A former Walmart employee went viral on TikTok after revealing how the corporate giant allegedly handles lightly damaged products at the end of each night.
User Benson (@ayoitsbenny) notes via text overlay that he’s no longer a Walmart employee, so he shared a video from his time at the superstore chain. Benson shows a series of slightly damaged products from the store’s inventory. He films a few open bags of dog and cat food, cleaning products, laundry detergent, cat litter, salsa, and pudding. With the exception of the detergent and the open bags of pet food, Benson deemed all of the products “good,” however, he says they’re required to throw the items away because they were out on the shelves for “too long.”
“And this is what we do with them, courtesy of Walmart,” Benson says, flipping the camera to reveal a trash chute as he chucks the items down.
He added in the caption that the chute crushes each item thrown in, so they are unsalvageable. “This is what we did towards the end of every night. Had this one saved for after I left. I would say go diving, but they crush it all,” he wrote.
@ayoitsbenny This is what we did towards the end of every night. Had this one saved for after I left. I would say go diving, but they crush it all. :D #walmart ♬ original sound – ✨Benson✨
The video racked up over 43,000 views since it was posted on Oct. 19, leading alleged former and current Walmart employees to share what their stores would do with leftover items in the comments.
“My walmart would tape the dog and cat food up to donate. clean up the bottles that have broken juice on it. and cvp most of the other things,” one viewer shared.
“My Walmart donated to food banks not everything but almost everything but 4 others. I worked at also crushed it in other states,” a second stated.
“The Walmart where I’m from donates to the food pantry my mother runs and they get a tax write off or something. Talk to one of the top managers and maybe they could reach out and find the food association in your state. It’s not the company as a whole. It’s your specific stores choices,” a third commented.
Other viewers recounted their experiences with other stores that allegedly toss leftover items.
“I worked in a warehouse , they threw away tons of perfectly fine food. They refused to donate, wasteful as hell,” one person shared.
“Target throws alot away,” a second wrote.
“the opened dog and cat food makes sense as it can be contaminated. we did the same at petco. the other stuff though,” a third said.
In a follow-up video, Benson responded to some of the criticisms he received. The TikToker explains that he was instructed to dispose of the items through the trash chute by his supervisor. He also notes that he didn’t suggest his Walmart location handle their blemished products differently as he did not have authority on the policy and didn’t want to risk his job to make the suggestion.
The Daily Dot reached out to Benson via TikTok comment and Walmart via press contact form.
Update 5:05pm CT Oct. 21, 2022: Ben told the Daily Dot that he worked at Walmart for about two years and left the company this past July. He wrote via email that the superstore chain runs “just as badly as you’d expect.”
“It is NOT uncommon for stores to throw out supplies the way I showcased in the video,” he clarified. “We are meant to record all damaged products, but half the time when your departments are run by stoned twenty-something’s you get half assed jobs.”
Ben said that his supervisor, who was ‘really cool,’ would ask him or other co-workers to throw out the damaged items. He said he worked on a stocking team where they would unload delivery trucks and disperse material late in the evening. Whoever stayed late would scan items and take inventory to make sure everything that needed to be out on the floor was.
“You would scan them into the system using a handheld device we called TC (Touch Computers), and then whatever COULD be salvaged would be,” he explained. “A torn box? Okay. Missing label? No problem. But that requires a whole other level of identification and labeling, which you then have to scan to see if it needs to be ran, and then run it. After working near ten hours, you don’t really care.”
Ben said that what made it worse is that the store didn’t really practice donation policies.
“I got a lot of comments stating “Well you should’ve, oughta, coulda!” but the fact of the matter is: every store is different,” he said. “No one store will be run the same. So we threw out mildly damaged items. Quite often. And if some high schooler was asked to do it, you best believe the shit got thrown out no question.”
The TikToker explains further context about his TikTok video, where his team lead had asked him to throw out the claimsed items.
“From what I could tell, he had deciphered what was good and what wasn’t. I wasn’t interested in if he did or not, I just listened because I didn’t want to be That Guy who asks more questions than minutes worked,” Ben said. “So I threw them out, like I had a hundred times before.”
Ben said the real issue is items on the shelves that have sat there for months if not years, shoved to the back.
“You’re supposed to rotate supplies but when you have three pallets of baby food to run with anywhere from 2000-4000 pieces on them (all done on a time limit) you’re not really focusing on the expiration dates,” Ben wrote. “The items that did get thrown out are nothing compared to the items that should be thrown out.”
He urged customers to always check the expiry dates, especially wet pet food, baby food, cereal and canned goods, because “if it comes from the back of the shelf I can guarantee that 6/10 times- expired.”
“I’m sure there are better stores in different places, but that was all my store,” he concluded. “And I don’t regret leaving at all.”
