Diary of Anne Schwarzkopf, Walmart Customer Service Associate
June 17 —
I’ve been working here a week and someone has eaten my lunch again. Gloria says that it’s mostly a crapshoot, something like fifty-fifty day-to-day and that it’s just bad luck that my lunch got stolen five times in a row. It happens, she says. It happens.
You know what else happens, Gloria? Genocide! But I bet you would take that seriously.
I guess I’ll just eat a snickers bar from the vending machine.
What if that’s the trick? The scheme that this place is running? They steal your lunch so you have to eat out of the vending machine or in the food court? It’s not enough that they steal 40 hours of your life a week, but they need your lunch money too!
June 20 —
Went looking for the hand towels today. For some reason there was a stack of hand towels in the go-backs and since I’m still not good enough for cashier I’ve got to deal with the stock.
The hand towels were impossible to find. I just kept walking and walking through the store. I kept passing end caps that I thought were nearer to the front of the store, but then I would look up and not see any of the walls, so I must be right smack in the middle!
I kept turning down aisles and thought I could see the end, there! There’s a row of freezers at the end of this one, but no, there’s only another aisle behind that one.
I found another employee in the candle section. All of the different smells there were an assault to the senses. I could barely breathe. My eyes were watering when I asked him “Where are the hand towels?”
And you wouldn’t believe what he did. He took a pause and then opened up his nostrils real wide to let in the greatest intake of breath I’ve ever seen. Then he said, “Oh hell, I can never find hand towels! That’s why I stick to the candles. Don’t they just smell great?”
I had to leave this crazy person. I thought I was going to pass out from the smell and considering what it’d done to that guy, I didn’t want to be similarly drugged.
It was getting closer to the end of my shift and I was starting to feel panicky. Why couldn’t I find the goddamn hand towels? Why can’t I find the front of the store? The back of the store? Where the hell am I? How many different bicycle aisles are there in this store?
I decided to ditch the hand towels on the electronics counter. Let them take care of it. The elitist pricks. Then it occurred to me that there wasn’t anyone around. Had the store closed with me in it? The answer came quick enough in the form of the lights going out a minute later.
Trying my best not to cry I hurried from aisle to aisle crying out “Hey! I’m still in here!” and “Don’t lock me in!” and “Lemme out!”
The only light in the entire store came from the emergency lights in the ceiling, which cast a ghostly sort of reddish glow over everything. In that red haze I saw a tent set up in the camping section. Exhausted, I climbed into it and here I am.
I picked up this journal on Friday so that I could goof off in the back of the store when no one was looking, but now it’s my only possession. It was the only thing I had in my pocket when I left the breakroom today. I left my cell phone in my locker. Am I going to find my way out of here?
If I don’t make it out of the store or if this is some kind of psychotic break, let this journal stand as a testament of my experience, of my survival.
I’ll also keep a tally of stuff I take so I can pay it back later.
Lay’s Potato Chips SKU 800009238347
Lay’s French Onion Dip SKU 80008273464
June 21 —
This place is unnatural. I was awoken this morning by a man yelling at me in Chinese. He was wearing a uniform, but when I told him I worked at the store too he kept shouting at me in Chinese.
I walked away from him quickly and I’m glad he didn’t follow.
I walked all day. In and out through aisles. I started keeping a mental map to keep myself from freaking out. I mean, this is pretty freaky that I can’t find my way out of the store.
Nature Valley Bar SKU 1000006473837
The map doesn’t make any sense. Twenty to forty aisles alternating with another twenty to forty arranged perpendicular to the others and then this pattern seemingly repeats itself infinitely. I haven’t seen a door or a wall since yesterday when I walked in the front to start work at two.
Aquafina SKU 7000039827636
If only I could see a wall instead of these endless endcaps and aisles. I keep seeing employees, but they disappear down aisles before I can get to them. Customers tell me that they’re just browsing and ignore my frantic begging. Why won’t they listen? They probably think I’m crazy and go right to my manager to get me fired.
Oh, how wonderful would that be?
I wish they would take me to my manager to have him fire me and say “Go and clean out your locker” and then point to the break room with my locker in it and my cell phone in my locker and my purse. And then I could walk out to my bike and then bike home and I wouldn’t have to be in this store anymore and I could see the sky blue and
I’m panicking again and I shouldn’t do that.
Snickers SKU 30000029891873
The point is that I found a way into the store, there’s got to be a way out of the store too. It could be the same way, it could be different. I just have to keep going, keep looking. Oh, my feet hurt so bad though.
Foot massager 600003984727
June 22 —
Orange 98¢
Doritos SKU 90000398374772
I found a door today, but it can’t be right. I saw it though, I felt it and it was right. How long have I been lost in the store? I thought it was June, but when I got to the door, I could see the parking lot was full of snow. When the doors opened for customers I was shocked at how cold the air was. It never gets that cold here in Phoenix.
Where the hell am I? I’m in a store, but where is that?
I’m developing a theory that there’s a part of the store that’s connected to, like, a wormhole or something. The wormhole is connected to all of the other Walmarts out there they’re all interconnected.
I started asking around about it. I went and talked to the girl at the McDonalds in the food court. She looked asian, so I was worried she might yell at me in Chinese. Instead, this is the conversation that I had:
“Excuse me, I know this might sound crazy, but what city is this?”
“Fairbanks, where else, fucking tweaker. You shouldn’t be in here. I’m going to call the cops.”
Well, I was in shock, but I was resigned to being arrested. Then I thought to ask another question:
“Hey, does it normally snow in the middle of June?”
Then she said! “Middle of June? Lady, you don’t even know what time of year it is? It’s fucking february. You need help.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. I really do need help. But the longer I waited for the police to come, the more I got worried about being put away in a hospital or something. What if I really am a tweaker and I’m going to end up in jail? I ran away and hid in the tupperware section for a while before strolling on to find some food.
I’m sorry, but I decided to steal someone’s food at the McDonalds. I probably can’t find that person again to pay them back. I’m just sorry. I’m lonely and scared and I’ve been lost in a magical fucking walmart for three days and I’m pretty sure that something has been following me and I haven’t had a shower and no one is ever going to believe me that I’m stuck here. I just want to go home.
It is nice to have a hot meal for the first time in days.
June 23 — I think...
Customers stare at me all day as I walk aimlessly through the store. No wonder. I’m completely dirty and my hair is so greasy. My shirt and pants are full of dirt and I must smell terrible.
My mind is playing tricks on me too. I keep seeing children poke their heads out from behind products in the aisles, though I know that there aren’t any children there.
Maybe I’m schizophrenic. Would you know if you were crazy? Could you eventually come to the realization that you were crazy and that you had always been crazy and you only just began to notice?
The children look out at me from behind the aisles and I hear their voices whispering in the folds of time and space.
How long have I been crazy? Did I even get a job at the store or was that a delusion? Can I get better? I’m so sad.
June 24 —
I’m NOT crazy! I spoke to some of the children today. They came to me when I was eating an apple in a produce section. They kept pushing me around the stands and aisles and end caps explaining that we had to hide from the giants (what they call customers) that we have to stay hidden all the time.
They told me that they had been watching me, that I was a lost giant and that that happens sometimes. I asked if they knew how I could get unlost and they said that they didn’t know either. They were lost too.
They told me about how they all had families once and then one day they got separated in the store and they never saw their mothers or fathers or sisters or brothers or grandmas or grandpas ever again. They just had each other and it’s not so bad, not so bad because you can do whatever you want to do and you don’t have to shower or brush your teeth and you can eat candy all the time and the newest toys are always just a few aisles away.
They took me back to a forgotten toy section where they had constructed a fort out of toy boxes and made furniture out of discarded trash and cardboard.
It feels like a home, like somewhere I can rest. I can’t ...
June 25 —
I fell asleep in the fort and when I woke up the children had brought me food and water.
For the entire morning I saw the children come and go, apparently they were very busy preparing for something. Most of the time I just munched on crackers and cheese and looked out of a little porthole built in the boxes. Customers streamed by, people who seemed familiar because they’re the sorts of people you’d see in any Walmart in the world. The waddled and strolled and swished down the aisle pushing carts or dragging children and just generally going about their normal day. The rest from not being in fight-or-flight mode for the first time in days made me feel like I could reach out to them, become one of them again. But I thought better than that. If I crawled out from behind a bunch of boxes stinking of fear and crying about being lost in a Walmart they’d probably run away and I’d be lost again.
Lunch was popsicles and peanut butter sandwiches. I asked if I could stay with them permanently. I offered to help them, but they told me that I had to go back to the giants.
At first I thought that they meant that they were going to return me to my reality, send me back to my store where I could ride my bike away, but what they really meant was that I belonged with the other lost adults. I don’t belong in the old world anymore. I can’t go back.
The leader of the children tells me that we will travel by swing. When I asked what that entailed, he explained that they used climbing ropes and various hooks to pull a canoe up to the rafters and then suspend it. Then, they will use the same ropes and hooks to catch a different brace in the rafters. In this way, we will swing over the aisles and to the camp of the lost giants.
I asked why we didn’t just walk.
The answer was that it was quicker because it was very easy to make the whole arrangement look like a sort of camping display and there was a lot less hiding involved.
Some of the younger ones started to chant “No one looks up! No one ever looks up!” as way of explanation.
We leave tomorrow.
June 30 —
It’s taken five days to reach the lost giants’ camp. I’m utterly exhausted and filthy. My clothing is torn and my shoes are practically ruined. However, I feel that I am finally home.
We arrived at the camp at about 11 am by the reckoning of the alarm clock aisle. The colony of lost giants had shifted the enormous shelves as to make something of a fortress. Within its boundaries they had set up a proper camp. They greeted me warmly and we were all pleasantly surprised that we shared a mutual language in English. There were other camps in other parts that spoke other languages.
The children soon departed and I was invited to eat with some of them — they call themselves refugees or fugees — I ate microwaved burritos with the fugees and drank warm beer. We told each other about where we came from and how we became lost and how long we had spent in the wilderness before we found the camp.
I got to know Byron particularly well, it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve made a connection with someone so quickly. Even before I was lost in the wilderness… How long had it been since I had made a friend? Seven years? I never met people. Never wanted to really. In the wilderness I was desperate for someone, anyone.
Anyway, I asked Byron what they called their camp. He said that they had come to call it Ur after the ancient Sumerian walled city. Clearly that’s some of his influence. He’d been a history professor in his old life. I wonder if he was ever married or had a girlfriend.
I’m feeling very hopeful lately. Maybe this is all going to work out after
March 3—
Byron and I marry tomorrow. I’m permanently closing my diary now, I’ve no need for it anymore.
I think of who I was a year ago. Lost, afraid, directionless… That was true before I became lost in what I have come to call paradise.
The camp moves tomorrow, we’ve exhausted the resources of this region and need to move on. I’ll leave my diary here. Perhaps someone will find it and find hope with it.
February 17—
I’ve been lost for three days and I’ve still not found any of these children or refugees that this bitch is talking about. Hope! Hope, my ass.
There is no end to the displays, the endless consumerist horseshit. I look to the ceiling for those gondolas, but nothing. It’s all bullshit.
I can’t lose this diary. Anytime I set something down, I can’t ever find it again. I have to hold on to it. It’s the only thing I’ve got that anchors me to reality.
This isn’t reality. I’m in some massive hallucination.
I hear whispers in the night...