I live a painfully mundane life slaving myself to the corporate confinement known as “Walmart”. Every single day (besides my days off, obviously) consists of me doing repetitive tasks involving manual labor in the store. If I’m not sweeping and mopping the aisle floors, I’m either restocking their shelves or scrubbing those despicable toilets on my bare knees.
Hours have gone by, and my shift has yet to end. I’ve been working here for the past 3 years and up until the third year, my experiences working here have been pretty great because of the laidback management team. However, this all changed a year ago when one of my coworkers was promoted to becoming a manager. Let me tell you, everything, and I mean everything went completely downhill once the aforementioned guy received his promotion.
After dealing with the incredibly daunting tasks of maintaining the store’s cleanliness, its aisle shelves, and not to mention, the “customer satisfaction”, I needed a break. I’m utterly sick of the entitled customers who misconstrue their importance to me. I decided to reward myself with a quick break, along with a bottle of water.
“Raymond, I need you to do some wipe-downs on some of the empty shelves. I’m short-handed,” said the “manager”.
I rolled my eyes and deeply sighed. I reluctantly complied with him, until he kept running his damned mouth: “Come on, Raymond! Are you here to work or to feel sorry for yourself?” Steven said, staring at me without taking my exhaustion into consideration. I couldn’t deal with his crap any longer. My blood had felt like it reached its boiling point.
“Fuck you, Steven,” I spat venomously. “I said fuck you! And your eyebrows!” I yelled again, pointing at his thick asymmetric set of eyebrows. I proceeded to trash some of the stocked shelves out of anger; my fury scattering their contents about.
“Wipe down this!” I exclaimed once more, rubbing my testicles in front of him. Steven’s jaw-drop grew even wider when I slammed my carcinogenic employee vest on the floor, spitting on it to finally seal the deal. That was the day I decided to burn bridges with Steven.
3 years later
Since I still don’t make that much money, I’ve decided to get some groceries at my former Walmart workplace. Trust me, buying from there isn’t as cancerous as working there 24/7, especially if you have a Steven. Anyway, to my surprise, the store was empty. Like, no one else but me was inside it. I then realized that this Walmart was actually abandoned. For an abandoned supermarket, it sure seemed like a great opportunity to loot some items, especially since everything seemed intact.
I called up my buddy Anthony to assist me in carrying out our well-earned goods.
“Isn’t that stealing?”
“No. We’re just acquiring abandoned goods. Stop freaking out, Jesus.” I complained. He agreed to help, and so venturing off to the depths of Walmart we went, as soon as he arrived.
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As we walked inside, we, no questions asked, went straight to the electronics aisle and took every conceivable device we could carry, sparing nothing. Then, suddenly, the power went off and the darkness immediately engulfed us in its blinding aura. We were scared shitless, thinking that it was some kind of law-enforcement setup to prosecute would-be looters. But surprisingly, that wasn’t the case.
The power returned suddenly. Anthony and I looked at each other awkwardly, confused about what just happened. We prompted for the exits, but then, the automatic doors weren’t so automatic anymore. They would not open. With tension slightly building up, along with confusion, I tried prying the damn thing, but it wouldn’t budge. I turned around and what I saw nearly had me throw up my heart. It was a Walmart employee with his back turned to me.
“Um, excuse me, sir, the doors won’t open,” said Anthony to the employee. The employee turned around and his facial details were just sickening: baggy eyes, knobby fingers from severe arthritis, and worst of all, his employee nameplate had the name “Steven” on it.
“There’s no escaping from here.” Steven said. Anthony and I didn’t feel confrontational towards him, so we instead decided to take matters into our own hands. We tried breaking the fixed glass from the automatic doors, but that was futile. I flung the frying pan I used to break the glass out of frustration.
With no other recourse in mind, I did what any reasonable person would do in my situation: I dialed for 911.
“Dude, what?” Anthony asked.
“Well, I’m not gonna die in this shit-hole,” I responded. The phone couldn’t even connect me to emergency services.
Then, two white, female children were staring at us. These kids, god, their eyes were sucking the souls out of our bodies. These girls were literally black-eyed. Their eye colors were deep black, staring at us. We tried to run, but they persistently chased us.
Freaking out, I immediately made my way to the fresh produce section, where a basket of crisp apples was just conveniently waiting for me. Without a second thought, I grabbed the basket as the girl was chasing me.
She had me cornered at a dead-end. I didn’t know what else I could’ve done, so I grabbed some of the apples and aggressively threw them at her. She wasn’t phased at all. Instead, it made her even more angry.
“Work at Walmart, work at Walmart, work at Walmart,” she kept muttering endlessly. All of sudden, she disappeared, and the words “Abandoned by Walmart” were scribbled behind me. I ran as fast as I could to the exits. Much to my surprise though, the doors were wide open. But, before I could leave, I frantically searched for Anthony.
I found him. He was wearing the employee vest.
“Work at Walmart, work at Walmart, work at Walmart.”