Day 1: Part 2

...Off to Wal-Mart...and this happens....

Grocery shopping for 35 people for one week is no small task. Luckily, Super Wal-Mart has everything one might need...that is everything except customer service. I put together a team of about 10 people to tackle the shopping list and off we go. We actually knock out the shopping list in about an hour which really is great time but then comes time for check out. We line up our five over-flowing carts of food and call back to the house to tell them we are almost finished with the shopping and to save some pizza for us. Little did we realize that check-out at Super Wal-Mart is not so super. Our less than enthused cashier begins scanning and bagging our items...one by one. And by one by one, I mean one item at a time and one item per bag. As you can imagine this takes an extremely long time...in fact it takes longer than the actual shopping did. The cashier is pretty impressed with the amount of food we bought and seems excited to tell us about milk prices and that they too have the "Happy Cow" commercials and the cows are from California...if only she showed that much excitement while she was still scanning and bagging our items. Multi-tasking apparently is not a skill impressed upon in the south...

Highlight of the shopping trip:
At one point I need to ask someone where an item might be located. I approach the lady and say "excuse me" when she responds with "I'm listening" without ever looking up from her task....so much for friendly customer service!

If you are ever looking for a great cross-cultural experience I highly recommend going to a Super Wal-Mart in the South.