Team Squiggle

It’s remarkable how, in a mere twenty years, we’ve gotten to be a more transparent society.  Those secrets that were only whispered and then disbelieved are now captured for eternity and stored in the servers of YouTube.

Such is it with the Wal-Mart cheer, described by Dangerous Minds as the “Squiggly.”  In fact, I knew it as the “Squiggle,” back in 1994 when I briefly worked for the beast.

For those not inclined to visit the site for fear of being clobbered by Richard Metzger’s triumphalist, cranked-to-eleven Democrazy rants, a brief description is in order.  When Wal-Mart has employee meetings, they usually end with a cheer.  Seven lowly staff members (and occasionally a good-spirited manager) take to the front.  The crowd begins clapping in rhythm.  The first employee calls out, “Give me a ‘W!’” and the shouts the letter back.  The second follows with, “Give me an ‘A!’”

You get the idea.  The place of honor is reserved for the fourth person in line, who represents the vestigial hyphen in Wal-Mart’s name.  This dash, and the person incarnating it, is known as “the squiggle,” named, perhaps, by one of the empty-nester women that populate much of Wal-Mart’s staff.  When the chant reaches the honoree, he or she shouts, “Give me a squiggle!,” then squats down and shakes his ass around.  The audience, drunk on the joy of working for the chain, follows suit.  It’s impossible to describe my alarm when the 75 people around me, as a body, suddenly dropped 18 inches below my eyes and waggled their posteriors.

I’ve told that story a hundred times to disbelievers.  Now, in this day when the People hold the Power, I can tell my story and, at last, be heard.

ADDENDUM: Being a temporary worker and obviously too cool for school, I did not participate. As one meeting ended, I heard angry sputtering behind me. I turned around me to see one of the company's multitudinous middle-aged women pointing at me, her face contorted in fury. "He didn't do the Squiggle," she shouted as her friends tried to restrain her. I am not joking.