Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Smelly Shoes

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Remember this post? Where I talked about how I hate WalMart, but went shopping there anyway? Well, I thought about doing this follow-up post, and after hearing the story, my family convinced me to blog about it. So here ya go.

After braving all the holiday shoppers and lines two weeks before Christmas, I went to work the following Monday excited to show my office what we had purchased for the families we were sponsoring. I took over our conference room, proudly displaying the clothing, books, toys, gift cards, etc. on the conference room table so that everyone could see what they had contributed money toward. As I was setting everything out, one of my coworkers came in to admire all the gifts. She noticed the shoe boxes and wanted to see the shoes we had purchased. I immediately told her how we had tried to find shoes that would be considered "cool" for a 13 and 14 year old and opened one of the boxes of shoes. I was astonished to see that the shoes inside the box were not the ones advertised on the outside of the box, but were dirty, holey, SMELLY, used shoes. I almost vomited from the smell. Just my luck. I've never purchased a pair of shoes without trying them on, let alone not opening the box, but WalMart only had like one or two options in size 10 1/2, so I just put the box in my cart. I know, I know, it wasn't exactly WalMart's fault that I bought used shoes (they were the ones that got ripped off by another customer), but they didn't open the box either! Needless to say, I had to go back to WalMart to exchange the shoes. I sure am glad my co-worker wanted to see what the shoes looked like - can you imagine if we had just wrapped the box and sent it off to be opened on Christmas morning??? Just one more reason why I hate WalMart!

4 comments:

MaiTy said...

That is SO funny! ....and it's only funny because you caught the mistake... you're right- it would have been really sad if some boy got used shoes....But how FUNNY!!

Nancy said...

That is so gross... but funny too. Merry Christmas!

siredge said...

Any retailer could have had someone walk in, try on a pair of shoes, put the old ones back in the box, and walk out. Maybe there is something I missed that implicated Walmart to a greater degree?

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas (your post indicates you did).

Kimberly said...

Bryce, I have lots of friends and family that shop at WalMart. My intent on sharing wasn't to convince other people not to shop at WalMart, it was just to share a funny/gross/frustrating experience that happened to me... I know this could have happened to anyone, and I know it wasn't WalMart's fault that someone ripped them off (although every other retailer I have ever purchased shoes from has opened the box at the time of checkout to confirm the shoes), but my experience didn't make me like WalMart any better! It's like a few years ago when I took a bite of Papa John's pizza and bit into a screw that I guess had fallen off the oven door. I know that could have happened at any pizza place, but I haven't eaten there since!