Living at the Wal

Funny guy:

Skyler Bartels kept looking over his shoulder. It's a habit he picked up living at the Windsor Heights Wal-Mart for three days.

Really living there. Eating, sleeping, checking out the DVDs, never leaving. The plan was to spend his entire spring break there. Under the radar.

Some kids go to Cancun. Skyler Bartels, a Drake University sophomore from Harvard, Neb., went to the garden and patio department. . . .

This was part sociology experiment, part school project. Bartels is a writing major. Maybe he'd put it all down on paper and pick up an independent study credit, or even sell it to somebody someday. . . .

Could the biggest, most successful discount store in the world really meet his every need? Twenty-four hours a day? That's what the TV spots were telling him.

"That was the goal," he said. "To buy everything I needed at Wal-Mart."

His father told him to go for it and offered to bankroll the project. . . .

He lived off energy drinks, doughnuts, yogurt and Subway sandwiches.

He figures he slept four hours out of the 41 in captivity. He'd catch a few minutes whenever he could - in a Subway booth or a restroom stall, which isn't recommended, especially with the night stockers bursting in every five minutes.

"I got to the point," he said, "where I was adept at falling asleep on the toilet seat, which sounds kind of weird."

The best place for dozing was lawn and garden, where the lights weren't so bright. Nobody worked there between 2 and 4 a.m. Bartels found a lawn chair, kicked back and wondered how life could be better.

Link.