It is not even a Walmart experience. It is a Online Walmart tall tale.

I shop at walmart all the time, in all area's poor, rich, middle class, are there fat people, sure. Are they "Dead zombies looking hobbled to their mobility scooters" .... I think the OP fancies themselves a fiction writer..

I wish I was lying. Multiple people almost bumped into me and I did the Midwestern “oop my bad,” and these people didn’t even flinch or acknowledge my existence. I just felt so bad for them.

This. And the demographics change wildly depending on what day of the week and time you go.

It's funny how nice one Walmart is in a nicer area, compared to one in a not-bad but not-great area just 15 miles away (the bad areas don't even have them)

One is clean and the other looks like a bomb went off. Dirty floors, merchandise laying all over, employees nowhere to be found...

Doesn't even seem like the nice one is a Walmart.

The nicer Walmarts usually have more checkout lanes open too. The lower-income Walmart near me has one open lane and then 15-20 uScans.

> This seems to be a uniquely Walmart experience. I don’t experience it anywhere else in the States.

Literally 95% of the US shops at Walmart, so... you might be in a very small bubble

For a large amount of rural America, it’s the only option.

That or a Dollar General with its bountiful selection of bananas and limes.

Why do you insist on lying?

Walmart is rarely the Only option. Where there is a Walmart, 90% of the time there is a Kroger (or Kroger Brand) Store, or Mejier (if in the Midwest), or some other store close by...

A solid chunk of the US population lives in a food desert. They're lucky to even have a Walmart within driving distance. You've clearly never had to walk a few miles on highway to reach the nearest grocery store. I can tell you from experience it's not particularly fun.

Not sure why you're minimizing this reality. 1 in 6 Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42711/12716_ap...

I am not reading a 600 page, 15 year old report of out dated info, however a search of the report shows zero references to "1 in 6 Americans " nor "next meal"

So if you have a source to back that actual claim I would be happy to look at it, and likely refute why it is cherry picking data

>>A solid chunk of the US population lives in a food desert.

Food Deserts are a political term, largely attributed to urban not rural area's and ever every study you find talking about Food Deserts I can find at least 1 if not more refuting that actual data.

Why do you insist on being rude?

Because you are spreading misinformation and FUD for no reason.

> Literally 95% of the US shops at Walmart, so... you might be in a very small bubble

Possibly. But your statistic tells me nothing about the foot traffic in a Walmart. 95% shop at Walmart, of that cohort how many shop there regularly? How many shop there for occasional purchases vs treating it as their primary store for staple items? On a random sample of days, how representative of that 95% is the foot traffic you’ll find there?

Personally I share OPs view of Walmarts, I don’t go in them because they make me feel bad about the world. I don’t get that feeling other places.

> On a random sample of days, how representative of that 95% is the foot traffic you’ll find there?

Very, since the more likely someone is to be a regular shopper there, the more likely you are to run into them on any given visit. That is simply an artifact of statistics.

> Personally I share OPs view of Walmarts, I don’t go in them because they make me feel bad about the world. I don’t get that feeling other places.

Do you get that feeling at the DMV? Maybe at the doctor's office or pharmacy? You are bumping into a true cross-section of the US population. Take note of the feelings you get and why, and understand that this is what the US is, not just what you see in the bubble

> The more likely someone is to be a regular shopper there, the more likely you are to run into them on any given visit.

Exactly. "Do you shop at Walmart?" answers a different question than "How frequently do you show at Walmart?"

I don't think you encounter a uniform sample of 95% of Americans on random visits to Walmart, you encounter a disproportionate number of frequent shoppers.

> Do you get that feeling at the DMV? Maybe at the doctor's office or pharmacy? You are bumping into a true cross-section of the US population.

This is exactly it. I've never felt that way in a DMV or doctors office. I've shopped at bodegas in the Bronx, County Markets in the Midwest, Frys, Safeway, head shops, gas stations at the corner of trailer parks (actually shopped, like for staple items on a regular basis and daily breakfast), gas stations in East St. Louis, dollar generals, etc. Public transit was my only form of transportation for 2 years in NYC, same with Seattle, and I went all over NYC.

You keep referencing my bubble. I'm not low income. But I wasn't born this way. Software engineering pulled me out of poverty in my mid-20s. I've been down and up the socioeconomic ladder (outside of addiction fueled poverty and true wealth) - and I have friends who've experience many dimensions of that ladder.

America is beautiful and diverse. There are a lot of people trying to find their way through this life here and you find amazing people everywhere you look.

The only place I've sworn off is Walmart. I can try to articulate why I think Walmart is the way it is, but that's tangential to it not being a representative of America.

I'm going to push back and say you might be in a bubble if you think Walmart is representative of the population here and suggest it might have a similar effect as the DMV. Either you frequent nicer Walmarts, you spend less time in them, or you have a very skewed view of the diversity of America.