Anyone who has been to WalMart knows you see some things. These 21 employees are reporting fresh from the retail trenches with their most ridiculous "People of WalMart" moment they've had on the clock. It will leave you scratching your head and wondering, 'Who are these people?'
Pineapple Projectile
“I worked at Walmart last year as a cashier and a woman came up to my register with nothing but a pineapple and a damaged one at that. it was 10 pm on a Tuesday, so it was a slow night. She demanded I give her this pineapple for 25 cents because it was damaged. I didn’t see any damage, so I asked he to show me the damage. She promptly ripped the top greens off the pineapple, and said: ‘See it now?’ I called my manager over and he said he can’t sell it to her for a discount, and he’s sorry, but she can get another one. She cursed, threw the pineapple at me, and walked out mumbling about needing a smoke. She was a prime example of human trash, but dang she threw that pineapple hard.”
What A Lovely Wedding Present
“This is the story of the wedding cake lady. This woman ordered a wedding cake a couple weeks in advance and got the biggest four tier one we offer. We ask for 50% deposit but she says she’ll pay for it all now. Sure, not a problem. Take her to a register to get our duplicate receipt. She pays for the entire thing in food stamps! ‘Holy crap, I did not know you could do that,’ I think to myself.
Pickup day rolls around. She and crew show up, paperwork is in order, she gets a look at the cake and loves it. Goes without a hitch.
Next day is where the shenanigans begin. She shows up with a few pieces left in the box and tells us it wasn’t fresh and wants her money back. Store policy at the time was ‘Freshness Guaranteed or double your money back.’ Bet you know where this is headed. We (the state) had just converted to a card-based food assistance program and the system had no way to reconcile a charge back onto the card. The store paid out double the price of the cake, in cash. It was $800 back to the customer.”
They Were Forever Banned
“I was unloading a freight truck when the woman that works at the fabric counter calls over the intercom for a manager. Then maybe two minutes go by and she yells for management on the intercom again and it’s clear by the tone of her voice that something is going down. Then maybe 20 seconds or so go by and all I hear over the intercom is ‘HELP!’
Some of us are about to go see what’s going on but our manager says he’ll take care of it. Turns out two sisters and their kids were tearing apart the store, the sisters were eating food right out of the bags, one of the kids was throwing jars of baby food at the wall and the rest were opening items off the shelves. The yell for help came when the oldest kid proceeded to pee on the carpet in the clothing department. When the two sisters were confronted with this, they just laughed and said it was our job to clean it up.
They got banned from the store and I was told the police had to forcibly remove them”
Travel In Style
“I worked as a third-shift stock boy for Walmart throughout college. One of the most interesting jobs I have ever had.
One of my favorite stories was one night about 3 am a bunch of kids came in wearing bandannas and riding adult-sized big wheels about as fast as they could. They made it clear across the store to the soda and stole about 5 2-liters and a bunch of chips and snacks. The entire staff just watched this happen too. Seemed par for the course.”
Walmart Is A Warzone
“Guy walks in takes a dump on the floor. Continues shopping like nothing happened.
Large lady and husband are shopping late at night. Lady decides she can’t make it to the bathroom. Squats down and pees in aisle 5. Husband just stands there, laughing hysterically.
Black Friday. I’m the first person people see walking into the grocery side of the store. I was ‘guarding’ Care Bears. Once 5 am came and crap hit the fan, I was pinned. Couldn’t move. Lady behind me was in a wheelchair. I was gonna try to help her, but she was ticked at me for being in her way. She kept trying to ram the back of my legs shouting at me.
Same black Friday, there was only one of a certain kids’ scooter left in stock. One guy got it. Another guy comes running from the back of the store. He tackles the guy with the scooter, punches him. Runs off laughing with the scooter.
Ticked off customer comes back with a weapon. A little old lady that was our greeter scolded him like a small child and made him give her said weapon.
Guys came in once with a vampire cape and teeth. That’s it, he had nothing underneath.
Women had a miscarriage in the bathroom, left the baby in the toilet.
Guy comes in with wife and baby at 2 am. Guy comes up and yells at me because we are stocking freight to loudly, his baby is sleeping.
A manager was using the walker stacker (walk behind forklift) out in the garden center. He was trying to get a television off the top shelf, about 10-15 feet up. The TV was not secure and fell on a customer. This was pre-flat screen days.
The Loss Prevention guy was an amateur MMA fighter, 6ft 4″ very muscular. He caught 15-year-old kid shoplifting. The kid weighed 110 soaking wet. LP guy picks the kid up to take back into the store. Kid smacks LP guy. LP guy thought the proper course of action was to turn kid upside down and pile drive his head into the concrete. The kid is now a vegetable.
A tall white guy would come in every Friday night like clockwork. Walks straight back to hardware, grabs spray paint and WalMart bag. Proceeds to huff paint. Coward managers never did anything about it.
Third shift manager chased shoplifter into the parking lot. Shoplifter stops, turns around, punches manager. Breaks her nose.
Walking back to the department from the breakroom. Walk through layaway, straight ahead was lingerie section. Saw fellow coworker trying on women’s thongs with his wife. He wanted to know if he looked good in them.
The same coworker impregnated two other women at said store, along with his wife. All at the same time.
The store manager was sleeping with his co-manager’s wife. It all played out in front of us at the store one night.
Very big and large man was beating his girlfriend up in the parking lot. Another very large manager went out to help said woman. Have you ever seen two large individuals do belly tapping with each other? If not, I highly recommend.
This is just a small amount of the stories I have. I worked for 10 years in a ghetto WalMart.”
“You Rassle?”
“Back in the fall of ’06, I worked at a WalMart in Arkansas over the holiday season. I stocked groceries overnight. My particular beat was the baking aisle, which gets pretty wrecked during the holidays.
So one day I’m sitting there sweating my butt off stocking an entire pallet of 10lb bags of sugar when I smell something awful. It was like a mix of rotting meat and body odor. For a second, I thought some college student had hidden some raw shrimp behind the jello again. So I look up and there’s this guy standing over me.
He’s about 6’0 tall. He’s got one of those giant Grizzly-Adams beards. He’s thin as a rail. He’s wearing a wife-beater, overalls and a denim jacket that’s so filthy the denim was a greenish color. That’s not all.
He had one and a half teeth. He also had a lazy eye, so I wasn’t sure if he was looking at me or the Betty Crocker brownie mix. The smell belonged to him. Being the polite employee that I am, I ask if I can help him find something.
He replies, ‘Dang, you’re a big ol’ boy aren’t ya! You play football?’
I reply, ‘No, actually. I don’t.’
Him: ‘You rassle in college?’ (that’s how he pronounced ‘wrestle’)
Me: ‘Nope.’
Him: ‘You rassle high school?’ (at this point he starts licking that nub of a tooth)
Me (nervously): ‘Nope. No wrestling.’
Him: ‘You like you’d be pretty good at rasslin.’ You wanna go outside and spar a little bit?’
At this point, I mumbled something about it being my lunch hour and power walked back to the storeroom. I then hid behind the pallets of Dr. Pepper until I was sure he’d left.
My coworkers didn’t believe me but found the story hilarious. That is until he came back the next week looking for me. For a month, not a week went by where I didn’t have to hide from the Creepy Hillbilly Rassler.”
The Third Shift Was Full Of Fascinating Characters
“WalMart was my first job at 18 and as with most new employees, I got stuck with the crappy third shift for the first few months. As a cashier on third shift, my job was mostly to stay awake and zone my area. Staying awake was almost never an issue, though, because at precisely 1:30 am, I would get The Bumblebee as a visitor.
The Bumblebee was an old, old, old woman wearing a bee Halloween costume. Stinger, wings, and everything. She was never outrageous in her behavior, she never purchased anything weird, she was just a bee and I never asked why.
When I got moved off of the third shift, they stuck me in the beverage department. That was fine once I got used to the regulars, like the guy who would dump an entire bag of change on the counter and ask, ‘How much do I have? How much can I get?’ and would sometimes ride his bike into and through the store because he ‘didn’t feel like stopping.’
I lived in a really backwoods area, so there was a guy who would ride his horse up to the store to buy his 99 bananas and then ride home. I always felt bad for the horse because it looked hot and tired, but I guess the guy’s license had been taken away years before so riding a horse is the way to go if you’ve had one too many.”
Dinner And Entertainment On Aisle 7
“I saw a lady playing hide and seek with her kid while carrying a small mustard container and eating a corn dog.
Now, I hate to make fun of the kid in this situation but this chubby little spawn of Satan was knocking crap down in aisles as she ran to hide from mom, who was counting and walking and eating her corn dog.
Mama Whale then was looking for her but really I think was just shopping pretending to look. She was moving so slow but I also don’t think she was capable of moving with purpose anyway.
Short story but there it is. Freaking Tallahassee.”
In The Mob’s Defense, Those Are Great Stocking Stuffers
“I worked a Black Friday in a ‘nice Walmart’ in a small Texas city. One of our advertised specials was $6 fleece pajama pants. For some reason, nobody could find out where the wrapped pallet was in the store and assumed it was set up elsewhere. For some equally confusing reason, that was THE THING THAT EVERYONE HAD TO HAVE. I don’t think I was asked more than three questions that entire night that didn’t involve pajama pants, mostly. People were TICKED.
We later found the pallet still wrapped up in the warehouse back stock the next day, and ended up putting it out on the floor where it was ravaged by 3 pm. Turns out overweight and shapeless North Texans love one size fits most clothing for obvious reasons.”
Their Years At Walmart Exposed Them To The Worst Of Society
“So many stories:
WalMart’s week-long anniversary sale. I bring out a crate of Charmin Ultra Soft that was on sale. A pack of shoppers jumps at it. Mom sends her little 5-year-old daughter to squeeze into the crowd. Other lady scratches her and takes her score.
Women’s washroom. Blood, poop, water and tissue everywhere. A line of ticked off ladies forms in under one minute after closing off washroom for cleaning.
Some guy throws up in aisle 3. Barricade both ends of the aisle to clean up. People still try to squeeze in even with the smell and the visibly disgusting floor.
Collecting carts in a parking lot where driving instructors like to take their students. This was before they had that electronic cart pushing thing. People will stand in the middle of the road as they see me coming in with the carts all the while dragging little Timmy with him/her. I can’t just swerve away from you and that oncoming car, so get out of the way!
Some guy makes the perfect spiral poop in the urinal in the men’s washroom. Why? How? I left it for the night crew and feigned ignorance.”
The Audacity!
“I used to work as a customer service supervisor at WalMart for a few years after I graduated high school. I honestly probably have hundreds of stories but for some reason, the only one coming to mind at the moment is the chicken man.
WalMart has a hot food bar and one particularly busy night, we get a man who comes to customer service with a large bag from the hot bar. He demands a full refund. I ask him what the problem is and he starts yelling that our chicken is the worst thing he’s ever tasted and he can’t believe we would sell something so dry and inedible. He claimed we are a rip-off and we should have our food license revoked. I calmly apologize for his experience and say I would gladly issue the refund. He hands me the large bag and it’s completely empty.
Me: ‘Sir, where is the chicken?’
Him: ‘Well, I ate it all.’
Me: ‘I thought it was inedible?’
Him: Dead silence.
Face, meet palm. So he’s telling me he wants a refund on the inedible chicken that he ate? I denied his refund and sent him on his way.”
She Must Have PTSD From All That Horror
“I used to manage the health and beauty department at a Walmart in a not so nice part of town. I thankfully escaped. I had so many ‘people of Walmart’ instances that I’ll just share my favorites:
An older woman (50’s) came in and said she was looking a shampoo that would treat scabies. I told her I didn’t think we had anything specific for it but I would help her find something close in the ‘medicated shampoo’ section. I turn my back to her and start going through the merchandise, looking for something that would work. She says, ‘My, you have such pretty hair,’ and I feel her hand on my head. I jumped back from her so fast I almost knocked over an entire end cap. She was pretty offended by my ‘over-reaction.’ I thought I was justified in not wanting to be touched by someone that was currently suffering from an infestation.
A bill collector called the store looking for someone that didn’t work there anymore. I told him as much and he proceeded to cuss me out and said he was going to sue me. I hung up on him about five times that day.
We had a group of die-hard NRA people threaten to come into the store with their weapon as a protest. Our store manager did the one good thing he’s ever done and called the cops on them.
Someone died in the bathrooms. Twice. One was, unfortunately, an elderly woman having a heart attack. The other was a guy that OD’d.
Had vagrants follow me to my car multiple times to ‘help’ me put my groceries in the car. It got bad enough I stopped shopping there at all. If I had to buy things, it had to be something I could carry.
I got pulled into a loss prevention bust when they caught a crack addict loading up her cart and trying to walk out the door. She had legitimate bought a lamp and wanted to put it in her car. When the police officers took her to the car, they found stolen items from other stores in the area. So I helped bust a theft ring.
And my most visually memorable customer was a big lady riding around on one of those electric carts (it was her’s not the stores). She had 3-inch neon yellow nails on all twenty digits, hemp flip flops, a baby blue velour jogging suit, way too much make-up, a straw samurai hat, and was literally dragging a chihuahua on a leash behind her. If I was a braver person I would have taken a picture.”
Cash Me Outside
“I went to the Walmart Money Center to cash my paycheck. It’s a Friday and super busy with the paycheck crowd but there are also several people there to cash their income tax checks. The people in front of me were incredibly rude and loud people who had two carts, one full of groceries and other random items, and another cart that held their three kids.
Each of their kids was barefoot and one has no pants on and all were dirty. As can be expected, the kids didn’t take too well to waiting in line with nothing to do. So the parents opened some toys and food from their cart and gave them to the kids. They finally get to the front and try to cash their income tax check.
In the middle of them asking if they could check out at the money center (which is just bad manners), the cashier tells them their check bounced, basically, and that they wouldn’t be able to cash it. She ran it again and had the same result so she told them they would have to get a hold of who issued the check and find out what was wrong. They went BUCKWILD, screaming at the woman behind the counter demanding that she cash their check anyways. She obviously couldn’t do that and told them so. Their ever classy response was to throw everything out of their carts all over the money center and storm out of WalMart without paying for the food they let their kids eat.”
It Was Quite The Disappointing Purchase
“Former Walmart employee. I worked returns and refunds in a small town WalMart in the Bible Belt for three years. Oh, the stories I could tell!
My favorite refund story is a woman who returned a…used adult toy. I didn’t even know we sold those. Her reasoning? ‘It wasn’t worth the 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.’ She got her money back”
Santa The Ladies’ Man
“Santa The Ladies’ Man. I have no other name, it was an older man who played the role of Santa year round. In the winter, he was dressed as classic Santa, in the summer, he wore Red shorts, white T-shirt, and Red Suspenders, still in Santa character, but in the fall and spring, he wore a bright red tracksuit with a white stripe, and a bright red wide brim hat, no other way to describe it. I obviously named him Santa The Ladies’ Man.
There was also the person in the motor scooter cart who’s stomach was scraping the floor as she drove.
And the woman who was out of breath walking to the deli and was having a hard time breathing as she ordered two pounds of mozzarella sticks, then proceeded to start eating them as she wheezed her way away from the deli.”
Sam Walton Would Be Rolling In His Grave!
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“I worked at WalMart for three and a half years during college, mostly at the customer service desk. It was in a college town in Florida, so we had all the fraternity/sorority traffic, plus all the foreign exchange students, but it was also a liberal haven surrounded by incredibly conservative cities.
My most appalling attempted return came from a young woman and her boyfriend asking to return a used pregnancy test because ‘It didn’t work.’ I don’t know what that meant, but my manager did not approve that return. The extra hilarity was that I was working next to a coworker who was a complete germaphobe, and the look on his face, once he realized there was a pee-stick less than 2 feet from him, was priceless.
The most ridiculous moment was a gentleman who stepped up to return a shovel. He admitted that it was purchased ‘over 30 years ago’ and claimed it had a lifetime warranty. No receipt, of course. When we refused the return, he started yelling about how Sam Walton would be rolling in his grave over how the store was run
Oh, I also had a bomb threat called in by a woman who said she had seen 2 people getting it on in the toy aisle. The call started as a complaint, but as she continued talking, she grew more and more enraged and clearly felt that blowing up the place was the rational course of action. That was weird.”
Even The Employees Are Weird
“Not so much ‘people’ but rather another worker. Meet Gary.
Gary is 81 years old, he also fought in Vietnam. Gary is a little short cute old man. However… Gary is totally crazy.
Let’s go through everything Gary told me before I left for school:
- The Kennedys committed the atrocities of 9/11. Yep…the entire gang was in on it, JFK, RFK, Ted, Ed, John… ‘Why else do you think JFK and RFK were assassinated?!’
‘Agent Orange is for women.’
Obama gave two statements after Charleston. One to the country and another to his cabinet that said they were going to take all the weapons.
Sandy Hook was fake because Joe Biden actually adopted all of the fake victims so we would never see them again.
He owned a bunch of real estate in California and owned adult video stores…he actively went to adult video conventions and claimed that he was on the committee to determine if someone could be a pornstar which meant he got to get it on with a bunch of girls.
Black people, by law, can’t be police officers.
Gary: ‘If you want to WOO (yeah he said it like Ric Flair) a female, you just gotta ask me sometimes.’
Me: ‘Alright, thanks, Gary, I have a girlfriend though.’
Gary: ‘My girlfriend’s got a tight one.’
Me: ‘Ok.’
Gary wasn’t just delusional, Gary also didn’t have a filter:
A woman with a big chest walked past him: ‘DID YOU SEE THE CHEST ON HER?!’ She blatantly heard him.
- Gary, talking to me: ‘If you don’t go on break I’m going to tie your braces to the back of my car and tear them off.’
Gary: ‘I got it on with my girlfriend last night’
Me: ‘Oh ok.’
Gary: ‘I was pounding it from behind.’
Me: ‘Gary, aren’t you like 80?’
Gary: ‘I take pills.’
Gary wasn’t just both delusional and obnoxious. He was also defiant. From day one to my last day, he had a theory that the boss was out to get him and that the boss always got upset over petty things. He used to say, ‘Eff that guy Dave!’ But our boss didn’t get upset over petty things and his name was Bill. I miss Gary’s crazy self.”
Weapons, Baby Dolls, And Dancing Women
“An older woman in a wheelchair came in one day carrying a babydoll,just cradling and talking to it. This was about 6 am and she was waiting at the weapon counter for ammo. I hid my employee badge and noped away back to my department, electronics. Apparently, she did this regularly.
Also, there was an elderly man who would ride a WalMart scooter in electronics occasionally and ask for adult videos, or as he would say ‘dancing women.’ After repeated failed attempts to explain that we don’t carry that kind of entertainment, he asked me about Game of Thrones. I admitted that there was indeed adult content in many of the episodes and he bought the first season that same day. He came in another time afterward and told me he had enjoyed it a lot, ugh. Sometimes he would come in and follow me or the other female associates around the department, wouldn’t even say anything…just followed us around.”
He Made Them So Uncomfortable
“One time, while working in the hardware department, a man came up and he stank really, really bad. It was a combination of sewage and vomit. He had jean shorts on and there was liquid poop running down his legs and into his shoes. He kept asking my coworker and I really odd questions. I remember: Where the duct tape was when it was behind him, whether the paint could be used to paint carpet, and ‘Why the flowers?’ Just that, ‘Why the flowers?’ He made us so uncomfortable that we just noped the heck out to lunch.
Another time, working in the Pet Department (my primary area) late at night, around 9 pm, an old, bathrobe-wearing woman asked me where the cat food was. I pointed it out to her (I had just zoned the aisle, everything brought to the front and looking nice). I was cleaning the fish tanks for a few minutes when my boss came up to me and asked me what the heck happened in the cat aisle. I walk over to it and there are about 40 pyramids of canned cat food. This woman had apparently taken as many cans as she could off the shelf and made small little pyramids all over the aisleway.”
Cherokee Elf
“I worked at Walmart for about a year but was not technically a Walmart employee. I was part of a company that handles the books and music. Anyway, I usually tried to keep to myself and never really talked to anyone. Every now and then, there’d be a stray employee that would browse through the books (killing time, I suppose) while I was stocking.
This one guy would come by maybe once a week, chat for maybe 10 minutes, and leave. He was a little weird, but he never really creeped me out or anything, mostly we just talked about what books we like or what was coming out soon.
One day (I really wish I could remember how this conversation started), he tells me that his ancestors are Cherokee Indians. At this point, I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, sure buddy.’ Where I am from, everyone claims to have Cherokee background (is this a common thing?). Blonde hair, blue eyes, and freckles? Yep, got to be Cherokee, for sure. That’s not the point of my story though.
This man proceeds to explain to me that the other side of his family is wood elves and that the wood elves had close relationships with the Cherokee Indians. He ‘proved’ this point to me by showing me how pointy his ears were. I could not think of a single thing to say to this guy, so I just kind of smiled and nodded in some sort of agreement. Walmart can be such a weird place.”
WalMart Sells Pants, Sir
“I saw a guy’s wiener once when I was cashiering.
It was about a year ago or so ago, I was 17 and working as a cashier at WalMart. Not loving it, obviously but I liked having a job for my age and the money also didn’t hurt, so I just pulled through with it.
So the story begins with me serving this guy. Early-mid forties-ish and wearing ripped up clothing like he came back from a construction job or something. I didn’t pay any mind to just how ripped up his pants were as I was just daydreaming about something else outside of work as I usually did.
The guy’s done paying on his card and the receipt prints out and I had the receipt to him, and my eyes just wander down and I see his wiener… Buddy boy was going commando in 10 degree (50 F) weather. The wiener was just out there, flaccid, wrinkled, and pink like an old snake (the first and only wiener I’ve seen, I was an introverted and awkward 17-year-old) Normally, when I see something that’s out of this world like that, I would mention it to the person. I probably should have said, ‘Hey sir… uh there’s a hole in your pants..’ But my eyes were just stuck on it and I was shocked as all heck.
I continued on the last hour of my shift not telling it to anyone, as the area where my store is in is know for its freaks and anytime I had a creepy moment with a customer, my supervisors and work buddies would just laugh it off.
On the ride home with my mom, I told her about it and her helicopter mom persona just came out. ‘WE NEED TO CALL THE POLICE! THAT’S HARASSMENT’
I convinced her not to do anything about it as I didn’t see it as a big deal. I didn’t feel ‘harassed’ in any way. It was just gross…
Didn’t tell anyone else about it until a couple months ago when I mentioned it to my aunt and cousin in the car and they just burst out laughing about it. I laughed along too because I really do see the humor in it and didn’t feel violated about it at all as many might think. Anyways, I have lots of other crazy customer stories from my time at WalMart, but this just stuck out the most for me.”