I prefer Target where I live. The closest Walmart is kind-of scuzzy. When I lived in small town Tennessee, though, I loved Walmart.
Shopping at Wal-Mart, on the other hand, is like beaming down to Planet NASCAR - a world known for its fetid atmospheric gases, harsh overhead lighting, and grunting, apelike humanoid inhabitants. It's usually dirty at Wal-Mart, not to mention funny-smelling, and the poorly-lit parking lot is a gauntlet of panhandlers, drifters, and guys that look like the Randy Quaid character from Christmas Vacation, right down to their grime-encrusted RVs - all of whom "just need a couple of bucks for gas so they can make it to Uncle Lonny's". Once inside, it's a mind-numbing nightmare to fimd what you're actually looking for, and if you do find it there's usually one checker for every 100 checkout aisles, guaranteeing that you will end up waiting endlessly in line behind the funny-smelling old white lady who purchases eveything with rolls of pennies (which she counts twice to make sure she hasn't been cheated), the scowling black teenager in full Detroit Bulls uniform buying a single package of batteries with a Amex Platinum Card (and no ID), and the gum-snapping crimped-haired Latina who insists on paying for her 49 cent package of SpongeBob SquarePants hair scrunchies with an un-numbered third-party check drawn on the Bank of Guatemala and made out to CASH. "Ax me fo' my driver's license? Oh no you dih-int!"
All this to buy a can of WD-40.
And I didn't even mention the legions of screaming, mucus-encrusted children that run through the store like packs of Morlocks from an H.G. Wells novel. Your average Wal-Mart is like a combination day-care center and meth lab - a reeking bedlam of overstimulated, gene-damaged, poopy-pants pre-teen mutants with mullet haircuts and WWF sweatshirts, all purple-faced and screaming for Daddy to buy them the ceral with the free Nazi armband in every box. Yeah, that's the atmosphere I want to be in after a hard day of work.
Do I like Wal-Mart? Hmm. Let's just say that if a smallpox plague were to hit Tarrant County and the only place to get the vaccine tonight was the 24-hour Wal-Mart SuperCenter, I'd take my chances waiting until Target opened tomorrow at ten and pay ten cents more to buy it there. Call me a snob, but next to the prospect of an evening spent among the Wal-Martians, even the threat of having virulent, suppurating pustules covering my eyes, nose, and throat seems somehow less scary.
True, the older Wal-Mart stores are rather seedy. I like the newer Wal-Mart Super Centers much better, i'll only shop in those...ok, i'm a snob! K-marts can be pretty nasty also. I do like the stuff in Target also, but if that story about them not letting the Salvation Army ring a bell outside thier stores are true, they will not be getting my business anytime soon.
My wife prefers Target, but I've still got a bone to pick with them about their treatment of employee reservists and the Salvation Army Christmas Bell Ringer ban. Won't shop there or even enter their stores. Probably my Celtic blood, but it takes a good long while for me to forgive or forget those types of things.