I'll shop here, but I won't LIKE it!

Okay, the title to this post could be applied to just about everywhere I shop nowadays -- Wal-Mart (especially Wal-Mart, GOD I HATE WAL-MART), Babies R Us, the grocery store (on days I decide to take a stand for small business instead of going to Wal-Mart)... but no, today I focus on home improvement stores. As far as large stores go, Menard's is a total asshole. Unfortunately they have just about the cheapest prices of any of the big home improvement stores, and I just keep winding up there, wandering aimlessly while being hypnotized by their mind-numbing, banjo-twanging jingle.

I'm from the country, folks, and I STILL think that jingle is annoying as fuck.

The thing I hate most about Menard's, though, is their absolutely asinine method of corralling and controlling the flow of people into and out of the store. There is an "in" door, and there is an "out" door. You MUST go in the "in" door (appropriately and conspicuously labeled), and you must go out the "out" door. There's no way to pussyfoot around it or try to go against the system. If you go in the "out" door, you're met with pissy looking employees, cash registers, cart barricades, and I'm pretty sure those guards from the witch's castle in The Wizard of Oz. It's also damn near impossible to go out the "in" door, even if you haven't made a purchase, because they have those amusement park-style push things to go in, that don't go both ways.

My biggest issue with this -- besides the fact that I hate being told what to do -- is parking. The doors are like two miles apart. I am of the breed of people that will park as close to the door as possible. I will spend countless hours, gas, and ozone holes to find the closest possible parking spot, because lugging 25+ pounds of child and carseat is fucking heavy. And while I am not a meteorologist, I am willing to wager an estimate that it's about 5,000 degrees outside right now.

So I'm posed with a riddle and a choice -- do I park closest to the "in" door, so I can have a short walk going in but a huge-ass long walk coming out, or do I suck it up early on and park by the "out" door and save the walk later? Or, OR... do I park in between so that I have a considerably long walk both going in AND coming out?

See? This store is an asshole.

I never know what option to pick, and while I'm trying to decide, there's usually at least three or four other cars wandering the parking lot (in the wrong direction, mind you, why is it nobody in this god-forsaken town knows how to drive in a parking lot?). I just want some damn caulk, why is this so ridiculously and laughably difficult?

I usually decide to get my punishment out of the way early and park by the "out" door, so that I can arrive in the store drenched in sweat, my child extra pissy -- probably about her burned retinas because I forgot YET AGAIN to put up the visor hood thing on her car seat -- and my right bicep about to give out because have I mentioned lately my kid is freaking obscenely HUGE?

And the carts. Oh the carts. This is why I never got carts before I had a kid because they're always mangled together and I always swear the girl at the nearby service desk is laughing at me because I'm battling the carts while holding a huge baby and car seat and losing miserably. I'll finally pull one out, and it always happens to be the ONE that cannot drive in a straight line, and the little old lady that comes up behind me to get a cart calmly and effortlessly pulls one out, one that drives straight and is not squeaky and does not contain a screaming child who is pissed from being jarred around so much while mommy battled the carts.

I'm telling you. Menard's is an asshole.