Here is an excerpt from the
Wal-Mart Book of Ethics Abridged Edition. It's available currently on the Kindle, and next month it is going to be distributed to further venues. Like the man it's based off of, it's quite the humerus bit of reading! He's a great guy!
Happy Reading
--R. A. Wilson
By R. A. Wilson
When
I first met Scooter, I thought he was loud, obnoxious, and an idiot. After
knowing him, I realize he is just loud, obnoxious, and an idiot with funny
stories. He will be the first person to admit he is loud and obnoxious. As for
an idiot, I do not mean he is stupid, far from it; he has just done some really
idiotic things.
As
good as the stories about Scooter are, he has told me some about other
associates and customers that had me falling out of my chair in laughter. He
was department manager of electronics before Allison, and Joeltron started in
electronics under Scooter. Joeltron (then just Joel) was cleaning the TV
screens with window cleaner and paper towels, using an aluminum ladder to reach
the shelves. Scooter recommended shutting off the TV’s before cleaning them.
Joel did not.
The
reason Scooter recommended shutting off the TV is a simple one. The “tube”
television is actually called a CRT, or cathode ray tube. A cathode ray is a
beam of positively charged particles used to create TV images, but this
attracts a large negative charge on the outside of the screen. When Joeltron
wiped the screens, the negative charge passed to him as static electricity. And
when his hand touched the metal ladder, there was an arching snap of light. It
shocked Joeltron so badly that he almost fell off the ladder.
Nora,
who worked in the department then, did the same thing, but she did fall from
the ladder and onto the concrete floor. Sitting in the personal office
afterward, Scooter said to her, “I give you a seven.”
“A
seven?” Nora asked.
“It
was ten on the dive, but you didn’t get your legs together on the reentry.”
Nora
laughed, but Cleo from personnel hit him with a clip board.
Back
in those days, the videogame case was different. The company had just changed
from a locking metal rack to the glass cases. These older glass doors slide
shut and lock, overlapping a few inches. Once, Scooter found a young boy had
slid his hand between the overlapping doors and grabbed a videogame inside the
case. Once in hand, he could not pull his arm back out. He was struggling with
this when Scooter approached him.
The
boy demanded, “Open the door.”
Scooter
shook his head and laughed. “Let go of the game.”
“Open
the case.”
“No,
drop the game.”
The
boy then tried to remove the game with only two fingers holding it, but that
still was too wide to fit through the small opening. “Open the case.”
“Drop
the game,” Scooter reasserted. “I can’t open it with your arm in the doors.
They slide over each other, making your hole there much smaller.”
The
boy’s mother then came, seeing Scooter and her son arguing. “Open the case for
him,” she demanded.
Scooter
stepped out of the way. “Look at what your son is doing.”
Her
face became red as she was embarrassed for her son’s theft attempt. He
eventually dropped the game, and his mom did not buy a game for him. Now, the
glass cases latch together instead of overlap, so no one can do that anymore.
Apparently, that was not an isolated incidence.
Scooter
obviously is no longer manager of electronics. That change has to do with
ten-thousand dollars of loss. The problem was, nobody knew what was missing.
Scooter, being the department manager, was the fall guy. He was blamed and
demoted. It was later discovered that an employee of our distributor of CD’s
and some DVD’s was stealing them to sell back to the store. It was too late for
Scooter then, as Allison was hired in his place. Lovable Scooter was removed
from the department after an argument with Allison that involved his tongue
being stuck out when he blew her a raspberry. Scooter in electronics became
Scooter in sporting goods. He is still the same ol’ Scooter though.
Recently,
three high school boys wearing letterman jackets walked through sporting goods
and picked up a can of buck scent, which is concentrated doe urine in aerosol
form used for hunting. The can acts like a grenade when the top is opened. It
first fizzes, but then pops, creating a cloud of urine, and it cannot be
stopped from popping once opened. Scooter watched one of the kids open the can,
and the group started giggling like a group of adolescent girls talking about
boys. They walked to the aisle of hunting clothes and placed the can down and
walked away.
Scooter
followed them, knowing they were up to something, and his rage peaked when the
can was opened. He picked if off the floor and hurried after the boys, who were
walking away. Scooter grabbed the one who opened the can and twirled him
around. Holding the boy by the shirt, Scooter shoved the can under the kid’s
nose.
“You
think this is funny? You think this is funny?” Scooter said.
The
kid’s eyes were watering as he tried to pull away, saying, “Dude.”
“No.”
Scooter gripped tighter. “You think this is funny? Here’s how it’s going to
work. You’re gonna leave. I do not want to see you in my department again with
your buddies. If I do, here’s how it’s gonna work. I’m going to call
management, their going to call the cops, and you are going to go to jail for
vandalism.”
“Let
me go.” The boy struggled a little.
“Get
out.” Scooter pointed in the direction of the doors, removing the buck scent
from under his nose.
“You
can’t make me leave.”
“Oh
yes I can.” Scooter walked him and his friends to the front and through the
doors. The kid looked like he had been tear gassed with tears streaming down
his face. Scooter went to the bathroom afterward and washed my hands as the urine
got all over him. The smell was nauseous, and it stuck to his hand, looking
like a brown sugar gel. That rancid smell stuck in his nose, making him vomit.
The
can of buck scent was the third to be opened in two weeks time, prompting them
to be placed behind the sporting good’s counter. Scooter did not know what was happening the
first time he saw one go off in the department as he had never actually seen
one before. It was sitting in the middle of sporting goods, hissing. Scooter
went to pick the buck scent up to put it away, and when he was standing over
the can, it popped in his face. It amazes me he finished his shift after that,
smelling like he fell asleep in a field and a herd of deer squatted over him.
The
third one was an accident, having exploded in the box that came on the freight
truck. The poor guys in receiving could not figure out where the stench was
coming from, but Scooter figured it out when he opened the box.
It
was not even an hour after the boys set off the buck scent when Scooter, Dean,
and Stan heard a noise coming from the furniture aisle. Scooter headed that way
with Dean following, and they found a group of high school girls gathered
around an empty spot on the big metal racks that furniture freight was kept on.
Four girls had climbed into the hole, though it was only eighteen inches wide,
eighteen inches high, and about four feet deep. These girls were crammed in
there like clowns in a car. The six other girls standing around were snapping
pictures and giggling like the boys were when they first opened the buck scent.
By
this point, Scooter was so mad he yelled, “Don’t you kids have anything better
to do on a school night then tear this place apart?”
The
four crawled out, and the girls walk away, giggling all the while. Scooter later
said, “I wanted to go all King Kong
and rip someone’s arms right off their shoulders. I just feel like giving up.
They just destroy whatever they want to destroy, and you cannot do anything
about it.”
And
then there was the rocket scientist, as Scooter calls him. This guy came in
with his fifteen year old son, approached the sporting good’s counter, and
said, “We want two non-resident water foul licenses.”
These
licenses cannot be bought at store level. One needs to mail into the state to
enter a lottery, and from that, names are drawn for a chance to buy one.
Scooter tried to explain this to the guy, but Scooter could not finish before
being interrupted.
“I
want you to sell me a non-resident water foul license.”
“I
can’t.”
“Yes,
you can,” he asserted.
“Can
I see you’re ID?”
“I
don’t got my ID.”
“Well,
I need to see your ID to sell you any kind of license at all.”
“No,
no. You don’t understand. I’m from Iowa.” He patted his chest as he said this,
like he did not need ID because he was from Iowa.
“Sir,
a law is a law.” Scooter then showed him a board hanging above the counter that
states we cannot sell licenses without valid ID. This still was not good enough
for this genius. Scooter should have known this guy probably could not read the
sign anyway. Beth in sporting goods also tried to explain it, but she had no
better luck. Scooter even called the game warden, who talked to the guy over
the phone, saying, “Without an ID, you do not get a license.”
As
Scooter hung up the phone, the guy said, “Well, I’m gonna go down town and buy
a god damn hunting license. I’ll see you in about half an hour, and you are
going to sell me my duck stamp.”
Scooter
was tired of being yelled at for the better part of twenty minutes for no
reason, so he was glad when the man left. But then he actually came back. He
shoved a license in Scooter’s face and said, “I’ve got my god damn hunting
license right here, so sell me a duck stamp.”
Beth
asked, “Where did you get that hunting license?”
“I
got it from Freedom.” He even told them the name of the guy that sold it to
him.
At
that point, Beth left the counter and went to the personal office to call the
game warden once more, but this time to report the gas station. A couple weeks
later, sporting goods received a call from Freedom, saying their license
computer could not connect to the network. Freedom then sent their customers to
Wal-Mart. We reported them, and they sent their customers to us!
While
Beth did that, Scooter sold the guy a duck stamp, which is needed in addition
to the license to hunt duck. Afterward, when the man seemed placated, Scooter
asked to see the license, knowing he could not have the right license. He
looked it over and said, “Uh, this is a non-resident small game license for
hunting pheasant. You still don’t have a duck license.”
The
man began stamping his foot, throwing a ten year old temper tantrum in front of
his fifteen year old son. “God damnit.” He asked to return the stamp, and
Scooter told him he needed to go to the service desk. The guy sent his son to
do that so he could continue to yell at Scooter.
By
now, Scooter was enjoying the conversation. “Now you’ve spent two-hundred and
twenty dollars, and you still don’t have a duck license. Here is the other
fact. You drove across two states without a driver’s license.” Scooter wishes
he called the cops when the man left the store to be picked up for that alone.
When
the rocket scientist’s son came back, he said, “Well, I’m still going to go
hunting.”
Pheasant
season was weeks off, so his license was no good at the time, and he planned to
go hunting duck with no license or stamp. Scooter likes to imagine him sitting
in jail with his son right next to him. Perhaps they could afford bail if they
had not bought that defunct license.
