Back in 2012, I was working at my local Walmart Supercenter, where I had worked for many years. Here’s a story about that time, or as my husband and kids used to call these – “The Walmart Chronicles.” In my early years at Walmart, whenever I came home with some bizarre or surreal story from my day at Walmart, my husband would tease, and in a singsong announcer voice, say, “Ta-da, The Walmart Chronicles” and my kids picked up that same teasing phrase. Often, I don’t think they believed some of these strange stories, but they were all true. And let me assure you, a lot of strange things really do happen at Walmart, especially bizarre incidents of theft. Here is one such tale.
An elderly male associate’s employment at Walmart ended for a valid reason. One of my young associates told me she felt sorry for him, even though she was the associate who warned me Asset Protection was watching him and that we were supposed to keep an eye on him and call AP if we saw particular suspicious behavior. This young associate told me this man believed the Mayan Apocalypse was going to happen and that he was stealing stuff to prepare for that event… True story.
Shortly after this man left Walmart, I arrived at work one morning and an elderly woman at the door greeted me as I walked in and she grabbed my arm to stop me. This people greeter was the worst gossip in our store and she stopped associates and customers alike, to gather and share gossip, often taking a hold of their arm to stop them and keep them engaged in conversation. Even my kids complained to me about her, telling me it felt like being held hostage at the front door when she started prying, trying to elicit bits of dirt to spread. My kids told me they went to the other entrance if they saw her at the door, to avoid dealing with her.
This morning, was a day of “sharing” gossip, as this woman animatedly told me this story about how Walmart killed that elderly former employee. She told me he had a heart attack and died and it was all Walmart’s fault for firing him. She did not know why he was fired and I assuredly wasn’t telling her.
Our personnel manager was coming through the door at the same time and this people greeter stopped her too to share this Walmart horror story. As we walked away, I told the personnel manager, “She’s going to tell every customer who comes through the door today that Walmart killed that man.” I asked the personnel manager if she’d heard he had died, but she hadn’t heard that “news” either and she told me she would make some phone calls. Later in the morning she informed me that the elderly man was not dead and had not had a heart attack, so I went to the people greeter and told her the story was not true. I asked her who told her this story and she told me she heard it from an elderly woman, who had worked at our store for many years, but had since retired. I also asked her to stop repeating that story.
Shortly after that, I ran into the retired associate, whom our store’s worst gossip had named as her source, shopping in the store. I had known this retired associate many years and I told her about the story and she told me she hadn’t told the store gossip that story and she told me she hadn’t even been in the store for over a week. I did tell the store gossip this and I asked her if she could think of who else might have told her, because I wanted to try to stop this untrue story from spreading further, because it damaged our store’s reputation. She couldn’t remember who else might have told her.
All through that day, customers and associates approached me and asked me about that poor old associate, whom Walmart killed… I kept relaying that he was alive and had not had a heart attack.
Friday morning President Trump did a nearly hour-long call in interview on Fox and Friends. As with every time Trump talks more than a minute, he veers off onto all sorts of tangents, speculations and garbled reports, but mostly Trump’s world revolves around “people told me about so and so or such and such.” He lives in a world fueled by innuendo and malicious gossip, mostly fixated on gathering gossip about what other people said about him.
The Dems impeachment sideshow revolved around 99.9% hearsay evidence too.
The media reports loads of hearsay reports too, often rushing to tweet out unverified information or retweeting other reporters’ unverified information.
Our entire political class lives and breathes opposition research (gossip and dirt-digging).
Digging for dirt and spreading dirt about each other is the American political ethos, despite all the lofty virtue-signaling about democracy and the Constitution.
Digging for dirt and spreading dirt about each other is also our cultural ethos, promoted 24/7 by our massive media organizations.
Most disturbing though is we have the President of the United States, whose grievances against the former ambassador to Ukraine, include – Trump claimed Marie Yovanovitch refused to hang his photo up in the embassy for at least a year. Here’s the report from CBS:
“President Trump attacked former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch on Friday, saying she was “not an angel” and claiming she refused to hang his framed photograph in the embassy in Kiev for at least a year.
“This ambassador that everybody says was so wonderful, she wouldn’t hang my picture in the embassy,” Mr. Trump told “Fox and Friends” in an interview. “She wouldn’t hang it.”A member of Yovanovitch’s legal team said the embassy hung photos of Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the secretary of state “as soon as they arrived from Washington, D.C.” The embassy in Kiev did not return a request for comment.
The president said he had heard “bad things” about Yovanovitch, who was appointed by President Obama in 2016, and claimed she was disliked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected in May.
“This was not an angel, this woman, OK?” Mr. Trump said. “There were a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like.””
President Trump behaves just like the worst gossip at my old Walmart store and while she was, unfortunately, talking to every customer walking in the front door, Trump talks to world leaders and the most important people in our government, in business and in the media.
Reporters analyze and dissect Trump speak and they count up all the lies he tells, but someone should count up how many times he asserts, “people are saying” or “I heard”…
Unfortunately, the absolute worst place for petty, malicious political gossip to marinate and spread is on Twitter and that’s probably why Trump loves Twitter so much.
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