Fear and scaring in Sarasota

Letter to a store manager

I'm not the biggest fan of Walmart, but it seemed like every one in the store was there when I needed them.

 

Oct.27, 2023

 

Store Manager Jarad

Walmart 

Lockwood Ridge Road

Sarasota, FL 34243

 

Dear Jarad,

 

While I spend several thousand dollars per year at your store, I have never experienced so much help from many of your associates until today.

 

You see, I lost my phone. Frankly, I was very scared and upset. For one thing, I do not drive. I have to depend on Uber and that means I need my phone or I am marooned in your building. I. had nightmare visions of spending the night sleeping on a table. 

 

Anyhow, here is what happened. First, I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and get my flu and Covid shots. 

 

After that, I picked up some groceries. And then, I checked out. While checking out I had a problem with one of my credit cards. I thought I had properly activated it, but failed to do so, and used my debit card instead.

 

Anyhow, I decided to check out the Holiday store. For more than a decade, Walmart has sold cute little holiday teddy bears with the year imprinted on the foot. It isn’t available yet, which is not unusual. But I used the phone to take a photo of a Christmas tree I was interested in. Then, while shopping for some gift bags, I got a phone message from my credit card company telling me why my credit card was refused and how to activate it. 

 

Anyhow, I went to the register to pay for the gift bags and discovered my phone was missing!

 

Not think very straight, I went to the first place I used the phone – the pharmacy. I had a notice when my prescription was filled. They didn’t have it, but the pharmacist on duty was kind enough to dial the number to no avail. 

 

Next, I went to the register where I checked out. The cashier was gone and the lane was closed, but one of your associates was using the area to apparently organize merchandise. He too, called the phone, again to no avail. But he referred me to another register which was designated for use as a lost-and-found station. The person there (perhaps a CSM?) went through the drawers but didn’t find it.He also tried calling the phone with the same results.

 

It was on to the Christmas tree area where an associate went throughout the entire area ringing me and searching for the phone without any results.

I then went to the area wheI I found the gift bags to no avail.

 

Having worked for five years at Walmarts on Long Island, I finally realized that just about the only person in the store who could walk around with me searching would be a manager.

 

Now, nearly hysterical, GM Coach Carrie arrived and in a calming voice asked me to review what I had done. I finally had figured out something of the last place I had been and we headed towards the Christmas section. She dialed my number and immediately found the phone by the gift bags. I had left it upside down and it was difficult to see and hear with my older eyes and ears. 

 

She continued to talk to me, further calming me down and I was finally able to order an Uber to get me home.

 

Again, so many people expressed their concern and willingness to help that I have to congratulate you on the magnificent core of associates you have.

 

Sincerely,

 

Michael Munzer

JUST A THOUGHT

Just a thought.

 

Our current political climate can be traced back half a century, or even longer. 

 

Buried under Nixon was Agnew. He was forced to resign after facing extensive bribery charges. I cannot comprehend how Americans could support Trump, due to his track record and moral recklessness. And how is Biden charged with financial issues with absolutely no proof?

 

It started with the Nixon nightmare. Except for 9/11, we have continued to become a nation of haters. Even then we found a new group of our citizens to hate, despite the fact that, unlike the terrorists, they fled their former homes to leave the oppressive and extreme Muslim culture.

 

When I was a student teacher, years before 9/11, I had a couple of students whose family fled the Islamic revolution in Iran. One of the students was a young teen who insisted on becoming as ‘American’ as possible. She insisted she wanted to become a Christian because that’s who Americans were. 

 

A few years later, during the 2002-03 school year, I taught a young student who lived on the lower East Side. Wearing a head covering every day, she rarely spoke and appeared to live in fear. She ate alone at lunch. A year earlier, the school’s playground was used as a staging ground for rescuing 9/11 victims. 

 

Politics in MY country has become convoluted and filled with rage. I once lived in a time when the minority party was called “the loyal opposition.”

Discourse was usually civil.

 

I’ve come to realize that, unlike previous years, I’m getting too old to care. If I live long enough, I’ll vote against Trump or whoever the GOP candidate is. But many of the friends who once made wonderful advocates for both sides are gone. It’s not so much fun anymore. Politics has gone from a great sport to all-out war tearing apart friends and family. 

 

It reminds me of the ‘War of Northern Aggression,’ which still has  roots in today’s climate as the differences between north (liberal) and south (conservative) cultures are filled with fear and distrust. How many times over our lives have we commented that the south is still fighting the Civil War? Yet even if we spend a day at Gettysburg, we still fail to realize how high the cost of that heritage is. Is it ‘history’ and has little to do with us, or are we doomed to repeat it by not learning from it?

 

Those of my high school classmates who are still alive remain clinging to different sides. We lost our innocence with the JFK and MLK murders. Here was a group that elected four Black classmates as our senior year officers, not because of the civil rights era we lived in, but simply because the incumbent group of privilege did a poor job. 

 

Today we remain divided. I’m so grateful that we had our 50^th reunion before Trump took office. Trump’s heritage of division, incompetence and election denial has polarized us.

 

It's my belief Trump never would have considered running for president if he hadn’t been so brutally teased by Obama at a White House Correspondents Club dinner. The man’s ego isn’t built to take a joke. We can all agree the Trump family has a history of racism. Court records give us a pattern of ongoing discrimination in their real estate business. Here was a man who was satirized and humbled in a most public forum by a man he grew up considering racially and economically inferior. He is a man so prideful that he could have no choice but to seek validation in the presidential arena, especially since his ‘birther’ claims proved to be false.

 

And his denial of the 2020 election results continues to inflame our nation and deeply encourages chaos in light of both civil and criminal charges. He simply could not accept defeat and repudiation and though his supporters will deny it, this is an example of a childish temper tantrum over incredibly high stakes. 

 

Yet many still believe his Jan. 6 behavior and its consequences are justified. Back in our senior year, we could never have imagined something like this.

 

But we should not be surprised. We quickly entered – and perhaps even caused – the civil strife over Vietnam and the rise of the counterculture. We were the ones who made drugs socially acceptable ­– and some of our best and brightest have died because of it. It is something we have passed down to our children. At the turn of the century, I taught special ed children. Many of these children were abandoned by their parents and their grandparents freely admitted that the mothers used drugs during pregnancy. But the deniers blame vaccines. 

 

We then went through Watergate, which was followed by impeachment of Clinton over sexual misconduct. Yet so many of us will freely admit to cheating.

 

And then on 9/11, we seemed to unify. But we also found a new group of our citizens to fear and hate. And Trump vocalized that fear and hate.

 

And we attacked Trump because of his “Stormy” relationship and three wives, the latest of whom frequently displays public hostility towards him. But I wonder if impeachment is justified over Clinton’s blow job or over Trump’s phone calls? In neither call did Trump get satisfaction. Hopefully Clinton did ( That’s a joke –  sort of).

 

Until January 6, we can view the former president as a man of many character flaws, disorganization, impulsive behavior and very poor decision making. His public lies and misinformation number in the thousands.

 

Though Trump is not an example of a “good” person, the reason I feel he has so much support is he is so much like us.

 

The fact is we deserve the leaders we have and may have killed the ones we need.   

 

Just a thought.