From customers in costume to attempted thefts, here are 15 stories of the weirdest things Walmart employees have dealt with at work.
15. Caught red-handed
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This one time while working in the electronics department, this dude came up to one of my coworkers and said he cut himself on one of the displays and that he needed medical attention.
We threw an off-brand Band-Aid on his cut, and sent him on his way. A couple hours later I noticed something wedged in between two of the displays, and I pulled it out.
It was an empty pre-paid phone case with a large slit down the side of the plastic mold and a blood stain on the exposed cardboard packaging.
Turns out the guy had cut his hand open while trying to steal one of our phones, and had the audacity to ask us for help.
| deleted user
14. The employee who had enough
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I watched a disgruntled employee spear five to six large TVs with the forklift-like picker used to pull pallets off the top shelves in the back.
He said he was sick of the job and had done everything he could think of to get fired, but wasn't having any luck. It was near Christmas, and they apparently needed people so badly he didn't get fired over this either.
After coming back from a talk with the manager, he finished his shift (now banned from using anything bigger than a pallet jack), and when his shift was over, he said, "Screw it, I'm not coming back. If that didn't get me fired, I don't know what will."
| bakageta
13. The barmaid bros
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One time, I was coming off break and passed two older men. They looked a little odd, but I only cast a glance at one of them at first, which caused me to stop and turn around. Two men, in what looked like their mid-50s, with tanned skin wearing Bavarian barmaid dresses, complete with shoes and pigtails, were walking through the store and shopping.
I made eye contact for a moment, and I got the most serious look from one of them. They were acting like it wasn't unusual at all. To this day, I'm still not sure what was going on. There were no events in the area at that time where people would be dressed up.
| belajour
12. Hear no evil, see no evil
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I don’t work at Walmart anymore but I'll never forget this one woman who frequented the store. Of all the weird people I saw, she had to be at the top. She was middle-aged and would be walking around in the dead of summer wearing a very heavy black coat, huge sunglasses and huge, over-the-ear headphones.
If you asked her why she was wearing these things, she would tell you that "she didn't want to see or hear the hypocrisy going on in this country" or that she wanted to "protect herself from the hate and intolerance in this country."
As you can imagine, many people gawked at her. She stuck out like a sore thumb. She would flag an employee down and demand that we tell them to stop, and it would always begin with, "In my culture, we don't... (stare at people, play music loudly, wear tight clothing, etc.)"
We would tell her that we'd take care of it, and she'd just tottle off without another word. This would happen at least once a week. She seemed to always be in the store from the minute I got in to the minute I left.
| xMCioffi1986x
11. An unhappy accident
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When I was out of high school, I got a job at a local Walmart as a 29, AKA a cart pusher.
Anyway, it was almost closing time and I ended up helping a customer take out some merchandise. Right behind the customer service desk/exit doors was what appeared to be the top of a chocolate ice cream, swirl and all on the ground. I assumed it fell off someone's ice cream cone from McDonald’s.
I hollered that I'd be right back to clean it up. I got back inside and noticed this ice cream has not melted one bit. Curiosity got the best of me so I decided to lean down and get a whiff of it just to confirm it was ice cream…
It was not ice cream. Someone, somehow, managed to drop a turd right in plain view with an ice cream swirl shape.
That was 10 years ago and it still blows my mind to this day.
| Twitchy44
10. The futon fiasco
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At the tail end of the academic year, near a local (albeit sketchy) university, a 20-something came in to return a futon. It had clearly been in use for several years, despite their protests.
At the time, if you pitched enough of a fit, a manager would put ANYTHING on a giftcard for its current store value. Off the top of my head, I wanna say $50, but it could have been $100.
Anyway, this thing was disgusting. EVERY imaginable stain was clearly visible. To do this kind of no-receipt return with no visible barcode, SOMEONE had to go get a UPC and then a supervisor had to use a key to override (approve) the return. This happened at around 10:30 p.m., when the second shift was usually wrapping up. The cash office lady was on her break, so all the cashiers were milling around while I waited on someone to either get the UPC or override the return.
The whole time the cashiers are making fun of the futon and busting on its condition. All the while, the customer is silently sitting there FUMING as they take stabs at the mystery stains. (The cashiers had NO clue the customer was the individual associated with the futon).
Anyway, the final cashier rolls up, takes one look and is like, "Are we taking THIS back? ARE WE TAKING THIS BACK?" I'm like, "Yeah, pretty much," to which she loses it and goes off just mentioning the most suspect stains. About this point, a manager walks up, to key in the override. I complete the transaction and give the customer their gift card.
All of the cashiers LOSE it, just laughing and pointing, and the college kid storms out furiously.
| jamiecook_86
9. These Wally weirdos
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There were two teenage girls in the toy aisle with a stuffed Dalmatian and some whiteout. They were removing the spots with the whiteout because they thought that it had gotten dirty when they dropped it.
Another time, a woman stopped me and another customer and asked us to pose for a picture (which we did) and she kept us there for 20 minutes talking about how we made a cute couple and should get married.
The customer's husband wasn't exactly happy, but he did have a slight look of bemusement on his face the whole time and let it go on until she finally left. We all had a good laugh afterwards and they actually became some of my regulars and would stop and chat whenever they saw me.
The lady who took the pictures was caught trying to steal $500 worth of Valentine’s Day stuffed animals later that night.
One night, while I was working customer service, a woman urgently ran up and said a pregnant woman had collapsed and they couldn't feel a pulse. After stirring up the mother of all storms, it turned out the pregnant woman who had said she wasn't feeling good, was completely fine and had never been unconscious, according to everyone else there.
| xisytenin
8. The hangry hired hand
Tenor
This will get buried but an old friend of mine was working the register at Walmart in kind of a hick-town in Indiana.
One day, this middle-aged woman who worked at the next register was denied her lunch break on time, as was (and probably still is) common practice there. She started pounding on the counter and grunting, "I'M HUNGRY!” pounds hand down, “I WANTS TA EAT."
She kept repeating this and customers were avoiding her so eventually they let her go on her lunch break. The next day, the exact same thing started happening again. The lady started grunting and pounding the counter.
But, before she should say it, my friend yelled, "I'M HUNGRY, I WANTS TA EAT!!!"
They locked eyes. The woman, in dead seriousness, says to my friend, "I'm hungry too."
| boogitydogbutt
7. The Walrus and the Lifeguard
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A few years back, I worked at Walmart as an Assistant Manager. I was working a 12 to 10 p.m. shift and the overnight manager called off sick, so I stayed until 4 a.m. so somebody working mornings could come in early and we could have it covered. Anyway, it was February in Northern Illinois. The temperature outside at 2 a.m. was about 6 degrees Celsius. At about 2:30, I got a call over the walkie talkie to come up to the pharmacy, "You've got to see this."
I went up to the pharmacy and saw two younger guys. One was dressed in a lifeguard's outfit, complete with a thick coating of sunscreen on his nose. The other one was dressed in a walrus costume.
I half-followed these guys through the store to make sure that they weren't going to do something stupid like pull fire alarms, etc. and caught up with what everybody was doing, stocking shelves. I lost contact with them because they weren't bothering anybody, and just went about my business. About a half hour later, I made my way up to the front registers and asked the cashier if she had seen the lifeguard and the walrus.
She said that not only did she see them, but they made a purchase. The lifeguard found some sunscreen in the clearance aisle, and the walrus got a pack of salmon from the seafood department. They paid with cash, and went on their way.
| dirt820
6. The troublemakers
Tenor
I’m unloading a freight truck and the woman that works at the fabric counter calls over the intercom for a manager. 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 and 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.
| Pineapple_Pistol
5. Horsing around
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In the short six months I worked at Walmart, there was one incident that still bugs me two years later.
On a Tuesday evening, I saw a young man walk in through the grocery side doors wearing one of those gag horse masks (you know the ones i'm talking about).
What bothered me the most about this is that this guy was strolling up down the grocery aisles as casually as ever, and nobody even bothered to bat an eye at him. Not the shoppers, their kids, or even my coworkers.
It legitimately felt like I was the only person watching this guy donning his horse mask like it was socially acceptable. I was beyond confused, to the point where I started to even question my own sanity.
| rudythedinosaur
4. The Bumblebee
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Former Walmart employee from Florida checking in. Walmart was my first job at 18, and as with most new employees, I got stuck with the awful third shift for the first few months. As a cashier on the 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 a.m. 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 liquor store. 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 liquor store because he "didn't feel like stopping." I lived in a really redneck area, so there was a guy who would ride his horse up to the liquor store to buy his 99 Bananas and then ride home. I always felt bad for the horse cuz 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 gotten one too many DUIs.
| deleted user
3. An epic heist
Tenor
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 occured one night at about 3 a.m., when 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 five 2-liter bottles and a bunch of chips and snacks.
The entire staff just watched this happen too. Seemed on par for the course.
| bidsmack
2. The wood elf of Walmart
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I worked at Walmart for about a year, but was not technically a Walmart employee. I was part of a company that handled 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 liked 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 a Cherokee background. 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 are 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.
| ginab0bina
1. The stalker shopper
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I worked for Walmart when I was 18.
One woman came up to me, looked me in the eye and said, "You are pregnant. It's a boy."
Being the socially awkward girl I am, I blurted out the truth, "Uh, I'm a virgin."
This woman stared me down and, with the most serious face I've ever seen, said, "Artificial insemination."
A few weeks went by, then months, then she realized I was not, in fact, pregnant. She formed some sort of hatred/obsession with me and kept trying to come to my register. The first time she came to my register, she had a huge crate of water and I was recovering from a back injury I sustained in a wreck, so I walked around to scan it with the scanner gun.
She then proceeded to yell at me, telling me to pick it up, put it on the belt, scan it and put it back. I told her I couldn’t because I had a back injury. I was wearing a brace and everything.
She said, "I don't care, you pick it up right now." By this point I was kind of in shock so I just stared at her for a few seconds and said, "Um, no." I walked away to get my manager while she chased me down.
Once my manager saw the lady and came to the rescue, the lady started acting like a normal person.
From that point on, whenever I saw her, I called a manager to check her out while I just stood back and watched and she glared at me the whole time. She would even try to sneak up sometimes so that I wouldn't have time to walk off before she got up to the front of the line. She literally hid behind the coke machines then jumped in front of people in line. Then she would get up to the front and glare at me.
I wouldn't even scan her stuff, I just stared back at her for a minute, walked away and got my manager without saying a word.
