WALMART

April 2nd, 2012

Dear Walmart,

Yesterday, I was at a Walmart SuperCentre (the one on Dufferin in Toronto, ON) and I bought some groceries.

While I was generally pleased with your pricing and selection, today I discovered something that I am not generally pleased with. In fact, I am downright unpleased. So unpleased that you may suspect that I am upset. Let me unpleasantly tell you why.

Milliseconds before biting into a succulent piece of your Black Forest Bar Cake (UPC 681131465359), I noticed that the expiry date on the package of said selected product was for April 12^th. Thinking to myself, “It is not nearly close to April 12, this product will be fresh and delicious,” I closed my lips around the blackness of the cake of forests bars and enjoyed its moist textures, sugary icing and hint of hydrogenated soya oil and carboxymethyl cellulose (as listed on the ingredients of the packaging).

Mmmmm, mmmm! Your black forest bar cake factories had added just the right amount of propylene glycol and sorbate sodium benzoate to make my taste buds tingle. As I leaned back against my chair, moving my jaw up and down repetitively in what can only be described as a chewing motion, I thoroughly enjoyed the perfect combination of all of the right ingredients, which your forest cake bakeries had mixed together in what can only be described as a black forest bar cake.

BAM! Suddenly my world was turned upside down and then right side up, and then upside down again as I was hurled into a summersault onto the floor! The sudden interruption of my jaw movements came about by some foreign ingredient that was not listed under the ingredients on the cake’s packaging. I spat the object onto the floor.

At a close glimpse, the object was blackish and very hard. It was in the approximate shape of a triangle and about the size of medium object. Not bigger than a big object, yet not smaller than a small object, it was indeed very medium. Quickly I checked the ingredients on the label to see if I had been a fool for buying a cake with a “hard, black, triangular medium object” in it. However, after reading and rereading the ingredients, I could not find the ingredient called, “hard, black, triangular, medium object”. Somehow, through your most amazing production facilities, this foreign object found its way into the exact cake that I bought from the exact location that I bought it from, in the second that I bought it. The highly improbable chances of all of these events coinciding would seem to be 0%. However, since this did happen, the chances of it happening have proven to be 100%. This leads me to believe that since the chances of me buying a cake from Walmart and finding foreign objects in it with which I can break my teeth on have been 100% in the past, they will continue to be 100% in the future.

Overall, I am not very pleased about the whole situation. I am pleased about how delicious the cake was, but the un-pleasure of the foreign object has made the whole experience an unpleasant one. I tried calling your 1-800-328-0402 customer service number, but your office was closed during the period of time that this happened to me, so I am sending you this letter instead.

Here is what I expect from you:

1.) Change your hours of operations to include times when people suddenly bite into things that are not supposed to be there from the products of which you sell.

2.) Either write, “may contain foreign objects that are not food” on your food labels, or don’t include foreign objects in your food.

3.) Call me back after 5:15 on a weekday or anytime on a weekend (or write me I guess, but it better be an EXTREMELY personalized letter and not a standard form) and offer some sort of reassurance on your product standards, because now I am afraid to buy any other Walmart branded food items.

If you would like the foreign object that I found in my food, I can mail it to you, but you better pay for postage and any foreign fees that customs will require.

Sincerely,

Terry Ibele

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CONCLUSION: They got back to me the next day. The Manager of the store called me and offered me a free cake and a $20 gift card, which I used to buy soil, a pot and beet seeds. I am now growing beets on my balcony. Thank you Walmart! You win!