There are Wal-Marts aplenty where I attend school and I never really had any major objections to going there until I realized that Wal-mart is the tool of Satan himself. Never mind all the hot talk about this retail giant sucking the life out of small business owners or the fact that Wal-Mart uses what should be considered slave labor; all of these are perfectly good reasons to never shop at Wal-Mart again.

From the outside, the store has a too good to be true concept-buy everything you want at less than you'd pay anywhere else. Their commercials feature wholesome families finally going on their dream vacation because kindred Wal-Mart saved them millions of dollars. Before I had a car I was forced to do my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart whenever my roommate went and I'm ashamed I ever put anything into my body that came from that place. The produce section looks as though a bulldozer plowed through it; oranges, bananas and lettuce litter the floor. I can't even imagine how putrid the meat was. And the Great Value brand? Has anyone read the labels of this brand? Even the water has chemicals in it. I finally decided that the money I'd spend on organic was well worth it considering the medical bills from consuming Wal-Mart's shit would be much higher. Everything I've bought from that death hole has fallen apart or is about to. My TV with the built-in DVD player skips all the time, our Christmas tree stand couldn't properly hold the tree, my hamster cage broke and the layers of my shoes began peeling off. I guess I should expect nothing more from a place like that. The staff are a bunch of idiots. On one hand I feel sorry for them because they work in a glorified warehouse, but then I find it hard to pity them when I came in for one thing and wind up waiting on a line for twenty minutes because only one register is open in the entire store. Once I left a picture frame at the register. Realizing my mistake I immediately called them, which was about an hour after I had left. I told them what register I had been at and they needed all these codes to look up the purchase, then took a full two minutes "looking" for my picture frame. They couldn't find it and said I could come in to get a gift card. So I went in, and as soon as I got past the fossil they pay to greet you, I could see from about half a mile away that my picture frame was still sitting there. How they missed it was beyond me. Going to Wal-Mart is like taking a vacation in a sewer. The parking lot always looks like there was a county fair held there the night before with all the wrappers and smashed glass on the ground. As you get closer to the store, you begin to catch a hint of stale cheapness until you are finally engulfed with gigantic signs touting unbelievable prices.

I hate Wal-Mart and I don't intend on ever going back there. Just because it's cheap doesn't make it worth it; I'd rather spend my money on food that hasn't been in a can for a century and on TVs that actually work. Wal-Mart epitomizes corporate greed and the ever-popular American notion of instant gratification. We want everything when we want it for as little as possible. Burn your nearest Wal-Mart.