Beyond the Cashier

A few days before Christmas I went to hell Walmart to pick up a few essential items: cookies, tealights and toilet paper.  While I was there, I managed to fill up my cart with a ton of other items.  You know how it goes when you're prancing around the Devil's Playground with $5.28 burning a hole in your pocket.

Walmart is a stretch for a retail-challenged person like me on any day of the year, but a mere few days before Christmas, it's virtually big-box suicide.  Which is why I am finally getting the following puzzlement off my chest by sharing it with you.

What's with all that merchandise beyond the check-out aisles?

I'm talking about the shelves and shelves of merchandise piled high directly past the cashiers, items you don't see until after you've waited in line for half an hour, behind other "guests" who take their screaming quintuplets shopping, attempt to pay with five hundred dollar bills or Euros or pennies, or realize just as they reach the front of the line that they left their wallet behind.  In the bathroom.  In the back of the store.

Do the Walmart execs realistically believe that I'll grab an item at the front of the store, turn back and do it all again?

Fie on you, Walmart.  I'll just have to do without a Santa Claus Chia Pet for another year.