Lettuce Check For Stool

I was wandering toward the produce when I experienced a typical Walmart moment. The customer I spotted looked like so many others that I have seen on this site. She was probably in her mid-to-late 50s, and she gave off that obvious vibe of someone whose primary residence sits on cinder blocks or wheels. Modified power-mullet? Check. Tank top with no bra? Check. Shorts and flip-flops even though it was a frosty 37 degrees outside? Check and check. And what was she doing? Why, she was using the shopping cart as a makeshift platform on which to change a toddler’s dirty diaper. She has yet to see me, which partially explains what happened next. After dropping the used diaper/naps bundle to the floor and kicking it aside, she then looked at her hand, noticed what had to have been some sort of poopy residue, reached over into the produce bin, and started to wipe her hand on a large head of lettuce.

Now I’m normally pretty non-confrontational, but after seeing this, I just blurted out “Oh come on! What are you, an animal!?” She turned to look at me, and for a split-second I saw it in her eyes: she knew that she had really crossed over a line, and she also knew that she had been stone-cold busted. But like I said, this look only lasted for a second. Her face then reverted to normal, and she told me to go fuck myself.

Ah yes, the classic rhetorical escalation uttered in countless WalMart arguments. She started to push her cart toward the front of the store, so I called out “I’m going to find a manager and tell him what you did!” Her reply? “I didn’t do anything [whips out cellphone], and I’m going to call the cops!” So that’s how the argument ended, both of us threatening to tell on each other.

A Walmart associate then came out of the receiving area, so I told her what had happened and, to her credit, she bagged up 2 or 3 heads of lettuce along with the diaper.