Walmart is a gateway into a terrifying dimension. This is the place where people go completely nuts, acting in the most revolting ways without a second thought. These employees weren't paid nearly enough to handle these literal creatures wreaking havoc on the store. Content has been edited for clarity.
An Explosive Solution
“This is my time to shine. I knew those four years at Walmart would pay off eventually. I worked at the Walmart service desk, so I dealt with some of the most epic nonsense imaginable. I had this couple attempt to return a half-empty and extremely sticky bottle of KY Jelly because according to the woman, ‘It didn’t work. It still hurt when he put it in my butt.’ I stood there for a solid thirty seconds, holding a half-used bottled that had been used to shove something up this woman’s butt. I regretfully informed them that I couldn’t possibly process this return. I handed them the bottle back, and then I went to the bathroom to dry heave and wash my hands.
I had a middle-aged guy stop by to ask for a paper job application, because for whatever reason, he didn’t feel comfortable using our online kiosk. I scrounged up a paper application and he started to fill it out at the desk. We made small talk as he continued down the page. Once he got to the question, ‘Have you ever been convicted of a felony?’ he paused and asked me if he should answer that honestly. I told him yes, because if HR ran his name and found anything, he would be ineligible for the job since he had lied. He told me that he had been convicted of a felony. Well, multiple felonies. He told me, ‘Oh don’t worry, I only assaulted guys, so you’re fine’. He calmly went back to filling out his application, while I was frozen there in sheer terror.
We had this customer who I’ll call Huffy, because she would arrive and huff the aerosol dust remover that people used to clean their keyboards. She would get high and then pass out in the bathroom for a few hours. Management got tired of Huffy coming in and taking bathroom space and stealing products. The next time she came in, a manager and loss prevention associate were on her immediately. Huffy was able to use a couple of cans before they got to her. Once Huffy saw the two employees walking towards her, she took off on foot. I saw Huffy and the two associates streak through the doors. Huffy got into her car and make a break for it out of the parking lot. She clipped two cars as she made her escape. She left the two winded Walmart workers behind in the dust. Believe it or not, someone who has just huffed two cans of dust remover is not a very good driver. I watched the car start to swerve down the parking lot. Huffy jumped the median and slammed her car into the back wall of the neighboring Burger King. She went through the wall and stopped in the kitchen. It was the best attempt to escape Walmart law that I have ever seen.”
Disturbing Dairy Fight
“This occurred in the early fall of 2011. I worked in the produce section of a Walmart supercenter in the middle of my hometown. This supercenter was located in a particularly bad area, and even I, a fully-grown able-bodied man, would keep my car keys hidden in my fist as I walked to my car in the parking lot after dark. One day, I was restocking the Dole-branded mangoes, when I heard a commotion from the back of the store. I was too tired to investigate, so I simply continued with my mango duty. A short while later, some police and a paramedic crew run past the produce section, headed for the back. Maybe someone got wasted? By this point, I was thoroughly intrigued. My break soon comes, and I head over into the back, around the dairy section. I see a blanket covering what looks like a body. There is blood all over the glass-door refrigerators, stocked full of Organic Valley milk. At first, I thought it was some really convincing Halloween decorations. But then it occurred to me that someone died. No, not died. They must have been murdered.
I figure out the entire story once I head over to the break room. Apparently, there were two men in the dairy section, both with shopping carts. This was an area of the town in which ‘being respected’ was one of the highest concerns to many people. When these two complete strangers had their carts accidentally collide, both of them took this action as a sign of disrespect. This escalated into a massive brawl. One of the men literally beat the other man with his bare hands. He got on top of the victim and smashed his head into the concrete floor until there wasn’t much of a head left. The surviving fighter stayed put, and he was soon arrested and taken away through the back of the store. Later on, there were blood tests done on both of the fighters, and neither of the two men had any illicit substances in their system. Respect and violence are so significant in my hometown that this sort of thing wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary.
Many people, along with myself, asked why the store hadn’t been closed down, and why I wasn’t notified to stop working. Apparently, the assistant manager talked to the manager, and they concluded that the only response necessary was to close off the dairy section for a while while the scene was documented. The rest of the store never skipped a beat. I had to reorganize some of my sections so the milk could be displayed there instead.
After that day, I frantically looked for a new job, and I ended up in my current career about eight months later. As I understand it, Walmart keeps track of their most dangerous locations by way of crime rates in the town, zip code, and other demographics. That store was ALREADY regarded by Walmart itself as the most dangerous Walmart in the United States, well before this incident. I suspect that it held onto that title to this day. Be careful out there folks, you never know the person you’re dealing with. They may prefer to beat you to death rather than face ‘disrespect’ from the slightest accident.”
He Was Wearing What?!
“I worked at Walmart for eleven years. Eight of those years were spent working the night shift. Once I had this guy walk into the store, head straight to the jewelry counter, drop an elbow through the glass, and stuff his pants with Kay jewelry. As an added bonus, he even high-fived the greeter on his way out of the store, and he smiled for the camera. Naturally, he was arrested within the hour.
I also had a regular customer who would come into the store at night in a raccoon suit. It was not a costume. It was a full bodysuit made entirely out of raccoon pelts. No way you could get this sort of thing at Party City.
This other customer came in wearing only a pair of shoes. I was on a break, so I didn’t witness this firsthand. He approached my coworkers and claimed that he had been robbed. He then proceeded to run all over the parking lot, rubbing his bare butt and genitals on peoples’ cars. The police quickly arrived and tazed him before they took him away. He never even waited for my coworkers to respond to him.
One day, I was covering for a greeter while she was on her lunch break. I watched this customer on crutches get out of a car and make his way to the entrance, complete with a cast on his left leg. Right afterwards, I saw this large woman get out of her car and sprint to the entrance, in order to beat this man to the only motorized cart we had left available. She plopped down on the cart and proceeded to drive away into the store. When the man on crutches got inside, I apologized to him and asked if he wanted me to get him a motorized cart from the other entrance He simply said, ‘No, it’s fine, I only need a couple of things. I’ll heal up in a couple months, but that witch will never stop being nasty.’
Finally, I caught a couple hooking up on top of a stack of pallets in the garden center. I can’t remember exactly what I told them, but they both noticed me right away. They turned beet red and ran away. The woman left behind her underwear and one of her shoes. I really should have gotten a raise for everything I had to encounter.”
Blackout Barrage
“I used to work for a Motorola carrier at this little folding table near the front door of various Walmart stores. I was selling flip phones to customers, but technically I was working through Walmart. One day, I was working in a very sketchy part of town. This was a store with lots of employees tasked with ‘loss prevention’, and items were being stolen all the time. It was a very lively place to be. As it happened, a tropical storm was rolling into town. It was three in the afternoon, rather overcast outside, and then the power goes out. Now these days, there would be battery-powered backup lights that would kick on, but back then there was one generator. It took several minutes before we got it to start and the lights came back on. Another bit of context: this store had been built in the eighties. It had lower ceilings and lacked the modern skylights. It was PITCH BLACK in that building for several minutes. There were no lights.
Remember back in elementary school, when the power would go out and everyone in the class would just start screaming because they could? Well, it was even worse than that in this Walmart. The roar of people was deafening and quick. After about twenty seconds, people seemed to realize that the lights were not going to come back on, and there was an opportunity for them. Nearly every customer in the building grabbed a handful of whatever they were standing next to, and they made a run for the door. It was and still is one of the most insane images I have ever witnessed. I was of to the side, so thankfully people didn’t run into me. I had front row seating to the entire event. For thirty seconds, there were streams of people dragging all kinds of stuff with them, while the two security guys were frantically grabbing at the people.
Two minutes later, the lights all kick back on, and not many people remained. There was only me, the other employees, and a few retirees who looked a bit confused by the entire ordeal. All the clothing racks had been knocked over. Someone knocked over a huge display of Star Wars and Marvel clothing. Someone managed to pull off an entire rack of Pello bicycles from the wall in the toy section. The store looked like a bomb had hit it. It took everyone almost a whole week to get everything back to normal. They only closed the store for a day though, and they had to rope off a few other areas for several days while they repaired the broken racks. It was truly incredible.”
Watch Out For Flying Security Guards
“I saw a little security guard leap into and beat up a sixty-year-old man in a Hawaiian shirt. This elderly man was trying to steal six hundred dollars worth of steak. The Steak Guy performed this feat about once a month or so. He would just fill up his cart with tons of steaks and head up to the front. He would act like he was going to check out, but at the last second, he would barrel through the exit doors and dump the food into his waiting truck. Unfortunately, Walmart hadn’t gotten his license plate and were trying to catch him in the act. I was working my counter and heard someone behind be state, ‘Sir, don’t do it. Just step away from the cart.’ I turn around and see Steak Guy with his usual shopping cart, and he looks furious. He is starting to stammer and come up with excuses while trying to play things cool. The cashier told the man again, ‘Sir, just come with us please. Let go of the cart.’ But that was when the Steak Guy made his break. He tries to blow past everyone else, only to get tripped up by a display of DVDs in front of him. That was the perfect moment for Eric to strike. Eric was about four feet tall, and he was itching for action. Eric leaps through the air and dives into Steak Guy’s chest with his feet. Eric scrambled onto Steak Guy’s chest and starts pounding this dude’s face. This was not the protocol for Walmart security, so Eric was fired almost immediately. Walmart was sued. It would have been better to just let this guy run off with the steaks. But man, what a show it was!”
Fearsome Family Arrives
“There was always this family that came in. They didn’t shower, and the parents did not care about their kids’ hygiene. Their clothes were caked in dirt and various stains. This family would always come in and get at least five shopping carts worth of Pringles, Coca-Cola, Hot Pockets, Skittles, Ben and Jerry’s, Pokémon toys, and various gardening tools. These were all random things that I didn’t think they really needed. Their kids were nightmares in the store. The first time I ever ran into this family, I was stocking the shelves and minding my own business I see them come into my aisle, but I didn’t think anything of it. As I am stocking, I hear the Dad tell his kid to put the bag of sugar down. The kid screamed in response. The dad swore at his child, but that only made the kid slam the bag of sugar against the shelf. He started whipping it around and spinning in circles, spreading sugar all over the aisles. The dad grabbed his son by the mulley and pulled him back to the mom and the other son.
My second encounter with this fearsome family happened a few months later. This happened during the holiday season, with a special section of shelves focusing on baking supplies. It was the last night before I would get some much-needed time off. But what do I see? Who evil kids climbing the tall shelves! I rush over to that area as the kids are pushing items off the upper shelves, in order to get them into their parents’ cart. I shout at the kids that they can’t do that, and they look surprised at me, like they didn’t know that their actions were dangerous. They actually apologized, and the family finished their shopping. I reported the family to my manager, and I haven’t seen them since. I wasn’t the only employee who had problems with them, though. They swore at minority employees all the time. Their kids would open up toys, eat candy, and just leave the remains on the ground. I do not miss them one bit.”
Some Sickening Implications
“During a dark time in my life many years ago, I stocked a Walmart during the night shifts. Now Walmart in the daytime is weird enough, but Walmart at night is an entirely different dimension of oddities. There are so many stories, but there is one that I’ll never forget happened one night at three in the morning. I was helping to stock the health and beauty aisles. I am rounding the corner when I hear some hushed yet slightly panicked voices. Now this aisle was a high-theft area for us, so I listen in at first. I think that someone is trying to steal some Clearblue pregnancy tests, since that had been stolen from our store in the past.
The last thing I heard before seeing what was happening was someone whispering, ‘You better not be, Mom and Dad will kill the both of us!’ I come around to see a male and female teenager stop dead and stare at me, white as ghosts. They had similar hair color and skin complexions. Well, given what was said between them, it was fair to assume that they were brother and sister. In the sister’s hands were several boxes of Clearblue pregnancy tests. The two of them just walked away silently after seeing me. It was quite a surreal encounter!”
Walmart Weirdos Drive Me Insane
“Working at Walmart made me hate people and gave me anxiety. I worked in the frozen food and dairy sections in one of the busiest stores in the area, over in the sketchy side of town. I was the only one who was usually in charge of refilling the milk and egg sections, as well as unloading the frozen food trucks. Everything I experienced happened in just a span of a year and a half. I was so happy to leave that place. I’m now a software developer and have little to no interaction with people. If I’m in a Walmart for more than twenty minutes, I honestly get anxiety and can feel my blood pressure skyrocket.
Once, there was this lady cussing me out because we were sold out of Tyson’s chicken nuggets. There was also a guy who brought an empty bag of Purina dog food to the store with him. He filled it up with frozen steaks and chicken from the meat section. He re-stapled the bag and acted as if this was completely normal. I reported him to the cashier, and he was caught right away. People would play bumper cars with the motorized carts. These battles would even happen in the parking lot. There were some times when I was working the night shift, and men would come in with spaced out women on their arms. These men smelled like month old sewage. I caught several women stealing eggs out of the cartons and putting them in their purses. This was almost a daily occurrence. It got so bad that the store had to install security camera just to watch over the eggs. Another time, these two guys were tossing a gallon of milk to each other. They would throw the gallon towards the ceiling and try to catch it on its way back down. I just sat there for a second, watching these two grown men with speechless belief. Of course the milk drops and explodes everywhere. The two guys just grab another gallon and leave the area. I stood there and watched that puddle in defeat. I went to go and get the mops, knowing that I was already exhausted with this job.”
Walmart Superhero Stops At Nothing
“I worked in the Garden Center at a Walmart, and we had our own separate gate entrance, as many other Garden Centers do. Since we had our own entrance, we also had our own greeter. Let’s call this guy Dale. Dale was a Vietnam War vet confined to an electric wheelchair. Apparently, Dale had an accident after the war involving his neck, so he was pretty much a quadriplegic. Dale’s arms did work a little bit, and he could check receipts with them. Dale put up with nobody, and he took his job very, very seriously. One day, someone was stupid enough to try and leave the Walmart with a stolen Bose stereo system. Unfortunately, this guy didn’t have a car waiting outside for him, which was a very dumb move. This thief must have assumed he could get out of the door because of Dale’s condition, but little did he know he was messing with the toughest employee that Walmart ever had. Dale tore after the thief through the parking lot in his electric wheelchair, nipping at the back of his heels with the metal footrests. The thief had no choice but to ditch the massive box and full on sprint away from the vicious Dale. Dale then steered in front of the stereo system box and pushed it with his footrests all the way back to the store. He was as happy as could be. What a guy.”
Give Me The Cheese Now!
“I covered the night shift in Walmart for quite some time. My store was located right across the street from a hospital, and only a couple blocks away from a gentleman’s club. You can only imagine the variety of people that I encountered. I once had a woman threaten to call the store manager because the Revlon eyeshadow she found on a clearance rack was marked down to two dollars, but she wanted it for one dollar. She started to scream and make threats. She ended up sitting outside the store on the bench, ranting on the phone about how apparently awful our store was.
That was the least of my worries. I noticed these large groups of teenagers coming in after midnight to ride scooters around the store and trash the place. They would always be such a headache to deal with. It took a while for management to take them out. People would open up the cooler doors in the dairy aisle and stick their heads in, asking employees back there where some of our products were. Why did they do this, when they could have just as easily found someone on the main floor? There are also these huge cooling fans in the dairy cooler, which make it impossible to hear anything. I would get these random customers screaming at me, ‘WHERE’S THE BABYBEL CHEESE?!’ out of nowhere. It scared me so badly.
I would also get hit on by random customers at one-thirty in the morning. Specifically, I had this one guy asking me where the bathroom was, in an excuse to flirt with me. Bathrooms are always a good icebreaker, said no one ever. This guy also thought that telling me that he had just gotten out of prison would really make my panties drop. Not whatsoever. I would regularly get customers who were angry at me that food items didn’t come in a smaller size. It was as if I personally designed and packaged this food just to attack them. At one point, some friends of mine tried to mess with me while I was on the clock. They would follow me into my department and opened all the dairy coolers to try and scream at me. By this point I had enough, so I hid away from all of them in the meat freezer. It took a while, but another employee showed up, and he got the manager to get rid of those people. They weren’t my friends for very much longer.”
I’ll Never Get To Leave This Register
“When I was working there, there was this Red Lobster waitress who always came in with a ton of $1 bills. It was always a pain to count all of her money out, so I would try to avoid being her cashier. One night, I was working on the only open register, and this waitress came over with a very full cart. It was already quite late, and this woman brought along her very noisy young daughter. I scan everything in this woman’s cart, and that was when she decided to realize that she didn’t have enough money. That set off an immensely long and frustrating process, where she had to determine what items to keep, I have to check each item’s price, and I had to void almost everything. Weirdly enough, she chose some pretty superfluous items over ones that seemed actually necessary. It took us over an hour for her to buy only several items. Seriously, there were about one million different ways to go about this shopping experience. The waitress could have told me she didn’t think she had enough, so I could have hit the ‘total’ button every few items for her to see. I could have organized things so I made sure the waitress got only the most essential items. This lady just had zero thought. And I get it. She could have been exhausted after a long day, and she could only pay with singles. But she couldn’t take maybe one minute to organize her money or her purchases? There was a massive line of people behind this woman, and we had to call in additional staff to man other registers and help those customers. I treated this customer as fine as I could, but I was never rewarded with the same understanding.”
Sneaky Scam
“I worked at one of the older Walmart stores back in 1998. The one customer I’ll never forget was Ms. Allen. She was this elderly woman who had a bad stutter. She lived alone and had very poor hygiene skills. Her hair was always matted, and she often smelled awful. She would always put one hundred dollars or so worth of ‘granny panties’ on lay-away, pay the minimum deposit, and come back a month later to cancel the lay-away. She would get her money back and use three different law-away accounts. She was totally scamming us.
Ms. Allen also had been caught shoplifting a few times at various Walmart locations around the city. She always carried this massive purse in the child seat of her cart. This bag was big enough to smuggle a television. She was caught a few times trying to steal some of those granny panties. When security guards and the local police department tried to question her about her efforts, she would launch into her really bad stutter. Everyone felt bad for her, and the police would just let her go after she returned the panties. I wonder, whatever happened to her?”
Screaming How He Will Kill Me
“I finally quit my Walmart job after four long years there. My best story from my time there happened when I was sitting outside during my break. It was two in the morning, pitch black outside. All of a sudden, a car drives up our main road superfast. I see the car lights go up over the top of this massive nearby hedge, and then the most horrific grinding sound I have ever heard. The driver had flipped his car completely upside-down in the middle of the median, while he was driving the wrong way. I ran over to see if this guy was alright. He is crawling out of the car, and he’s threatening bystanders. There is also another dude unconscious inside the car, held back by his seatbelt and bleeding from his head.
I was calling the ambulance when I walked up to the wreckage. The driver saw me on the phone, got fully out of the car, and sprints right towards me. He is screaming about how he is going to kill me. I immediately ran back into the Walmart, and I gave my management the heads up about this crazy guy just outside our store. The security was alerted and they helped me get out of the store safely. This crazy guy came inside, looking around for me, and then tried to run back outside. The cops were alerted as soon as this happened. A literal manhunt ensues against this man, and the cops eventually caught up to him. It turned out that the car was stolen, and it was up to me to identify the driver. I went to a special court hearing later, where they gave this man a misdemeanor charge. I really needed a vacation after what this lunatic man put me through.”