to come back and thrive, they need a restructuring much like pushing a master RESET button to wipe everything out and start all over. It seems in the past people bought their cars because their deceased grandfather was a steel mill worker and if they bought foreign he would haunt them from the grave. The car companies can't rely on stuff like that anymore. Consumers have to be smarter when the economy is tough and being ”American-Made” now envelopes many more manufacturers including Honda and Toyota.

Once Dodge and General Motors have a completely clean slate, they need to create cars in comparable quality to Honda and Toyota and then they need to develop the technology to have the absolute best gas mileage. If they can do that, people will want their cars for the same reasons they buy foreign. The foreign auto makers will then have to develop the same technology for even better cars and the race will go on. Pretty simple, but I think this is the exact kick in the pants that this industry needs. And that is why I believe that things will be better than ever when we get out of the recession.