I went to Wal-Mart late Monday night. There was about 15 minutes left until Tuesday, the day a movie and a videogame I have been waiting for were set to be released. Now, I've done the midnight release thing millions of times in millions of stores... including Wal-Mart, but on this occasion, I was told something that I did not expect;

"Wal-Mart changed it's policy. Employees are no longer allowed to stock DVDs and videogames, the vendors do that stuff now."

Is that true? Who are these vendors?

While I was there, a number of other people were standing around in that department looking for items at the turn of midnight as well. I calculated it quickly in my head, $370 worth of merch. I know that's microscopic compared to what Wal-Mart pulls in daily, but considering that there are (approx.) 3000 locations nationally, that's more than a million dollars of lost sales in the period of about a minute.

Well, whatever... does anyone know if this is standard policy now?