It's Really Not This Hard

All I needed was a pair of softball cleats.

That really shouldn't be difficult.

Nothing at Target. Not at the shoe store next door. The sporting goods store wants the equivalent of a tank of gasoline for them (roughly $327). But some friends found cleats (super-cheap) at the World's Largest Retailer.

Now, you have to understand, I am not a fan of the World's Largest Retailer. I have been known to use the word "evil" to describe WLR and what I think it has done to our economy. I blame WLR for the death of three grocery stores, a sporting goods store, a hardware store, a computer store and at least one clothing store in my hometown. And I doubt my little hometown is different from dozens of others across the country. WLR did not absorb all those full-time jobs, benefits for families or salaries. Hundreds of people (in a very small, economically-challenged town) were forced to look for work out of town. The local economy has been decimated.

But, today, I needed cleats. And I decided to suck it up, put my morals and my bitterness aside for a few minutes and go to WLR for its cost-effectiveness.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I found myself in the very heart of Middle America. Big hair. Pot bellies. Fords and Chevys as far as the eye could see. (My Volkswagen with the top down was definitely a one-of-a-kind addition to the scene.) This is exactly what the world imagines America to be. Welcome to the stereotype.

The Greeter was less than enthused to see anyone coming in the door. She grunted out some kind of nearly-audible salutation. I smiled and turned to say hello... but she had already buried her face with some kind of pretending-to-sort-a-stack-of-sale-flyers maneuver.

The Store is enormous.

4,365,782 acres of fluorescent-lit merchandise... and hundreds of people scurrying about trying to stock it, arrange it, price it, stand-and-stare-at it and even buy some of it. It's overwhelming.

I needed a map. Or at least a compass. And bread crumbs to leave a trail for escape.

There were bikes hanging from the ceiling in the distance. Two miles to the southwest. That must be Sporting Goods. I began hiking.

At the culmination of my trek, I found a woman rearranging something on a shelf. I still needed a map. She didn't have one. But she knew the terrain. She instantly became my trusted Sherpa.

Cleats aren't here. They're in the Shoe Department. Follow me. Three miles west. 

We missed the 12:35pm shuttle. So we were on foot.

After a few minutes of searching for the person who actually knew the local terrain in the Shoe Department, we recruited the help of two more WLR associates. No one knows where softball cleats might be. Eventually, though, we assembled a group of five associates debating where to find the elusive cleats (Sporting Goods or Shoes) and how to dig up the Great Shoe Representative. It never occurred to anyone that the store might have a paging system.

Someone from Electronics, two states over, knew the answer. And led us directly to a small stack of orange boxes hidden in the farthest corner of the Shoe region. In the meantime, the Sherpa who had briefly disappeared and actually met the Great Shoe Representative face to face, came back with directions. Better late than never.

With the crisis averted, our merry band of part-time-with-no-benefits associates began wandering back to their previous tasks. And I was left to stare at the $15 cleats.

None of which were my size.