If you don't have to go to Walmart on a Friday night, you probably shouldn't.

I know that, I've been to Walmart plenty of times on a Friday night and it's always a frustrating experience. Anyway, my wife, Kathy's dealing with an illness. And to help with her care I need disposable gloves. Which we ran out of right about 6:00 PM on Friday evening.

We also needed several other items. So while I was hoping to go to Walmart Saturday morning I wound up pulling into the lot of the Warrensburg Walmart Friday night about 7:00 PM. It wasn't too crowded, so I got a spot up front near the pharmacy doors.

That's when the trouble started. I couldn't remember where the gloves were that I needed. So I'm scouring the pharmacy section and can't find them. Until I decide that I'll open the app and see where they are. I find the aisle, but the app says the gloves I want are sold out.

I trek from the pharmacy side, to where the cleaning supplies are. Because you can get disposable gloves in both places. Hoping that I'd find the gloves I want. Luckily, they had one box left. So I snapped them up. That, however, is where my luck ended.

Next on my list was coffee. As I traversed across the store to find it. I noticed some of the shelves seemed a little bit bare. When I got to the coffee aisle. They had all kinds. Five kinds of Folgers. Five kinds of Great Value. Five kinds of Dunkin'. I could go on and on. Anyway, I wanted Maxwell House, breakfast blend. Nope. Every other kind of coffee but not that. I settled for a mild blend of Folgers.

Then back across the store avoiding the groups of Warrensburg teenagers who are killin' a Friday night walking around the store. The college-age kids picking up beer and snacks. And the families with young kids trying to get their shopping out of the way for the weekend.

I don't know how the families do it. By the end of the day, Walmart just doesn't have a lot of products on the shelves. Besides the coffee, there were two or three other things that I wanted to get, that they just didn't have. And I'd imagine for a family trying to do some shopping that can be madness.

And don't get me started on the lack of open, staffed, check-outs. There were only two or three open, with a line four or five deep. I don't mind self-checkout if I have three or four items. But when you start adding multiple bottles of pop. A gallon of milk. And boxes of multiple shapes and sizes. It's either to let a checker do it, they're pros, And most know how to bag properly.

It wasn't always that way. I remember when I was a child. For a time. My parents would force themselves and me to the store on a Friday night. I absolutely hated that. But I never remember the store not having what my parents needed to buy.

And while the Warrensburg Walmart wasn't overly crowded on Friday night. It was still busy. It makes me wonder why some of the shelves were empty. Because it wasn't the giggly teenagers. The college kids stocking up for a night of partying. Or the neighbor families having a five-minute chat in the middle of the aisle that made it a two-star experience.

It wasn't the assault of cigarette smoke emanating from some shopper's vehicle as I walked to my car that made it a two-star experience. If I was a smoker, I guarantee the first thing I'd do after throwing my groceries in the trunk, was light up a smoke.

No, for me it was the self-check-out experience that made it a two-star experience. It's just a pain in the ass to bag 2-liter bottles of soda. There isn't much space to place your bagged items. And of course, there's always one or two things that just are hard to scan. Self-check-out can take a frustrating shopping experience and just be the cherry on top that makes it downright lousy. My advice, skip the two-star shopping experience on Friday nights.

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