Opinion: Local stores send shoppers to Wal-Mart

Yet, here I am, back in line at Wal-Mart, hunkered down in Checkout Lane 1 with eight other hardy souls. A sign hangs over us, implying that this is a special line, a line for customers in a hurry, a line where customers with more than 20 items are not welcome.

Judging by the number of items in shopping carts, most of the people in this line are illiterate.

A vaguely familiar woman behind me carts enough canned cat food to feed Brazil. I’m wedged between her and a man who gawks at me. He has an interesting facial tic that I can’t possibly ignore, so I stare back. He wears a bright orange hunter’s vest with no shirt, and he cradles a large plastic bottle of cheap bourbon and a lone box of shotgun shells in his bare, tattooed arms.

It must be deer season. Or, around my house, Deere season.

As I fret over the memory of the small-caliber bullet that strayed into my John Deere tractor last year, I suddenly remember who the woman behind me is.

She’s the Wal-Mart employee who promised I’d find the item I sought among the bicycle parts in the toy department. She was dead wrong. After a 15-minute search, I located my purchase in the hardware department.

I want to update the woman, now officially off duty, about where to send people seeking hand-operated air pumps, but the line is moving and I am near enough to the cash register to read the clerk’s name tag: Lee. Lee wears a blue vest littered with tiny buttons and pendants and little smiley faces. I notice he isn’t smiling. Neither am I. Neither are my fellow shoppers. We seem utterly wretched.

We stand in line, flush with cash and credit, preparing to buy pears, ping pong tables, vacuum cleaners, toilet tissue, plastic bottles of whiskey, giant bags of Fritos, canned cat food, shotgun shells and, in my case, a hand-operated air pump to resuscitate my son’s football. And nobody is happy, especially me.

Here’s why. Earlier in the day, I traveled to three other stores to buy the air pump in hopes of avoiding this very line.

First, I visited a major sporting goods store. It was sold out of hand-operated air pumps. When I asked where I might go to buy one, the clerk rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Wal-Mart,” she chortled.

Next, I forced myself to drive to The Mall and made a mad dash into the Giant Department Store. There were no hand-operated air pumps in stock that morning, although the salesperson strived to sell me a newly arrived air rifle. I declined, knowing that I would use it to shoot him in the butt if he suggested that I could find the air pump I wanted at Wal-Mart – which is precisely what he did.

Finally, I sought out a local hardware store, one known for attentive service and, amazingly, a store where you can speak, in person, to the actual owner. I ran into him at the front door and beseeched him to sell me a hand-operated air pump. Price was no object.

He broke my heart. “I’ve got your bicycle pump, got pressure pumps, I even have a big stock of water pumps but, dang it, I don’t carry those hand-operated air pumps. Hell,” he shrugged, “Wal-Mart sells air pumps for less than what I pay for them.”

Wal-Mart spends about a socktillion on advertising, but none of their ads work as well as the hardware owner’s simple endorsement.

Wal-Mart should replace its fancy TV spots with hand-held video shots of druggists, shoe store clerks, tire store owners, grocers, jewelers, appliance dealers, eye doctors, etc., shrugging and saying, “I pay more for this (holds up item) than Wal-Mart charges you for it.” It’s a wrap.

(Note to Wal-Mart’s ad department: If you use this idea, make sure I’m compensated. At the least give me my own aisle. Hang a sign that reads “Bob’s Aisle,” and please don’t put any smiley faces on it.)

So here I stand in the checkout line with a scowl on my face, holding a hand-operated air pump. I’m in line at Wal-Mart because the stores I wanted to buy from gave up and let Wal-Mart win.

Here are a few simple suggestions for merchants who are losing customers to the big box stores.

• If you don’t have an item, make the effort to call another local merchant to see if they carry it. Send your customer there.

• If you don’t have an item, thank the customer for coming in and offer a discount coupon for their next visit.

• Teach your employees to smile at every customer every time.

• Remove the word Wal-Mart from your vocabulary.

Bob May is former managing partner of five local radio properties and is now engaged in the publishing of large-print phone directories in about 50 small towns in southwest Missouri.