I’ve been a Walmart grocery shopper for about five years now. I know that Walmart is far from perfect, and it’s very easy to find problems and faults with the largest megastore chain on the planet. However, sometime during my Walmart shopping trip this afternoon, I thought it might be a good idea to propose an alternative view on Walmart for your consideration.
Before I shopped at Walmart for groceries, I shopped at Albertsons. I was pretty satisfied with Albertsons, but when a Walmart neighborhood market opened up a little closer to home than the Albertsons, I decided to give it a shot, and the rest is history. It wasn’t that the Walmart was any better than Albertsons, it’s just that it was good enough, it was a little more convenient being closer, and the prices were consistently better. That last point was important for a guy with six mouths to feed. 
I’m also a happy Walmart shopper. I’m the guy that you would see in a Walmart commercial, the one who’s smiling while he’s shopping. Am I smiling because Walmart makes the shopping experience so wonderful? No. The shopping experience itself is mostly fine, but it’s not the best I’ve experienced. Target, for example, is consistently better at providing a great shopping experience. They also usually have better prices on milk, which is important to a guy with three teenagers in the house whose biggest major food group is breakfast cereal, and whose second biggest is Nestle Quik.
No, here’s why I’m smiling when I’m shopping at Walmart:
1. The prices are consistently lower than other places
When I’m shopping at Walmart, I know that my total food bill is going to be pretty much as good as I can get shopping at a single grocery store without spending the better part of my life clipping coupons. I honestly believe that we were able to afford to move into a good part of town, into a nice house in a nice neighborhood, in large part because we saved so much money over time shopping at Walmart. That, and the fact that I, rather than my wife, did most of the grocery shopping. 
When I shop at Walmart today, I think about how it’s one more thing I’m doing to enable us to potentially go up to the next level of financial prosperity, and possibly become wealthy and be able to afford to shop, at least once in a while, at Whole Foods!
2. It’s convenient
Walmart has become a one-stop-shop where we can get groceries, prescription drugs, garden plants, electronics, hardware, clothes, a haircut, and an oil change, all under one roof. They also have self-checkout lanes that are wonderful if you have a few items (not including adult beverages), are somewhat technically literate, and are lucky enough to have at least one self-checkout that’s working. Finally, they (usually) have the price-per-unit posted on the tags so you can compare without having to do so much math.
3. I’m reminded of the abundance we currently enjoy here in America
Do you get frustrated when you’re looking for a particular special type of salad dressing or soup at the store, maybe that’s for a recipe? We have a meal this week that uses Vidalia Onion salad dressing. I actually found it. It was the reduced fat kind. I imagine in places like Soviet Russia, they were glad to find some oil and some vinegar on their store shelves. In America, we have probably 150 choices of salad dressing bottles at Walmart: different brands, different flavors, different fat contents, different sizes. Lots of choices, and usually sufficient supply of most of what you want to buy. Sure, there’s those few items that you may not find in stock on any given week, but considering how many shoppers they have, I think it’s a virtual miracle that they can keep the shelves stocked at all. By comparison, have you ever tried shopping at Toys-R-Us before Christmas?
4. I can listen while I shop
I tell my wife when I’m leaving for Walmart that I need to grab my “essential equipment” for shopping, namely, my earphones. I listen to inspirational music or interesting podcasts or audiobooks while I shop, and this makes the experience much more enjoyable, especially for others when I exercise the discipline not to sing along.
5. I’m a grateful person
Yes, this makes a big difference, too. See, while I’m smiling my way through Walmart, enjoying all those low prices, convenient services, and abundant options and supplies of stuff, I’m also observing my fellow shoppers. They, too, are getting all of the same benefits that I’ve listed above. However, precious few of them are smiling while they’re shopping. Now, I can imagine some reasons why they’re not enjoying the experience as much as I am: a) they’re more financially strapped than we are; b) they don’t enjoy getting great deals as much as I do; c) they have to bring their kids with them to shop; d) they would rather be doing something other than grocery shopping; e) they’re clinically depressed. I’ll give a pass to the chemically depressed among us, but for all of the others, a little gratitude could go a long way toward changing their shopping chore into a more joyous experience.
For these three primary reasons, you’ll see me smiling while I’m carting along through the aisles of my neighborhood 
What about you? Are you a Walmart shopper? Is it a dread or a joy for you? Where do you prefer to shop for groceries? Have any tips for improving the grocery shopping experience?
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I need to adopt your attitude about Walmart! Great deals there, but I have a hard time enjoying the experience. Ear phones it is!
Thanks, Dan and Shan. Yeah, the music really helps A LOT!
Also, not sure where you are in a spiritual sense, but I find it helps to pray quickie prayers of blessing for the people there. It’s amazing the degree to which it appears that people feel the weight of the world on their shoulders when they’re grocery shopping. Any way you can bless someone else, either with a prayer, or a smile, or some courtesy, can make a difference in someone’s day.
Also, imagining what it would be like to live in an economically impoverished place helps a lot. We may think that shopping at Walmart is a chore we have to do because maybe we can’t shop elsewhere, but people in other parts of the world would think they had died and gone to heaven to have that kind of abundance available!
Anyway, thanks for the note. Have a great week!
Very thought-provoking. We take so much for granted.
I’m one of the frowning parents dealing with the “can we have…” crew. I hear those words from the moment we get in the car, until the moment we leave Walmart. Even then, they are asking about getting toys on the next trip.
If you’re feeding the masses and looking for deals, Sam’s is more than worth it. I leave out of there looking like I’m stocking up for the apocalypse. The traffic around the one on Siegen is wretched, but its still worth the hassle.
Hi Lanie!
I’m sorry to hear that you have to tote the kiddos with you: definitely much more challenging when I have my youngest along for the trip.
You might try telling them before leaving what they can expect to get and what the consequence will be if they ask for anything else. You might make a game of the trip while you’re there, too. “Ok, next we need to find some mixed vegetables. Let’s see who can find the cans of mixed vegetables first.” Also, you might make random comments like “isn’t it amazingly how blessed we are to live in a country where there is so much food available in so many different varieties! It’s not like this anywhere else in the whole world!”
Regarding Sam’s, we had a membership until March, and we got a few good deals there. Overall, in comparing prices per unit, I found that the Walmart brands were a good bit less expensive than the economy-sized name brands at Sam’s. A few things I miss from Sam’s are the big bags of whole raw almonds and the big tubs of Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough
I agree with you about the traffic at the Seigen stores: you don’t want to be anywhere around there on a Saturday afternoon!
Thanks so much for your comments, Lanie. Have a great summer!