Today, I have come to tell you about the "Wal-Mart Mystery Man", whom I encountered on a trip into a local Wal-Mart with my father just last night. Having come in from out of town, my pops and I went to dinner, had a drink, and sat around shooting the sh-t for some time. On the way home, he accompanied me on a grocery run at the nearby Wal-Mart in Addison, and that's when we found ourselves in the middle of the strangest encounter I've had in some time.
We were walking along, talking, and approaching a check-out lane with a basketful of items procured at rock-bottom prices. The clerk working the register saw us coming, and I noted the odd way his eyes seemed to light up at our approach. It was as though his entire life up until this moment had been spent training to ring up groceries, and here we were: his first customers, tossed by fate into his path to test his skills. Kinda like when the kid has to fight that sabertooth tiger in "300", only with paper towels and a barcode scanner.
"Hey, there!" he called to us, though we were just feet away.
"Hey," my dad said back. Then, turning to me, he said, "I'm gonna go use the bathroom", and off he went to take a leak.
I was left alone with (for the purposes of this story, we'll call him) "Sergio". He wore the typical Wal-Mart "Vest of Doom" overtop a button down shirt that was not living up to the promise of its name: the shirt was open at the collar, revealing far too much of a swarthy patch of chest and-- I believe-- several delicate gold chains. Sergio's appearance certainly explained why the "A-Team" van was parked out in the parking lot. As my dad walked off in the direction of the john, he came around the counter towards the cart.
I'd already started putting the items up onto the conveyor belt that moves towards the cash register, but Sergio hadn't turned it on. Once he'd sidled up next to the cart-- barcode gun in hand-- he told me, "I'm just gonna get your big items."
"Oh," I said, remembering the large case of paper towels underneath the cart. I moved to pull them out for him to scan, but he bent down quickly and beat me to it, saying, "I got it."
"Take it away, man," I said, and continued putting my groceries-- and I should note that the cart was full-- up onto the belt. Because it wasn't, y'know, moving they were starting to stack up. I was running out of room.
Sergio reached into the cart while I worked, picking up and scanning a bottle of bleach and a jug of laundry soap.
"Oh, dude, that's alright," I started saying. "I'll put 'em up there for ya."
"Oh, no," he said, grinning conspiratorialy. "When you're in my lane, I hook you up."
I stood there, unsure of how to proceed. I already had about 75% of the groceries up on the belt, but he was ignoring them and just scanning random objects that were still in the cart. Surely this wasn't how he planned on ringing all of it in-- was it?
"Hey," I tried again, "Really, I got th--"
He cut me off, again grinning and murmuring, "Take it easy, man, I got this."
Uncertainty had turned into outright confusion. People began to arrive behind me, each of them with their own large cart's worth of groceries, and a glance in the woman behind me's direction revealed that she was just as confused about Sergio's mysterious check-out routine as I was. It was at this point that my dad came wandering back over from the bathroom. As it happened, I needed to go myself-- thanks, 90 oz. glass of iced tea-- but I felt compelled to warn him before I left.
He was already looking at Sergio's progress, head tilted a bit to the side like a dog hearing a far away noise.
"I know," I said, before he said a word. "It's weird. Don't bother, I've already tried twice. Be right back."
I went to the john, and when I came back, it was obvious that my dad had just gone through the same confusing conversation with Wal-Mart's most esteemed cashier. He was standing off to the side, body language conveying one, clear emotion: "Unsure What to Do With Oneself". Behind us in line, people were just staring.
My dad and I exchanged a glance and a shrug. Sergio had now worked his way up onto the belt, and was methodically going through each item with the barcode-scanner. I knew at this point that there'd be no convincing him to stop this madness, but when I realized that more than 5 minutes had passed, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
"Wouldn't it be, like, much faster to just do it the normal way?"
My dad burst out laughing, but Sergio just kept on at his incredibly slow pace. He said, "I have a checkout time of 17 items per minute; I think I know what I'm doing."
Confusion was a distant dream at that point. Now we were in some parallel universe: up was down, black was white, groceries were being rung in at the rate of one every three and a half seconds. He wasn't even bagging them, just picking them up one at a time, hitting the trigger on the gun, putting them back down on the belt, and then moving on to the next item. It was excruciating to witness, like watching someone eat a bucket of popcorn one kernel at a time. Underwater.
"Whatta you think Sam Walton would have to say about your, uh, checkout process?" my dad asked. Sam Walton, of course, is the walking think-tank that came up with the idea for Wal-Mart. He's who you oughtta be praying to every time you get slapped in the face by UNBEATABLE PRICES when you walk past that ancient greeter out front and find yourself purchasing 18 spatulas for $10, because do you have any idea what these things cost apiece?! You'd be crazy not to buy 18 spatulas at that price! Why, you might never have to buy a spatula again, just because you made one, $10 investment! Sam Walton, you are a God.
Without missing a beat-- and I swear this is true-- Sergio replied: "Sam Walton's dead." And, as we all know, zombies have very little interest in anyone's barcode scanner strategy. All they care about is brains and farmhouses full of survivors. "F-ck unbeatable prices," says Zombie Sam Walton.
I was standing there, dumbfounded. People behind us in line were making an exodus to any other lane available, even if it meant going to the one way down on the end where they stick the cashier with the 7" fingernails and the pink weave. Perhaps ten minutes passed before Sergio began the arduous process of putting my groceries into bags, a process that I feared he would attempt alphabetically.
It was as though time had stood still in Lane 7 inside the Addison Wal-Mart, the rest of the world whizzing by, going about their business, making moves and getting sh-t done. Sergio picked up a pound of coffee, and underneath us, vast tectonic plates were shifting and colliding, forming underwater ridges and causing volcanic eruptions in distant locales. Species were thriving, dying off, new ones being introduced to the environment at large. Overhead, whole galaxies were being born, stars burning out, civilizations being created and killing themselves off. Whole generations of lives came and went, and then Sergio placed the coffee into a plastic bag. I could feel the life draining out of me.
Eventually, he finished. By this time, my father and I were speechless. We weren't sure what had just happened to us, but we knew that it was remarkable. My father and I have been through alot together over the years, but perhaps in the end it will emerge that no situation brought us closer together, bonded us more, than the time Sergio rang in our groceries at Wal-Mart.
Have you got a funny true story you'd like to spend in inordinate amount of time typing out for others to read and shrug at? If so, send an email with the details to me. We may run it on the site, fully credited to you, if it sounds worthwhile.
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