Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Adventures in Grocery Shopping - Emergency Evacuation Edition!

Well, I officially had my first full grocery shopping experience at Walmart last night. My husband and I make it a point to go grocery shopping at Meijer instead so we support local business. Sometimes I will pick up a couple things here and there at Walmart but our actual grocery shopping trip is always at Meijer.

So there we were, comparing coupons and picking out items when a broadcast comes over the loud speaker at Meijer. "Attention all shoppers, due to an emergency situation, all shoppers must leave the store immediately. Please evacuate in an orderly fashion out of the closest exit. All employees, evacuate to parking lot B." This was repeated several times.

Some people started running out of the building other people started taking their shopping carts toward the checkout. I'm not sure why, since the employees were being evacuated as well. I think it was just the shock. My husband and I simply left our cart in the aisle and walked away. There were police by the exits to help people remain calm. Once outside there were about 5-8 police cruisers in front of the building.

After looking it up this morning, it turns out it was a bomb threat. They brought some bomb-sniffing dogs in and didn't find anything. There were a couple of news reports from local news stations. They were all just little blurbs though.

Thankfully, we left unharmed. We had also just started our shopping trip so it didn't cost us too much of our time. Another blessing is that It was about 8pm so the store wasn't too packed. I felt bad for some of the people I saw who were ready to check out with a cart full of items and had to just leave their stuff in the cart and come back some other day... or do what we did, head down the road to Walmart instead. I can't help but wonder what the Walmart greeter was thinking when a line of cars suddenly turned into the Walmart parking lot, 8pm at night to go grocery shopping.

All in all it made for an interesting first experience shopping at Walmart and an interesting day in general.

3 comments:

Layneh

Thank goodness your husband has his CPL, it probably helped calm some nerves!

Amata

For sure! It was nice knowing that if someone came out shooting we had a fighting chance. In fact quick action on my husband's part might have saved someone else's life too.

Anonymous

Some people get to have all the fun! :) I loved your comment about what the Walmart greeter must have thought when they saw a line of cars pulling in around 8:00, all of whom headed for the grocery section! It would be so much fun to be a "little mouse in the corner" sometime when you two go shopping. You're so serious, and so funny! I just love you both. Mom :)

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