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Enjoying late night Fun and games at Wal-Mart
Bored College Kids
Competing in Aisle 6
Wal-Mart's Late Hours, Size
Draw Students for Games;
Scavenger Hunt, Anyone?
By ANN ZIMMERMAN and LAURA STEVENS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February_23,_2005;_Page_A1
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- On a snowy Monday night recently, Northern Arizona University freshman Natalie Eickmeyer finished her studying and decided to go out and have some fun. So at 10 o'clock, after scouring a dormitory for participants, she and five friends headed to the Wal-Mart discount center.
The students had no intention of shopping. They were going to Wal-Mart to play games.
That night, she and her pal Amy Zimmerman, a college junior, decided the group would play "10 in 10." The captains of the two teams each spend 10 minutes putting 10 items in a shopping cart. The carts are turned over to the opposing teams which have to figure out where the items came from and return them to the shelves where they belong. That's no easy feat in a store stocked with more than 100,000 different items. The first team back to the checkout counters with an empty cart is declared the winner.
"It's big, it's the only thing open after 9 p.m., and you can get away with more," said Ms. Eickmeyer, explaining why she and her friends regularly use Wal-Mart for various challenges.
From scavenger hunts and aisle football to a relay race limbo under the shopping-cart stand, college students around the country -- particularly in rural areas -- have found Wal-Mart's endless aisles and 24-hour operations to be perfect for middle-of-the-night romps.
Students at Taylor University in Upland, Ind., a liberal-arts school surrounded by cornfields, sign a contract promising not to drink, take drugs or have premarital sex. A dormitory there organizes wholesome activities, including group dates that begin at a restaurant and end at a Wal-Mart for a scavenger hunt, says Elizabeth Diffin, a senior at the university. They typically play a version called "A-Z," where the team that first finds an item for every letter of the alphabet wins.
Eugene Orr, manager of the Flagstaff Wal-Mart, says he's aware that college and high-school kids conduct scavenger hunts and play other games in his store. "I don't think it's a big deal," he says. "But when they leave everything in the baskets and carts, it's really discouraging to the associates, because it creates extra work for them and takes away from customer service."
Mona Williams, a corporate spokesman at Wal-Mart, said the college Wal-Mart competitions were news to her. She suggested that Wal-Mart might use scavenger hunts to train stock clerks.
Students at Northern Arizona University play A-Z at Wal-Mart, too. "I've had trouble finding something that begins with Z, but I usually get lucky in the medicine aisle," says Ms. Zimmerman, noting that Zantac, a medicine for digestive disorders, does the trick. "U and X are hard, too," she says. But after some careful searching, she located Xtra laundry detergent and Ultra Palmolive dishwashing liquid.
The games vary from college to college. When Kerry Ahern and her boyfriend, Lance Greer, are bored, they play aisle football at Wal-Mart, a game they made up to pass the time in Easton, Pa., where Ms. Ahern is a senior at Lafayette College.
In this game, Ms. Ahern and Mr. Greer scout out two goal posts several aisles apart -- fishing-tackle boxes and bedding, for instance. Then they pass the football and try to tag the receiver.
"We play during the day and people give us all sorts of dirty looks," says Ms. Ahern. "The ball once hit someone shopping. She was not pleased."
Other Wal-Mart games emphasize strategy more than physical prowess. During the recent 10 in 10 game in Flagstaff, Ms. Zimmerman, who captained one of the teams, looked for small, rarely purchased items -- a thimble, in one instance -- and potentially embarrassing personal products such as condoms. She also employed some sneaky tactics. After grabbing the thimble off the rack, she turned all the other thimble packages around so the competing team would have trouble recognizing where the thimble belonged. One of the products she grabbed, CLA, a food supplement meant to help reduce body fat, was the last one on the shelf.
Meanwhile, opposing captain Ms. Eickmeyer was racing from one end of the store to the other, filling her cart with "random things from all the dark corners where no one ever goes." Among them: a bendable bubble curtain for fish tanks, a Danskin rubber band for working out, a dodgeball, car air-conditioner refill, something called a gripper for seat cushions, frilly girl's anklet socks, Dramamine and a decorated potholder.
"Gentleman, start your shopping carts," Ms. Zimmerman shouted at 10:12 p.m. And the two teams, each accompanied by the opposing team leaders to keep them honest, were off.
Ms. Eickmeyer's team worked feverishly, immediately heading off to the condom display without a moment's hesitation. The team members almost got stumped by the thimble, but after going through racks of needles and pins and other sewing accouterments, they realized that the packages had been turned backward. They angrily confronted Ms. Zimmerman, who professed shame.
That left the team with one item, the bottle of CLA. There were bottles of the product, but no exact matches. Finally, when Ms. Zimmerman looked the other way, the team asked a blue-smocked saleswoman for help, a violation of the game rules. "I don't know where it goes, just stick it up there," said the worker.
With that, the team, which called themselves "The Noodles," raced back to the cash registers and waited.
The other team, "Natalie's Angels," was having its troubles.
It tried to ditch the dodgeball next to a shelf of balls in the camping section, but Ms. Eickmeyer cried foul and insisted the dodgeball had come from another aisle. Finally, the team found a bigger selection of balls in sporting goods. The seat gripper was easy to find; a string of them were hanging at the end of an aisle next to the Finding Nemo comforters. But Tom Ainsworth couldn't find where the decorative potholder came from. He walked up and down the houseware aisles several times. He found potholders, just not the heavy quilted ones decorated with flowers.
He finally gave up and asked a kneeling stock clerk for help. The worker walked him over to the "domestics" area, in the back right corner of the store, where the sheets, comforters and decorative towels were stocked. Mr. Ainsworth and his partner, Brenton Ward, put the potholder back in its place and headed back to the front of the store to accept defeat.
The two teams conferred and each learned the other had asked a stocker for help. Also, Ms. Zimmerman admitted it was perhaps unfair to have picked a one-of-a-kind bottle of CLA. They decided to call the contest a draw.
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