Walmart ... again

I read an article recently about how Walmart is, in the current economy, trying to squeeze the last bit of life out of all of its competitors/potential competitors. It is doing this by revamping its apparel offerings, listening to customers' complaints about floor layout, etc.

One of the changes the article pointed out is that the aisles are wider and that shoppers can now see multiple areas of the store from certain points for optimal navigation. As I walked into my newly renovated local Walmart, I got to experience the results of this "new look."

There is definitely more breathing room. For example, when you first walk into the store, you have a direct line of sight all the way from the far right to the far left end of the store. This fact comes into play because, as you walk inside, directly to your right is the sanitary napkin/douche/condom aisle. First of all, these items never used to all be in one aisle. Secondly, WTF? It's as if Walmart corporate was like: "Hmm, maybe we should put all the embarassing products in one aisle. And then, wouldn't it be great if we positioned that aisle strategically so that as many people as possible could see the customers in that aisle?"

I think Walmart had better be prepared for their condom/tampon market to take a hit.

Who moved my bread?

It's standard protocol for Walmart to update its look every three years. Or at least that's the explanation a Walmart associate gave for the overnight relocation of the pharmacy into a newly-constructed gray wooden box-room ... and for the fact that the bread has moved from the second aisle to a corner at the back of the store.

You heard me right. They moved the bread. This has caused major disgruntlement among Walmart clientele. I overheard one customer ask an associate whether the bread could be re-relocated because, and I quote, "Everyone is complaining about this."

As if a Walmart peon has control over the store's layout. Ha.

My dad works as a consultant for Target, and he says that store layouts are decided on by analyzing massive amounts of customer traffic data.

"Why do you think milk is at the back of grocery stores?" he asked.

"Because that's where it's supposed to be," I answered, confused.

"No," he explained. "There was a time when milk was at the front of the store, so that customers who just wanted to run in to buy milk could. But then stores realized that it was better for business if customers were forced to walk through the entire store."

So, if you go into the Conley Road Walmart in Columbia, Mo., and wander around looking for bread only to discover it after you've picked up five other items, now you'll know why Walmart corporate put the bread in the corner.

An experiment

I just waxed my legs for the first time, and I'm feeling a little Bridget Jones-esque: brilliant idea spirals into frustrating -- yet slightly humorous -- catastrophe. Think blue soup.

So, there's wax everywhere. In my microwave. On my sink. On my bathroom floor. Somehow on my arms.

The newspaper I put down to protect the floor is sticking to my feet as I traipse back and forth, back and forth to the kitchen to remicrowave the wax.

The only redeeming fact is that it seems the amount of hair on my legs is indirectly proportional to the amount of wax lurking unsuspectingly on everything I touch.

Which president would you date?

My roommate and I have been watching The Presidents, a History Channel DVD set we got from the library that provides a 15-minute biography on each of the presidents. Droll, you say? Not if you play the Which-president-would-I-date? game. So far, my judgment has been very poor on this subject.

When Andrew Jackson started making appearances during the first few presidents' biographies, I was a little starstruck. He was the Defender of New Orleans against the French, he fought off the Indians and the Brits in Florida and claimed her for the United States against the Spaniards...and he had awesome hair (How did he get such big hair in an age before hair products?). I announced my crush to my history-buff friend David, who immediately cried "Folly." David said that I had not chosen wisely--Andrew Jackson was practically guilty of genocide. Thousands of Indians died when Jackson had them uprooted and sent on The Trail of Tears.

David was right. The next night I watched Andrew Jackson's biography. He was a crazy man. He let the U.S. Bank--the bank that prints U.S. currency--die just because its supporters were his enemies. He courted and wed a married woman. He disagreed with a Supreme Court ruling--the ruling that allowed the Cherokee Indians in Georgia to stay on their land--so he ignored it and sent the Indians packing anyway.

This was an unwisely placed crush.

You might notice a crush theme in my postings. All I can say is that the crushes are getting progressively less realistic: first my neighbor, then famous writers, then a dead guy.

Naomi's Field Guide to Coffeehouse First Dates

Signs that you are witnessing a first-date-in-progress at your local coffeehouse:

1. It's late on a Saturday afternoon, and the two arrive separately. Scratch that. If it's a guy and a girl at a coffeehouse late on a Saturday afternoon, it's probably a first date.

2. When the two in question meet, they hug. Briefly.

3. The couple sits far from the other patrons.

4. The two appear similar in age, style, socioeconomic status and attractiveness.

5. The guy doesn't drink straight black coffee. He drinks a slightly girlier drink, like a cappuccino.

6. The snippets of conversation you catch include sound bytes like, "I lived for two years in Dallas..."

7. Animated conversation seems to be followed by brief, intense pauses that are broken with comments about the weather or the drinks they're each drinking.


**If you identify two or more of the above signs, you are most likely witnessing a first date.

Hunter gatherers, angst and the economic crisis

This economic crisis has explained a great mystery to me: why our hunter-gatherer forefathers had so little angst.

If you were worried about putting food on your table (literally), probably you didn't have time to worry about what the people in the next hut were saying about you or why your buddy from many moons ago de-friended you at your favorite prehistoric social-networking site.

(Actually, who am I kidding? I'm sure gossip was alive and strong among the hunter gatherers...assuming they were linguistically advanced enough to talk.)

You see, I've found that worrying about putting food on my table (or realistically, paying medical bills and funding my imminent post-graduate-and-unemployed lifestyle) is very freeing. I spend less time psychoanalyzing myself. And I think we can all agree that the less psychoanalyzing going on in the world, the better.

Marital Advice for a Complete Stranger

Today I told a guy I barely know that I don't think he should get married.

Cheeky, I know. But someone has to be the female voice, telling him that we women don't want his type.

(Due to my hesitancy at being chosen to utter this truth (think Moses), the words did not flow out smoothly; he initially thought I was pre-emptively rejecting any marriage proposals from him.)

This guy's in my journalism class, and we were having a class discussion about journalists' roles in reporting international affairs. When violence breaks out in a foreign nation, the journalists there often send their families away to safety. Sometimes the journalists themselves also leave. This male acquaintance of mine claimed that it would be selfish for a journalist to evacuate with his family and abandon his post--his calling--as a journalist.

All I'm sayin' is: Don't marry and procreate if you plan on abandoning your family and putting yourself in danger for the "higher calling" of journalism. How about the higher calling of being around 'til your son graduates from high school?

House-hunting Tip for Guys

Recently, I went house-hunting with one of my guy friends. My job was to give the female perspective--what does a woman think about when looking at houses? I gave him the obvious female input: We women want lots of counter space in the kitchen, and it matters whether or not there's a linen closet in the bedroom hallway.

One more thing: You want to make sure that the layout of the bathroom was well thought-out. In my current house, the cabinet is above the toilet; the toilet has become an abyss for many cosmetic/personal care items. I once fished a small perfume vial out of the toilet with a pair of chopsticks. Then there was the time I knocked my roommate's Vaseline jar into the toilet. Though I considered salvaging it, the thought of toilet water seeping its way past the lid and into the oily gooze was just too much.

A couple days ago, I woke up and went into the bathroom to find this note from my roommate taped to the mirror, "Naomi, I'm afraid your toothbrush fell into the toilet this morning :{ Sorry!"

My mind when into problem-solving mode: Do I have another toothbrush lying around? No. Could I chew gum all day and avoid breathing in people's faces? Dangerous and disgusting. Could I go pick one up at the store? Got up too late, not enough time. Could I use my roommate's toothbrush? Yes...

So, I boiled my roommate's toothbrush and called her later that day to tell her to increase the toothbrush order to two. Her note had promised me a new toothbrush by the evening. But now I wasn't the only one who needed a new toothbrush.

So, all you guys who want to take advantage of the buyer's housing market: Bring a girl with you. You'll never guess what they find important.

As the World Turns: A Summary of Recent World Events

Dear President Obama,

Socialism? Really?! Are you out of your freakin' mind? Look at what that did to my country. Nothing good can come from it.

Look at the Chinese. They're sending their people over to your country in boatloads to buy your foreclosed houses. Why can't you be more capitalistic like them?

Sincerely,
Vladimir Putin

Sales Tax OR A Discussion of the Government's Profit Margin

Think about: Yesterday I went into McDonald's and bought items exclusively off the Dollar Menu. Now, I can't possibly believe the Dollar Menu is a loss leader, because half the items people purchase are off the Dollar Menu. However, the profit margin can't be very high. I have no training in economics, but suppose the net profit margin on Dollar Menu items is 5 percent. So, I went into McDonald's, bought two items off the Dollar Menu and McDonald's made 10 cents. How much tax did I pay on the bill? 15 cents. And that's all net profit for the government. So essentially, the government has a net profit margin of 7.5 percent on the McDonald's Dollar Menu, compared to McDonald's own 5 percent.

Who's really winning this game?

Day 4: Wall Street and Some Thoughts on Purchasing Power in New York

Wall Street is not much of a street. I imagined hundreds of bustling men-in-suits, running across the street with their hand in the air, hailing taxis. In fact, the part of Wall Street I went to--the part next to the New York Stock Exchange--is cut off to traffic and mostly all I saw was tourists in various stages of taking photos.

One thing I find interesting about New York is the prices. On-the-sidewalk vendors sell $1.75 hotdogs; 80-cent, eight-ounce cups of coffee are all over Chinatown. But, seeing $9.99-per-1/2 hour parking seemed pretty standard throughout Manhattan. I'm thinking I could survive financially in New York as long as I could subsist on hot dogs and little cups of coffee and didn't bring my car.

Day 2: In the Movies

Central Park in the winter holds not the glory of summer in Central Park. Nonetheless, I still felt that perhaps I was the girl from Enchanted, or I was watching a young chess prodigy from Searching for Bobby Fischer. Later we went to the Museum of Natural History, and I got to pretend I was in Night at the Museum, Sagawea and Teddy Roosevelt and all.

Most memorable perhaps was the model of the giant squid suctioned to a giant sperm whale. Did you know that no one has ever observed giant squid in their native habitat? No one knows for sure where they eat or where they live. Dead ones just wash up on shore, get caught in fishing nets or are discovered in the bellies of sperm whales; that's the only way we know that giant squid exist. Crazy, huh?

Day 3: Ellis Island

Somehow, its museum made immigration through Ellis Island seem a rather glamorous--if painful--affair. And, according to the tour guide, 40 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry through this island. So you can imagine my disappointment to find, upon calling my mom from the museum, that my ancestors emigrated from Germany around the 1860s, long before Ellis Island's doors opened in 1892. Although, when you think about it, being around since the 1860s makes my family good, solid American stock--I'm practically a Daughter of the American Revolution.

New York City, Day 1 OR The Importance of Wise Choices in Footwear When Traveling

I recently spent a few days in New York City. The three of us who went together jokingly referred to ourselves as the three villagers come to gawk at the big city.

Now, the thing I don't like about being a tourist is looking like a tourist. The essentials to appearing like a "native" are to dress like the natives, act unaffected by everything and not go around holding a map and saying things like, "That museum was interesting, but what I'm really looking forward to is going to the Empire State Building tomorrow."

Unfortunately, my traveling companions were not as concerned about looking like tourists; I gave up trying to look like a native when I realized that the Lonely Planet guide to NYC that never left my friend's hands implicated all three of us, not just him.

A corollary to the "Be careful how much you care about looking the native" is "Be careful what you value when making footwear decisions while traveling." I chose--incorrectly--to value fashion (you have to look fashionable if you want to look like a native in NYC, right?) over function. I brought my fashionable, not-so-waterproof boots. And, in deference to my traveling ideal of packing lightly, I only brought this one pair of shoes.

The boots--whose native habitat is dry, cold climates--were ill-prepared for the slushy fallout of a New York snow. The wool socks, who usually cooperate well with the boots to keep me warm, provided no insulation once they too were slush-soaked.

I have at least three pairs of shoes that would have done a better job of keeping my feet warm and dry, but I didn't think they were fashionable enough for New York City. I think I might need to readjust my values.

This episode reminded me of a day I spent traveling to Nanjing when I decided--because it was so hot--to wear my (apparently tractionless) flip-flops. It rained that day, and I spent the entire day trying not to fall on my butt on the slick, smooth granite tiles of the Nanjing walkways.

The lesson in both instances is the same: Consider carefully all possible complications that a particular pair of shoes could pose when traveling.