I first heard about the Wal-Mart position from a friend of mine who
was working the early morning shift at the famous discount retailer.
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 goofing off in the break room.
Sadly, I'm not kidding.
I was in college and needed the money, so I showed up one Wednesday
at 2:00 pm for the Wal-Mart interview. Believe it or not, the interview
process for Wal-Mart was pretty thorough, especially considering the
job paid $6.00 an hour and entailed wearing a blue schmock, cleaning
up after dullards, and answering the same questions hundreds of times
per hour.
Customer: "Excuse me, do you have a toy department?"
What I would think: "Do we have a TOY DEPARTMENT!? What
the hell kind of question is that?! This is WAL-MART, flapjack. Can
you not see the gigantic blue and yellow sign hanging up when you walk
in the door that says 'TOYS'?!?"
What I would say: "Yeah, sure. It's down there."
Anyway, after a grueling two-hour interview, a drug test, multiple calls
to my references, and a two-week waiting period, I was finally accepted
into the ranks of the Sam Walton elite: I became Joe "The Overnight
Electronics Department Employee" Peacock.
The job was a complete nightmare.
First, NO ONE NORMAL works the overnight shift ANYWHERE. This is ESPECIALLY
true at Wal-Mart, a gigantic wasteland of career options, where you
are working alongside people who restock Liquid Dawn dish soap and Golden
Flake snacks eight hours a night for a living. IN GEORGIA. Surprisingly,
this conglomeration of educationally inept rednecks 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.
 The
first few weeks were extremely frustrating. Because I was the new kid,
and because I did not belong among their kind, I ended up the victim
of several "funny" little pranks. For instance, I was told
that the electronics person had to cover for the pet department, which
was on the opposite end of the store. I was also informed that whenever
possible, I should pitch in and help other departments stock their wares.
It was common to find me putting away stock that wasn't in my department,
being paged back to my department every ten minutes for customers who,
according to the paging person, had mysteriously "just left."
It was about a month before I found out that neither the Ivory nor the
fish were my responsibility, and for all of my hard work and willingness
to "pitch in," I received a big fat "Needs Improvement"
on my one-month probationary report.
Once I learned the truth about my "extra duties" and subsequently
told those who asked me to do them to "go fuck themselves,"
things became quite simple for me. I would arrive at the store about
10:00 PM, help the third-shift person clean up, receive my stock about
midnight, put it all away by 1:00, then kick back and watch digital
satellite TV or DVDs while doing my homework until 6:00 AM, when I left
the store for class. I was becoming quite happy with my routine, despite
the fact that I was surrounded by uneducated 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 smoked.
Which is when things started going downhill.
Next: things go downhill!
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