Hot Mess Mcgees

So, the site People of Walmart is a hilarious way to pass the time and see the various beasts who trudge through the Wal-Marts across our nation. As someone from Indiana, I’m here to tell you that I don’t need Wal-Mart to see those kinds of hot messes walking around.

My MOH,  my MoRo, and I worked at a grocery store in good ol’ Elkhart, Indiana, the hot mess capital of the world. We used to deal with the most atrocious kinds of people and situations in the world. (That statement was an exaggeration… ish.)

Rose Red. She was the most infamous customer we had at Martin’s Supermarket. Rose Red wasn’t her name, just her wine of choice. She was one of the fattest people I have ever seen still to this day. She would start her shopping venture in the alcohol section and pick up a few bottles of Rose Red. While she shopped, she would crack open the bottles and drink as she shopped. After paying with food stamps, she would sit on the bench in the lobby awaiting her cab and crying about her life. Many times, she would beckon me and request that I go buy her a few more bottles of wine while she waited for the cab…  I was 16.

My Mexican Stalker. I personally thought I looked like a 12 year old boy throughout high school, but this man (he was 5’4″ish and 30 to 40 years old) thought I was hot stuff. He would come into the store and just watch me ring up groceries, and he always asked my managers when I was off work. On the rare occasion that he was actually there to shop, he only came through my line no matter how long my line was or how little he had. My favorite day (other than when he was banned from the store for being a creep) was when he asked me if I wanted to go to a party with him. He said he would pick me up and take me there… on his bike.

The Grocery Thieves. During our 2.5 years working at Martin’s, there were a lot of petty theft incidents. One such incident stands out. This woman came into the store and shoved meat, produce, canned goods, etc into her clothes and headed towards the door. Martin’s policy was to allow the thieves to step out of the door into the lobby before the security officer nabbed them.  This patron noticed the security officer waiting for her as she headed towards the door. Instead of running out of the store, she sprinted back in towards the grocery aisles. She started emptying her stolen goods and throwing them at the aisles. The police came to get her boyfriend who was outside in the getaway car, but he drove off and abandoned her. As my MOH put it, “Who steals from a store then runs back in to the store?”

The Meat Lady. This particular lady I never experienced first hand. She used a motorized cart and required assistance while shopping, how lucky for my MOH.  At the deli counter, the Meat Lady ordered hundreds of dollars in meat cuts. They continued shopping for about an hour during which the ML told the MOH many disturbing stories. At the conclusion of getting her groceries, however, ML decided she didn’t want any of the deli meat cuts anymore, so they  returned all hundreds of dollars of it. Throughout the shopping endeavor, she kept talking about her dog that passed… because she killed it.

Jobs. One of the worst parts of being a bagger at Martin’s was Jobs.  This meant that you came in from 6-9PM (it took me till 10:30) to clean the restrooms and take out the trash. There was one time where the customer missed the toilet altogether; I refused to clean the lone turd off the ground, of course. Another time (the last time I did Jobs), a woman had pooped so much that the toilet was just feces, no water.  I held my breath and went at it with a  plunger. The poop did not go done, no sir. It came right on up… and out. I went to my manager who said that I needed to mop up the doody water. Did I? Hell naw.

Seeing the People of Wal-Mart website definitely makes me laugh. But, it also makes me shudder. It makes me remember the many Martin’s customers whom one could classify as “hot mess Mcgees.” Can you imagine what is going through the minds of people who decide their apparel decisions are a good idea? Scary image.

H, out.

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MoRo addition:

“You forgot about the time I had to lift a “little person” into her SUV…..Or the time a lady came in and needed someone to help her pick out the right eggs because she was “mostly blind”, and then proceeded to drive herself home.”