Required Field

I read in a book today that businesses are using social media to make connections, develop relationships, and get clients from online sources.

But whenever I see that one of my Facebook friends 'likes' Wal-Mart, I don't see that as a good thing or a marketing tool.
I'm more like:

Do my "friends" really like going to this artificially-lit warehouse of chaos and screaming children infiltrated by clincally depressed "employees"?

I put employees in quotes because it's rare when you see a person in a navy blue shirt and khaki pants actually working (i.e. actually stocking shelves as opposed to leaving huge boxes in the middle of a really crowded aisle).
They're usually too busy standing around flapping their humongous lips to their fraaaaaaaaaand who's smacking her humongous lips back. Or they're standing around being a 'greeter', which is synonomous to pacing awkwardly around the front of the store and glaring and sometimes grunting at customers.

Or do my "friends" like Wal-Mart because it is the only seemingly reasonably priced supermarket in town (e.g. Statesboro)?

"Low price leader."

Every time Mike and I have to go to Wal-Mart because the item is not carried at Kroger, Publix, the Dollar Tree, or Dollar General, I get very sad and whiney.
Like a child going to ... well, anywhere, really.

And then there are the fire-fighters/middle school girls basketball team/PETA representatives who stand right outside the doors to solicit funds, turning an already terrible experience into an awkward one.
The key here is to avoid eye contact.
Or enter through the side door.

But THEN there are the solicitors INSIDE the store who are unvoidable.
Like the DirectTV people.
"Yo dawg - I heard you like to buy things, so we decided to sell things where you buy things, so you could buy things while you buy things!"

And we already have DirectTV.
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!??!!??
DO I REALLY HAVE TO TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW?!?!?

And I would feel relieved whenever I finally exit the store if it weren't for the parking lot.
Oh, the parking lot.
I have yet to have been to a Wal-Mart with a decent parking lot.
The one in Pooler actually hires a mall cop - or the social equivalent- to scuttle around in a white SUV, waste gas, and not do anything productive.
A common theme of Wal-Mart.

Also, am I the only one who's picked up on how Wal-Mart seems to exclusively serve obese customers?
This is so invariably true that Mike and I have actually substitued the word for "fat" or "obese" with "Wal-Mart".
So when you go to the pool, and you see something in a bikini that shouldn't be in a bikini, you say, "It was so Wal-Mart at the pool today."
And Mike knows exactly what I mean.

And I could go on for hours of how awful the whole Wal-Mart franchise thing is.
Whether its the interminable check-out lines, how people still haven't grasped the utility of enter/exit signs, or the tornado-sodomized state of their inventory, there is always something dysfunctional about how that store operates.

So, no, I don't think Wal-Mart is anything to be like-ing.

My life is average,
TWS