Florida Walmart, Texas Mattress Store "Celebrate" 9/11 With, Um, Interesting Gimmicks

This probably wasn't the best way to homor 9/11 

I suppose their heart was in the right place.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some people at a Panama City Beach, Florida Walmart, and the local soda distributor, came up with a striking way to "honor" the memory of 9/11.

So they constructed in the store the two World Trade Center towers built out of Coke Zero packages, notes the Associated Press.

The backdrop of the American flag was made with red regular Coke, silver Diet Coke and blue Sprite. A banner above the display that read "We will never forget" with the Coke and Walmart logos completed the look.

Why does this kind of weird, tacky thing always seem to happen in Florida?

Of course right away there was (surprise!) a backlash. A lot of people were appalled.

Others mocked it:

"We will never forget.....These great rollback prices y'all!" was one Twitter reaction.

Amid the hubbub the Coca-Cola company apologized and said the display was meant to honor local firefighters and support that organization's upcoming event.

The store and the distributor said they never intended any disrespect, which I believe, but what the hell were they thinking?

Well, they were probably thinking more than the folks at a Texas mattress store. They decided to hold a mattress sale, and did quite a little TV ad that you can see in the video at the bottom of this post.

As the Dallas Morning News tells us:

"Store manager Cherise Bonanno says that there's no better way to remember the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks than the sale, which offers any size mattress for the price of a twin mattress. Two employees stand in front of a pair of towers of mattresses and an American flag.

At the end of the video, which has since been removed from the store's Facebook page, Bonanno swings her arms and the employees tumble into the mattress towers, knocking them over. 

Banana shrieks, then turns to the camera and says, "We'll never forget."

Well, it's hard to forget the mattress ad you're about to see. Do you think it's a bit much?

Idiots Light Shelves Of Fireworks In A Walmart Apparently Because It's Fun

Somebody set fire to this display of fireworks
inside a Phoenix Walmart.  

If you're in Arizona, you can buy fireworks for your Fourth of July celebrations at a Walmart.

Except at one Phoenix Walmart at the moment.

That's because some idiots decided it would be fun to light them on fire while the fireworks were still on the store shelves in that Walmart.

You can see the two videos of the incident at the bottom of this post. Pretty wild.

Whoever set the fire - and their faces are on security cameras from the store - could face 20 years in prison with a felony conviction for doing this.

Store staff evacuated the busy store. Some of them were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation from breathing all that smoke in while making sure everybody was out of the building.

On the bright side, the flames were extinguished before they reached a nearby display of lighter fluid and propane, which really would have caused a mess.

But the store is closed because of extensive smoke and water damage.

Because of some idiots.

First video was taken right by the display as it burst into flames, the second one is store surveillance cameras narrated by a snarky guy, but still pretty fascinating to watch.

And stupid. If that fire spread any quicker, some of those shoppers and Walmart staff could have been killed.

Walmart Is Unclear On The Difference Between Maryland And Massachusetts

Walmart said these two states look pretty much alike,
so who cares if a University of Maryland t
shirt has a Massachusetts map on it?  

At Walmart, they had  t-shirt that touted the University of Maryland.

Go Terps!

Here's the problem. The logo on the shirt shows a map of Massachusetts, not Maryland.

I'm not sure how many University of Maryland students, faculty and alumni don't know whether they are in Amherst, Massachusetts or College Park, Maryland, but I'm sure it's not many.

That doesn't stop Walmart, though, no way! Facts are stupid anyway, right?

According to Consumerist, a shopper tried to point out to Walmart that perhaps the University of Maryland is in, um, Maryland and maybe the t-shirts should reflect this notion.

I hope the initial response from Walmart was meant as tongue in cheek, but I'm not sure and that scares me.

I, and pretty much everyone else disagree on this point, but Walmart said both Massachusetts and Maryland start with the letter "M" and maps of the two states kinda, sorta look alike.

Good enough, then!

Or maybe not. The Washington Post reports, amid the growing embarrassment of these shirts, that Walmart is pulling them from the shelves and apologizing to University of Maryland fans.

Maybe Walmart could have fun, though, confusing other states and their universities. Colorado and Wyoming are both shaped like squares, so you could switch their university logo shirts.

Mississippi and Alabama look vaguely like mirror images of each other. New Hampshire looks very remotely like an upside down Vermont, and Delaware looks a bit like a mini mirror image of New Hampshire.

This is getting confusing.

Good Damn Luck Getting A Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie

Good luck finding Patti LaBelle's Sweet Potato Pie
at Walmart. It's selling like, um,  hotcakes after
a viral video about it. 

I will not be eating any Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie this Thanksgiving.

I'm sure it's good, but I don't feel like searching every Walmart on the planet for it.

Huh?

Here's the deal: Walmart introduced Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie for the Thanksgiving season this year. (Apparently the awesome singer knows her way around baking, too.)

Then some eccentric but very fun guy on YouTube decided to review it. As you can see in that video below, he definitely liked it. (And can sing pretty well, too. He's no Patti LaBelle, but that's OK.)

The video went totally viral, with 3.2 million hits as of today and counting. When people saw the video, they, too wanted Patti Labelle's Sweet Potato Pie.

The pie sold at the nation's Walmarts at the rate of one per second for 72 straight hours, according to Forbes magazine. 

Walmart, which has exclusive rights to the pie, can't keep them in stock. They're $3.48 per pie at Walmart, but some people are selling them on eBay for as much as $60 per pie, says Forbes.

Many people, including me, will be forced to go without Patti LaBelle's Sweet Potato Pie this Thanksgiving. (Luckily, there's a place called Mirabelles Cafe and Pastry Shop in Burlington, Vermont, near my house, which makes awesome pies. Maybe not sweet potato pie, but marvelous other pies for sure. I'll get my Thanksgiving dessert supplies there.)

Anyway, here's the strange but awesome Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie YouTube review that started this craze:

People Of Walmart Hit A New Low

A video still of that pathetic Walmart fight
between two women and a little boy.  

I admit it: I'm afraid of Walmart, and I don't like the store.

Yesterday, I was forced to shop at one in Yankton, South Dakota while visiting this town. It was the only place in Yankton that would fill my medical prescription, so I had to go.

It was fine. There were no "People of Walmart" those incredibly weird people that seem to hang out there. The staff was cheerful and helpful. One of the employees chatted us up about our visit to town.

We were lucky. Luckier than the folks at a Walmart in Beech Grove, Indiana. Everything these days is captured on video, and uploaded to YouTube. This incident is no exception.

I'll set up the pathetic scene:

A woman in a motorized scooter and another woman exchange words in the shampoo aisle. (Note: judging from the video, both women could have used the shampoo.)

The woman in the scooter then stands up and challenges the other woman to a fight. They quickly start brawling.

The saddest part is the six year old son of one of the women, who joins in the fight by hitting the woman that had been in the scooter with his fists, and a shampoo bottle. The boy's mother, in the midsts of the brawl, yells to the kid, "Johnny, punch her in the face! Johnny, punch her in the fucking face!"

The video goes on and on with no signs of store security. Bystanders pause and watch. The guy taking the video says "This is white trash at its finest."

Sigh.

Police are investigating whether to charge anyone with a crime. Beech Grove police also said, with considerable understatement, that they are deciding whether to involve the Department of Child Services in their investigation because of the behavior of the kid and the possible environment where he is being brought up.

My objections to Walmart mostly have to do with how they treat their employees. Obviously, most people who shop there are nice and normal, and just hunting for a bargain. But some people....JEEZ!

Here's the sad video:

People Disagreeing Literally Butt Heads: Lovely Walmart and McDonald's Scenes

No, these two women are not being affectionate.  

Not everybody gets along with each other or with customers at work, as recent viral videos show.

It seems that if there's going to bad public behavior and fights, it will almost always be at a Walmart or McDonald's.

These things almost always end up on YouTube. I have to admit I share the public's fascination with these incidents.

Everybody gawks at train wrecks, I guess.

The other day I showed you the guy who was displeased about being fired from his McDonald's job. Now, we have two women who are perhaps not best friends.

The video concerning this one has really gone viral.   It involves a customer and a tax preparer in a Texas Walmart. (Admit it. There's no place you'd rather be than a Texas Walmart right now, right?)

The tax preparer works for Jackson Hewitt and has a booth at Walmart. The customer had a disagreement with the tax lady a few days earlier, says Consumerist, via television station KTRK in Houston, Texas.

The customer, Jessica Albitz,  came back to Walmart a couple days later and encounter tax worker Alice Keener. (Keener wasn't the person Albitz was dealing with a few days earlier, but they didn't get along from the start.)

Albitz said when she came back, Keener mumbled an obscenity to her. That's when maturity took a nosedive and the following stupidity erupted.

No word yet on whether the tax preparer has been disciplined. The other woman, the shopper, has been banned from that Walmart. It takes a lot to be banned from Walmart, so that is quite an accomplishment.

In the video, the nicest thing anybody said was "Yo mamma's a bitch."  Yeah, the language is NSFW.

The headbutt in the video is the highlight. Watch:

Florida Man Is Not Employee Of The Month

Gawd, I love Florida

Not sure if Willie Mitchell looks angry
in this mug shot because he was arrested or
because he didn't win the employee
of the month award at a Florida Walmart.  

Every day, the Sunshine State yields a bright boatload of strange people, strange crimes, just general strangeness.

There's a whole damn Twitter feed called Florida Man which dedicates itself to monitoring all the weirdness that is Florida. It's a busy Twitter feed, let me tell you.

This one story actually didn't come from Twitter's FloridaMan, but I'm sure it will get there soon.

It turns out the Deerfield Beach, Florida Walmart awarded its employee of the month award to a woman who worked there, and not fellow employee Willie Mitchell.

Mitchell was PISSED that he didn't win the award, according to CBS4 in Miami. (Note, if you click on the link, a Toyota video ad will start playing, so lower the sound all the way down)

He vowed to show that winning employee, you betcha! So he didn't what any Florida man would do, apparently, and shot out the window of the winner's car.

"Perhaps (Mitchell) wanted to be employee of the month but clearly these actions that we saw in response to this, I think we see why he wasn't chosen as employee of the month," said Broward County Sheriff's spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright, who was also clearly demonstrating her superb understatement skills.

Of course, now, not only is Mitchell out of the running for next month's employee of the year at Walmart, it turns out,  Surprise! he no longer works for the retail giant, according to Walmart.

Ya think?

So, next time you want to impress the boss at work, learn from Mitchell. Don't shoot out your successful co-worker's car window. Bosses, not to mention police, kind of notice these sorts of things.  

Walmart Tells Employee It's Company Policy To Let Thugs Beat You Up.

A Walmart employee in Michigan was fired because he fought back when somebody was beating him up.

Save money and live better at Walmart. Unless
you're an employee being assaulted. Then don't live better,
apparently.  

Apparently, you're supposed to allow yourself to be beaten. Nothing like a bruised and battered Walmart employee to greet customers, no?

Kristopher Oswald said he was on his lunch break in the parking lot when he saw a woman that looked like she was being assaulted, according to WXYZ -TV in Detroit.

He offered to help but when he did, he was attacked. He almost had the guy who was piling onto him beaten back when two other guys pounced.

Luckily, police arrived and broke up the melee.

Oswald said after the incident, Walmart fired him for violating company policies.

Walmart, of course, has no comment.

A lot of big corporations have these anti-violence, zero tolerance policies. That's meant to protect employees from violent coworkers and the policies make sense.

Until you get the HR people. panicked over the possibility of lawsuits. Anyone with the slightest connection to a violent moment, even if they are totally the victim, is fired. Because lawsuits are worse for these companies than their employees' well being, I guess.

I once worked at an outfit like this. A guy, unprovoked, hit another guy. The guy who was hit put up his arms to defend himself and that was enough to get him fired.

Yes, fired.  You're supposed to allow yourself to be beaten, apparently.

I guess big companies, including Walmart, think violent people will sue their deep pockets for not letting them assault innocent employees.

It's all about money, isn't it? People are dispensible. Like cattle. Or widgets, in the eyes of some big corporations.

It's all making me a bit careful as I seek new employment. I want to give it all to any company I work for. Give it all, that is, except my life and well being.

Careful When Ripping Up $100 Bills, Walmart!

If this lawsuit turns out to have its facts straight, the folks at a San Antonio Walmart better be a little more careful in the future. And be able to tell the difference between fake $100 bills and the real deal.

According to the lawsuit, a woman named Julia Garcia pulled out a $100 bill to pay for some purchases. The cashier didn't even bother checking to see if it was fake. Said clerk just decided it was fake, ripped it in half, and had Garcia detained as a crook.

Garcia, maybe foolishly, produced another $100 bill to prove that her cash was legit and store personnel quickly ripped that one up, too, without checking its authenticity.

Guess what, kiddies! The $100 bills were completely real and legit and store staffers could have easily tested them to determine that. Most major retailers have little readers that can scan money to determine its legitimacy.

A cop finally came and sorted out the matter. Garcia said she was humiliated and detained for hours. The cop basically rescued her, saying she did nothing wrong and was free to leave.  The cop also told Walmart to give Garcia back her $200. The store manager kept digging the hole deeper by trying to give Gracia back the ripped bills.

No dice, said the cop. They had to give her undamaged money. So there.

These Walmart people were kind of cynical, don't you think? Anyone paying with a $100 bill is automatically using counterfeit money, not the real deal?  Yeah, check the bills. Trust but verify, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan.

This whole incident  makes me nervous about ever go to a Walmart. What else is considered suspicious? Should I wear certain clothes,  maybe take fashion tips from the hilarious but sad web site "People of Walmart? Only problem is, I don't have clothes like that.  And I won't fashion my hair into a mullet.

Do I need to have the "right" credit or debit card?  Should I pay for my purchase only with $1 bills, dimes and nickels, even if my purchase amounts to something like $200?  What should my mannerisms be in a Walmart?

Walmart is getting a lot of bad press lately anyway. There was another story about how a woman wrote a $48 check to Walmart. The check bounced, and she was subsequently told to pay $280 or spend a year in jail.

Seems DA's have been using some companies that have sprung up that use District Attorney letterheads to threaten people who don't pay their bills.  Prosecutors say they have their hands full so they oursource these small cases.

Of course this woman should have been more careful and had the funds to cover the check. And she is responsible for paying Walmart the $48.  But I wonder if outsourcing bounced check prosecutions to private companies, some of whom might not care much as to whether the person is guilty of bouncing checks or not, is a good idea

And do these private companies prove that the parties are indeed guilty of wrongdoing? Who IS responsible for figuring out whether people owe cash?  And do they all use legal means to collect?  And who gets the money once it's collected?  I'd like to know more about the checks and balances on this one.