Walmart: Always Prepared

I shop at the local Walmart because I can find everything there except plain yogurt, which is not an Ozark foothills food, and fresh fish. That's because everyone who shops there catches their own. I saw the above, and it's new, a real eye-catcher, in its Customer Service area. I assume it's needed on the occasions when a disgruntled customer is returning things and might be armed. Didn't used to have that at the Kresge's, Goldblatt's, and other department stores of yore. Nor at Woolworth's, where I was a teenage cashier.

Did you know that the first 5 to 15 feet inside a store's front door is its "decompression zone" where you forget what happened in the parking lot and prepare mentally to shop? Walmart doesn't put merchandise in the decompression zone -- it puts a greeter there! -- but just beyond the zone they pile up seasonal or faddish (such as "Duck Dynasty") merchandise on both sides of ya. Ninety-five percent of shoppers will next turn to the right, so the wall to their right after they turn is, in the retail business, called "the power wall," and my Walmart has its pharmacy and over-the-counter drugs there, with cosmetics nearby.