How to Survive Shopping (Ruleshorror)

13 Rules to Survive Shopping at Walmart

So maybe I've scared you off all the other options, or you live in the middle of nowhere and didn't have them in the first place. What good is advice about the flea market or mall when the only thing in town is good old Wally World?

Walmart is a strange place with a documented history of strange inhabitants and bizarre products. It's weird at the best of a times-a fantastic and bizarre hodgepodge of people who can't afford better or have no other options geographically. Sometimes it really is the only option for food. Maybe you get your food elsewhere, but pet supplies it's the only option. Maybe you'd like to get clothes from a dedicated store, but you live in a town with a population that barely cracks four figures. For some reason or another, you've got to go to Walmart.

It was always a place for the strange to gather, both of our world and otherwise. In the now-times, Walmart has gotten weirder. In order to survive strangeness in all its forms, bear these 13 rules in mind.

If you see someone scrubbing the walls, walk away slowly. At best, it's a human employee scrubbing human grossness that was put there voluntarily. At worst, it's an inhuman employee scrubbing away-well, you don't wanna know what they're cleaning up.

I understand wanting to test the balls in the sports section. Don't throw too high and hit the top, because you might break the Sealing on the Ceiling. After that, there's no going back.

The Walmart bathroom is actually one of the most dangerous places in the worlds. Yes, most dangerous out of worlds, plural.

Why yes, the eyes in the suspiciously cheap knockoff dolls ARE following you.

Some of the books are clearly not New York Times #1 best sellers and that's okay. Lots of unknown books can be super cool and high quality. If the book starts reading itself to you though, thank it for its time, and leave.

Any DVD you buy from the Walmart clearance bin has astronomical odds of actually being a haunted CD from the 90s-similar to "lost VHS" tapes with, um, stuff, on them.

Occasionally, Walmart produce does bite back upon inspection. It's not just you.

People have gotten married in Walmart before. This is such a bad idea for lots of mundane reasons (sanitation, reputation, aggravation), but also PERMANENTLY BINDS YOUR SPIRITS TO THAT PARTICULAR WALMART.

Nothing good lives under, above, or at the back of a Walmart shelf.

It's not just that nothing good happens in a Walmart parking lot at 2 in the morning. It's that bad things choose to happen there too.

Anyone who has frequented Walmarts knows that distinctive smell. If the smell suddenly changes, it's either something mundane and horrifying (human refuse, burst food, expired something or another), or you're encountering a Walmart Spirit. You will smell it, hear it, and see it in that order (and taste it, if you're particularly unlucky). It will want directions, spare change, or to cut you in line. For the two former, do it, your wording doesn't particularly matter. For the line cutting, don't answer, just step behind it in line - you do not want to give it permission to cut you.

It's 100% okay to ask an employee to check in the back. It is 100% a bad idea to try to do so yourself.

The tiles are random. Or at least they should be-don't follow a path unless it's clearly man-made (usually in tape is safe), or you will open the portal to the place most of their stock comes from.