Wal-Mart Remodeling

As a long time resident of The Colony I am a regular patron of the Super Wal-Mart, like most of the members of our community I tend to enjoy things that remain regular, but lately my carefully assembled communal Mecca has been disrupted. Yes, that is correct;
Wal-Mart is changing! I was as surprised as most of you, and boy was I lost. As I looked around at the faces of other customers entering the building I noticed that they all felt the same feeling; deceit. The one thing that remains constant, Wal-Mart had changed, and not for the better mind you. Perhaps a change to their policy on taking articles of clothing into the fitting room would have been welcomed, or a change in staffing in the photo-department to get rid of those punk kids who wont develop my pictures would be a good decision. Usually I am not one to meander about a subject, but as you know I am feeling a little emotional right now, and this distress has caused a large build up. The change in Wal-Mart although terrible and cruel to long time customers has deeply rooted sociological reasoning behind it. As my son Bobby and I entered the store to purchase him a pair of short boy’s slacks we noticed the changes immediately, the men’s clothing department which was previously located dead center in the front of the store to accommodate to a man’s need of utilitarianism had been switched with the more lollygagging women’s clothing department which is conveniently located between the female hygiene/make-up isles and the groceries (the only places a woman should be) so now as you enter the store the women’s clothing is located in the front, as soon as you enter. It almost brought me to tears as I had to walk the extra thirty five feet to reach the men’s department, but as I was burying my teary eyes into a pair of socks the reasoning behind the radical decisions dawned on me. Advertising, yes, it is known that women enjoy shopping for clothing and they are usually distracted easily. So, in a marketing scheme Wal-Mart has re-arranged the clothing departments so that my female co-shoppers are attracted to spending money in the clothes isle, which mind you now has a “wooden” floor to give it a more uptown boutique feel. By encouraging pre-groccery spending in the clothing isles Wal-Mart can not only collect the revenue of normal shopping but also include other un-planned spending. Of course this spending is only un-planned by the customer, The Wal-Mart corporation has obviously planned this very well, but this plan will back fire if we stand strong against the attempt by Wal-Mart to tempt us and our wives into extraneous spending. For now all we can do is pray that this terrible change is just a nightmare and that we will all wake up and it will go away.
By Sociology Dept. Head Wilbur Fields.