March 30, 2006
Another Triumph for Wal-Mart
Because I can’t stand overbearing service at stores… It seems that at Wal-Mart, they’ll let you shop in peace. FOR 41 STRAIGHT HOURS!
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — For spring break, some college students set out for sun-drenched beaches or cheap European cities. Skyler Bartels headed for the local Wal-Mart.
Bartels, 20, an aspiring writer and Drake University sophomore, thought he’d spend a week in a Wal-Mart as a test of endurance, using it as the premise for a magazine article. His college adviser liked the idea.
“I just intuitively thought, ‘This is brilliant!”‘ said Carol Spaulding-Kruse, an associate professor of English. “I wasn’t quite sure why, but it just sounded like a really good idea.”
For 41 hours, Bartels wandered the aisles of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Windsor Heights that’s open 24 hours a day. He checked out shoppers, read magazines, watched movies on the DVD display and played video games.
He bought meals at the in-store Subway sandwich shop, but was able to catch only brief naps in a restroom stall or on lawn chairs in the garden department.
Other shoppers and employees didn’t pay much attention until the end of his stay, he said, when it appeared some store greeters began to take notice — pointing at him and whispering.
A shift manager approached him and asked him if he was finding everything he needed.
“He said, ‘Didn’t I see you over by the magazines, like, five hours ago?’ I told him, ‘Maybe,”‘ Bartels said.
Tiring to the point of hallucinating, Bartels said he decided to go home before he was thrown out.
You know, if Wal-Mart just started charging him a little bit of rent, they could lower prices even further!
Hat Tip: Catallarchy
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41 Hours? What a piker. I know from long experience that the hallucinations dont start for at least three days, and you can hold them off til 5 days if you’re used to it.
and the little wuss had naps… amateur.
41 hours with naps?
Typical English major wuss; an “all-nighter” for them is staying up until 2 reading a book and then getting up at 9 for two classes…as long as I get a few hours of rest every 24, I can go for a week+, speaking from experience.
Yeah, I remember the nights I pulled all-nighters for engineering classes… History channel going in the background, the smell of brain cells frying in my head overpowering the smell of coffee…
And that’s not counting the all-night drinking that occurred on other occasions… Like when my roommate had a girl over the night before a hog roast, so I stayed up all night helping to baste the roasting hog and drinking Keystone Light…