Saturday, May 21, 2011

Attacked By A Bottle Of Pancake Syrup?

Normally, when I choose to go to Walmart, I go to the supercenter in the smaller of the two cities I'm closest to. In that Walmart I do not normally meet the kind of shopper that you see on the People of Walmart website. I don't even meet the caliber of shopper that Scratch seems to attract. No weirdos, no idiots, no losers, just neighbors, family and friends. Ok, so maybe there's a few weirdos there, but in a nice way.

I had to go there today, after my 2 hours of work, and frankly, I wish I hadn't. Everything was going smoothly until I arrived at the cereal aisle. I had just removed a box of pancake mix and syrup from the shelf, and was turned back to my shopping cart so I didn't exactly see what happened. I just heard it, and felt it. And ended up with it all over me.

Some guy walked behind me with his arms full of things and his elbow knocked a bottle of syrup off the shelf, onto the floor where it exploded and spattered all over me. It missed him completely. I heard the loud pop, and felt things start to drip from my hair down my neck. It was oozing through my fingers. It was on the back of my white capri slacks and running down my leg into my shoes.  The guy just says "Oh! I'm sorry honey, I got it on you" and walked away leaving me standing there dripping. At least he picked the bottle up and put it back on the shelf.

A woman on an electric cart that had just come through the very same spot behind me didn't knock anything down nor did she run over my heels in an attempt to avoid knocking anything down, so there was ample clearance between me and the product. She went to get a store employee to help me out. The store employee escorted me to the ladies room and went inside with me to see if there was a way that we could get it off the back of my pants. We encountered another good samaritan who suggested a tide bleach pen.

The store employee was going to go and get one when the samaritan offered me hers. I offered to pay for it and she wouldn't hear of it. Now that's the kind of Walmart People I usually meet. Which made up for the one that did all the damage and then walked away without going to get a store employee to clean up the sticky mess on the floor at least. I guess he thought that Walmart would have made him pay for the breakage. They usually don't because they'd rather have someone report it than to leave the mess where someone could get hurt.

Thanks to the lady with the bleach pen I managed to finish my shopping without people thinking I'd had some sort of accident that they didn't want to know about. The syrup he knocked down was a dark amber in color which made brown spots on the back of my capris. Except for the sticky spot in my hair, I looked presentable so people didn't try to leave a wide path between us.

That Tide pen worked great, it lightened the brown up to the invisible point and once washed, I'll be able to wear those pants again. A shower and a hair washing took care of the rest. Other than the embarrassment of walking through a store with brown stains on the back of ones white pants and the really creepy sensation caused by syrup oozing down my neck and legs, everything is all right in my world.

While I realize there was nothing much the guy who caused the problem could do about it, he should have at least found a store employee and owned up to what happened. However, he acted in typical male fashion. Make a mess and leave the women to take care of it.

15 comments:

  1. Consider yourself lucky that a large box of Corn Flakes did not follow the syrup.....LOL......

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please don't let him represent all men. I would definitely have helped someone if I had accidentally spilled syrup on them.

    Sounds like a sticky situation...

    ReplyDelete
  3. TAB,

    Large boxes of Corn Flakes were protected by my shopping cart. Fruit Loops, on the other hand, were within reach. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  4. Red,

    The 3 women that helped me represented 3 generations including myself. When I said he walked away they all said "It figures".

    I had no idea until I saw the broken bottle top what it was that was on me and that was a very creepy sensation. It wasn't like water dripping because it was so thick. I was accidentally slimed by my grandson once and the syrup was worse.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sarge,

    First thing I did after putting away the perishables was go take a shower and wash clothes. No ants.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We'll call you "Woman in Search of Pancakes"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Skinny,

    I'm thinking it should be more like Woman Who Was Treated Like A Pancake.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Was it real maple syrop or merely the Log Cabin variety? Well, you are sweet by nature...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sherry:

    I'll bet you had the sweetest buns in town.
    That was a sight to behold. :^)

    ReplyDelete
  10. John,

    No, just plain old Walmart brand pancake syrup. Not even the artificially butter flavored. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  11. Whit,

    It was cheap Walmart syrup. Sticky buns would be more like it, along with sticky hands, neck, hair and whatever. lol

    ReplyDelete
  12. My granddaughter dropped a sippy cup of red fruit drink on the floor at Wal-Mart. It exploded. We mopped up the mess with paper towels---it was OUR mess after all---and I went to the ladies room with the red drippy towels to throw them away. One of the employees thought that it was blood, and that someone was bleeding out in an aisle somewhere. If someone HAD been bleeding to death, I couldn't have found a Wal-Mart employee to save my life. Pun intended.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Slick,

    The lady on the electric cart had no trouble finding an employee, I was actually surprised at how helpful she was.

    I once broke a small hole in a kitty litter bag that I planned on buying. Leaked litter out in a small trail for a few feet. When I realized what was happening, I asked an employee to tape the hole shut and I'd pay for the bag even though it lost litter. It was my fault, since I was buying a bag of litter that was too heavy for me to lift over the metal part of the shopping cart.

    I think they were surprised at me because they offered to take that one back and get me another one. I felt it was my responsibility and I should pay for it. Unlike the guy who knocked down the syrup.

    ReplyDelete
  14. In the days when I went shopping with three small children, if we broke it, we bought it. Basic decency. It's sad when you realize that decency is so out of style that nobody recognizes it anymore.

    ReplyDelete