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I took a part-time job at WalMart during the holidays, talk about your momentary lapse of reason. It was seasonal, figured we could use the extra income and besides, it's WalMart, how hard could it be. Little did I know that when Dante wrote his Inferno, he was prognosticating about WalMart.

Now I have worked retail before. Not much to it, smile and be courteous, try to get that suggestive sell, make sure the shelves stay fully stocked. You can train just about anyone to do it. For my end of it, I was assigned the task of assembler. Assembler, yep, it's just what it sounds like, I assemble things, mostly bicycles. There is the occasional baby stroller and BBQ, but for the most part, just bicycles. The degree of difficulty in this task is relatively low on the skill-o-meter. Being that my daytime job is as a mechanic on heavy construction equipment, this had about zero challenge to it. The more interesting part of this job is the people that work there. A cornucopia of personalities, some of which are really frightening.

I have been out of retail for about 15 years and I really don't remember it being this way. Just like everything else, time has changed this too. I guess it's mostly me but some of the people who work there could really use some therapy. A few need to be committed, they take their jobs way too seriously and it really makes them anally retentive. There are a few of them that have wrapped themselves so tight in the WalMart philosophy that all they want is to make management and they will have reached the apex of their lives. If being a manager at WalMart is the highlight of your professional life, you just need to end it now. Trust me, if that is the peak, you've got nothing but valleys ahead of you.

There's this one person who works the same shift I do who really scares me. Now I'm about 6 feet tall and about 275 pounds, military veteran, not much gets to me. I've seen this woman having animated conversations with herself and getting angry at the outcome to point she will start yelling. Not kidding. She actually yells at herself. She came to work one day with tape over one of the lenses on her glasses, her reason, the lens popped out and she didn't want to look odd wearing a pair of glasses with only one lens. Huh?

While going through the orientation for this gig, they tell you all about their expectations of customer service. I have yet to see this applied by anyone. Most employees see a customer coming with an inquisitive look on their face

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