There's a scene in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" where two employees in a big box Best Buy type store haul a big screen TV out to a woman's car without any care for what they're hauling. The scene ends with the TV being thrown into the back of a vehicle with a large crashing sound and the two men telling the woman it's supposed to sound that way.

The scene was played for a laugh, but in the real world there would have been repercussions along the line of the woman getting a free TV (or the TV and some of her money back) and the two employees being fired.

What's that? Stuff like that doesn't happen in real life? Funny you should say that. A video has began to make its way around the Internet, going viral as they say, that shows Walmart employees tossing around and throwing iPad boxes onto the floor.

For three or four people left that don't know, iPads are those computers about the size of a hardback book (what you hated in school) that the Apple computer company builds for about $17 apiece and then sells for $500.

Anyway, the video making the rounds shows four employees in a Pikeville, Kentucky Walmart saying, "This is why you don't buy an iPad from Walmart," then doing their best to destroy said iPad in its packaging.

Walmart has said all the proper corporate things, including that they're embarrassed by the employees actions, that the employees are no longer with the company and the store will do whatever is needed to make the customers who bought the iPads happy.

But this is apparently where real life and fiction part ways. Despite the best efforts of these employees (overweight, foul mouthed southern men in their early twenties), no one who bought the iPads brought them back saying, "Hey, this thing's broken" or "I can't get this thing to work."

This could lead to several conclusions. One, the packaging for the iPads is incredibly padded. Or, the iPads themselves are as well made as Apple claims. Maybe the big guys (they seem to average about 280 pounds) wore themselves out picking the box up and had no strength left when they threw it down. Or somewhere there's a poor sap wondering why he can't get his new iPad to work.

The video is on Youtube and judging by the comments, these fine young men didn't manage to improve the view of southerners any. But that's another topic of conversation. The question that initially came to mind was, in this day and age, if you have a job, why would you video yourself doing something like this, then put it on the Internet?

I know, a warehouse job at Walmart isn't the greatest thing in the world, but still it's a job and if you lose it there really aren't that many more out there for you to grab onto.

It also makes a person wonder what kind of personality defect you have to have to destroy something that doesn't belong to you? I've known guys like this throughout my life (and women, also). They're the kind of people you try to avoid if you see them coming. They're always angry about something and usually want to talk about how awful something or someone is.

For a while, making a jerk the main focus of a movie or TV show was the in thing to do. There wasn't one character in the aforementioned "40 Year Old Virgin" that I didn't want to slap. Actor Seth Rogan has perfected the loud mouthed jerk that Hollywood, for some bizarre reason, wants us to love.

But as the Walmart video proves, we've got plenty of that in real life. Just keep this in mind as you're doing your Christmas shopping over the next few weeks. And check immediately to make sure everything works, even if it's five weeks before it's opened. Better to take it back now than have a very disappointed recipient on Dec. 25.

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575