Surprisingly, Walmart has not touched this neck of the woods. We've got McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, KFC, Chili's, Ace Hardware and other American chains. But no Walmart. So in search of a replacement to go to stock up of stuff for the house, Justin and I headed to Carrefour Hypermarket, a french chain. So, is anyone wondering how the French do Walmart in the Asian country of Indonesia? Well let me tell you...
We get to the store and are greeted by a funky yet ingenious contrapion. The main shopping area is on the second level of the store so in order to get your shopping cart up there (which I don't really know why they don't just keep some shopping carts up there), you ride on an uphill moving sidewalk. Now while you might be sitting there concerned for our safety wondering how we would keep from getting run over by a runaway cart, here is where the genious comes in. The wheels on the cart are not your ordinary wheels. They are designed to catch on the moving side walk and stay locked in place until you get to the top. Now that idea would make great shoes for kids sometimes!!
Once we made it to the 2nd floor, we spotted quickly the small kitchen appliances we were after. We made a quick pass through the TV section to note prices and then proceed to go up and down the aisles looking for things like a microwave, toaster over, etc. You know...the essentials. Soon after we had a couple of items piled into our cart, we were stopped by a store employee who started writing us some kind of sales slip. She looked over the microwave in our cart and wrote down some information and then handed us the ticket. We tried to inquiry what it was for but she just said take it to the front to pay. So, we took our ticket and kept shopping. After then after we had selected a couple of more items, we were approached by the same girl now joined by another who dove right into our cart and began opening some of the box and taking out some of the warranty slips. They asked us to fill in our address information and then took the slips from us and instructed us to pick them up at the front. Okay. That was a little odd having them just come up and open the boxes with out even asking. We hadn't actually paid for the items but somehow I already felt ownership of them and felt a little violated by the act. After Justin and I exchanged puzzled looks, we shopped on.
This store was packed out like a Walmart super sale day. People everywhere. And they drive their shopping carts like they drive their cars...dodging, weaving, making paths that aren't there and pretty much not paying attention to the cars (or in this case people) around them. Crazy.
We navigated our way through the crowds and made it to the check out with 2 cart fulls of stuff. We proceeded to pay for our merchandise and inquired about the slips that had been taken away to some location for who knows what to have done with them. This inquiry brought another man our way who them began opening even more of our boxes and taking slips out. After we paid, this man then escorted us to a service counter, where more boxes were opened and papers taken out and stamped. As we sat there at the counter I wondered why strangely it seemed like Justin and I were the only ones in the entire store who were undergoing this scrutiny. Humm. Justin seemed to think that no one else was purchasing these types of items (ex: microwave, toaster oven, iron, rice cooker, portable stove) but with that many people shopping...I just don't know. We finally agreed that they were just trying to be helpful and make sure we got the full gaurantee on our products. As our driver would say, "Crazy Indonseia."
As a side note...Today, the second day of school and Luke already has a girlfriend. One of the other moms observed Luke and her daughter giving each other a kiss before they left their class today. I think we all knew Luke would be a ladies' man.
Today's Word of the Day : terima kasih, pronounced tear-a-ma ka-see. This means thank you and it is the first word Justin and I learned when we came here back in July.
1 comment:
you are going to have to talk about the birds and the bees with Luke before he is even out of diapers. If he has a girlfriend, now he really won't want to leave the baby class!
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