Last month, I went into W*M to buy an inexpensive digital camera for my daughter, and I asked the person working the camera counter which additional memory chip to get to replace the worthless one that comes with all new digital cameras. She assured me that such-n-such was what I needed, so I bought one for $85.00, payed for everything, and went home. Opened up the box, saw that the extra chip was the wrong kind, so drove back in, went to the appropriate returns desk, gave the receipt and the unopened package, and went and exchanged it for the right one. I was held up by the store door man - 'security' guy, some poor geezer well into his 80's with a cane, for 30 minutes while they checked to see if I had pulled a switcheroo. I think he was more annoyed than I was, and offered me a chair. Anyway, reason to add to the thread is I read of a new t-shirt on the market, something about "Every time you shop at Walmart, God kills a kitten"

When one WalMart is bad, do not blame all of the stores. Period! I work at a WalMart store in Oklahoma and its currently the largest Supercenter store in the state. Yes, thats right, I work in the Pets department overnight. This is a really tough decision on my work hours. I like working at nights, because it pays more, but I want to work during the day, because I want to be around more customers to teach them more about fishes. I stock the Pets department, but I do assist customers with fishes. Its a real challenge, because of right now, I am basically deaf without the use of my hearing aid and all my life, I've been wearing my hearing aid and was able to hear great as other people can, but there is a problem right now in my ear, so its tough. I can speak to people very clearly and I try to read their lips and when neccessary, I have them to write down on paper. All stores that sells fish are bound to have a dead fish here and there... thats perfectly normal. One night, this customer was an idiot, actually very rude somewhat. He wanted the entire tank of a specific fish that cost 5, 10, or 15 cents each (cant remember at the moment), so I went ahead to net out all of the fishes, but let one fish in the tank, because it had some kind of fungus. I told him that the one fish is bad. I went ahead to prepare the fishes into the bag and while I was doing that, he went ahead and netted the sick fish out and I tried to tell him, but he wouldnt listen and he put the sick fish in the bag. I went ahead to tie up the bag and note the price and amount of fishes, but I did not add the sick fish to the total price. While I was doing that, he went ahead to net up 4 dollars worth of goldfishes that costs 15 cents each and I told him that I will do that. He wouldnt listen and by the time he was finished, I prepared the fishes into the bag and then he went and got some more and put it in the bag. I tried to count the fishes in total and estimated it to be 50 fishes, which came to about $7.50. He wouldnt listen to me and he wanted things his way. There was this one night, I spent nearly an hour educating a lady on fishes and tank care. She ended up on picking two fancy goldfish and the alage eater that sticks to the tank glass. After everything was done, about an hour or so later, when I walked by the fish tanks, I noticed two bags in the sink. I was shocked, she changed her mind at the checkout. Made me furious. Its alot of stress a fishes to net them out and bag them. Another night, this guy wanted several fishes, which was divided up into two bags. After all was done, he came back about 15 minutes later, saying the prices on the bags came off, so I wrote it on the bags again. Later that night, my coworker brought the two bags back and dumped the fishes back into the tank. What is wrong with these customers?! Anywayz, I still work there and I still enjoy educating people on fishes and tank care. Just because there is a lazy associate at a store, the entire company should not be blamed. Its very simple to talk with the store manager about whatever. PetsMart is a good place and they have much more selections. WalMart is good, but not enough selections. Petsmart is generally more expensive but there are some fishes here and there thats cheaper than WalMart. There are PetCo stores in this state, but I have no clue where they are. I've seen commericals, but they failed to show the locations of the stores. So, I have no clue about PetCo. Anywayz, all of these stores sell good and healthy fishes with top technology fish tanks. It all comes down to the services of each associates for each stores.

Glenda, I see this is an old post, but I am doing some research for school and ran across it, but I will fill you in on the chicken situation at Walmart. They do not come in frozen, they come in on ice fresh from the packers. They are however, preseasoned. They are then put into the rotisserie and cooked. When they are put on the floor to sell they are freshly cooked, ok sometimes overcooked because of complaints of them not being done. However, they are temped before packaging and put on the floor. After that three hour time frame they are brought off the floor and put into a flash freezer to stop the heat. This does cause them to get frozen. They are then repackaged in new packaging and placed in the refrigerator at a low temperature to keep bacterial growth from beginning. The next morning, they are then put out in the cold section of the deli at a reduced rate. Since the chickens are a hot seller, usually by the time the new ones come out of the oven, the old ones are already gone. So what probably happened is you got one that was off of the last run for the night and that is why it was still frozen inside since it had not had time to thaw completely. I will say thought the best deal is to get there early enough in the evening for the last run of chickens that end up getting marked to half price if they are not sold by closing.

Well, I hope that someone found it, bought it and took it home with them where it hopefully is someplace warm and frost-free/freeze-free. My big tomato plant is happily residing upstairs in the spare room right beside a south-facing window. I talk to it, thump its blossoms and check its soil moisture daily. A couple of lady bugs that were attempting to overwinter by hibernating in a corner of the spare room woke up in Tuesday's hot weather and now are climbing all over the plants in the room. They must think it is Spring. I do hope the folks at Home Depot in Gainesville brought in all those plants from the garden center or covered them up with a very heavy-duty frost blanket row cover because they had hundreds and hundreds of plants in stock over the weekend. If they had moved the plants, shelving racks and all, someplace indoors it would have filled up an entire 2-car garage with little room to spare, so it was a substantial number of plants. . And, those are just the vegetables, fruits (strawberry plants) and herbs. I'm not as worried about the shrubs and perennials they had on display. On Tuesday it hit 79 degrees at our Mesonet station and 77 degrees at our house, and it didn't just feel warm, it almost felt hot. That sort of weather could give a person planting fever. The bees and the wasps were swarming all day. This morning, though, reality returned and it was 26 degrees at our house and 23 degrees at our Mesonet station this morning around sunrise. Gainesville is at a higher elevation so they might have been slightly warmer, but probably not by much. Our weather is nuts. We've had more than the usual number of grass fires the last couple of days, which is par for the course as winter deepens and fine fuels like grasses become more cured following freezing weather. I'm surprised how many plants have popped up in stores across the state this past week. Even some cool-season plants can freeze or suffer damage with temperatures in the lower 20s, especially if they just came out of a climate-controlled greenhouse before they were shipped to the stores. I just don't understand why so many stores so far north have so many plants. Of course, the stores are happy to sell the plants. And, for the folks who buy those plants and put them into the ground too early, the stores then will happily sell them replacement plants. It is a great business model for the stores---the more plants they sell early which then freeze, the more plants they sell later to replace the frozen ones.