The Heart of Darkness

I went to Wally World last night. We were out shopping for a new tv because our current tv, which is about 10 years old, has problems with the tuner which would probably be more expensive to fix than to get a new tv. Our local choices for purchasing a new tv are all big box stores. We tried both of the large electronics stores, and short of spending over $1000 for a tv we're not sure we really need (HD, LCD, etc) we both ambivelent as to what to get. We could replace the same size and type tv we currently have for around $270, but we don't know if we want to actually do that. Too many choices!

Anyway....after getting pretty frustrated at only having two different places to shop I suggested we go ahead and look at WM. Here's my reasoning on this...for this particular type of product and market the choice of place to purchase a tv from are essentially the same....big box stores. There are no mom-n-pop stores selling tvs in this town, or anywhere around here (that I know of). The fact that we might purchase it from one store versus another is irrelevant at this point because they all use the same marketing and purchasing techniques.

So I was in WM for the first time in 7 weeks last night, and I was very aware of how my attention was easily distracted by things...kids books on an end display in the baby dept., cereal on sale at a GREAT price on the end of the cereal aisle. I didn't buy any of these things, but we did purchase some convenience food for dinner (frozen pizza). The other thing I looked for while I was there was some envelopes I've been trying to find elsewhere (no luck there either). But it bothered me to even be in the store. We didn't buy a tv there, by the way, because they apparently had done a poor job of setting up the higher-end tvs (HDs) and they were all grainy and looked awful. We couldn't get any sort of idea as to what they really looked like.