A Spark delivery driver is up in arms after she alleged that Walmart canceled her order because she apparently wasn’t parked in the right spot.
“Not Walmart playing with my Spark money,” the driver, Ladii Lanna, wrote in the accompanying text overlay of her video.
In her nearly one-minute clip, Lanna accused Walmart workers of “playing” with her. As of Thursday, her video explaining her predicament had amassed more than 38,600 views.
What happened at Walmart?
Lanna said that she was sitting in her car—a mere 30 feet from Walmart’s pick-up area—when she was waiting to begin her trip. She explained to viewers that Spark drivers can’t hit “start trip” until they’ve arrived at a designated pick-up location.
“You can’t hit ‘start trip’ until the exact time,” Lanna said. After arriving, however, she said that she hit the ‘start trip’ button, moved something into her backseat, and drove over to the bay areas where Spark drivers are meant to wait.
The worker noted here, too, that she was “literally 30 feet away” from Walmart.
However, Lanna said she quickly noticed, via the Spark app, that her order was canceled. She said it only took her a second to figure out that the customer didn’t cancel her order—Walmart had.
Lanna said she spoke to a Walmart manager and asked why they canceled her trip. But she said she was told that her trip got canceled because Lanna apparently didn’t have a “bay listed.”
“I said, ‘[expletive] I’m waiting on y’all? I put the bay in two minutes ago,” Lanna said she told the manager.
Lanna said the manager attempted to explain that drivers have two minutes to put in which bay they’re in—or else their trip gets canceled. The driver, however, said that she didn’t understand the cancelation because she had allegedly provided Walmart with the correct information of where her car was before the order got canceled.
“My bay was already in when you canceled my trip,” she said. “I literally sat here and then you canceled my trip.”
What are Spark Drivers?
Operated by Walmart, the Spark Driver app lets shoppers order and receive deliveries of products from Walmart and similar businesses. Functionally, it works similar to delivery apps including Instacart and DoorDash.
The biggest difference is that Spark workers are independent contractors. They can either pick up customers’ orders and deliver them after the store’s digital shoppers pick them up. Or, they can shop for customers’ orders themselves and deliver the orders.
In the r/couriersofreddit subreddit, some workers questioned whether Spark is worth it. The original poster said that they saw an ad in their area promising to pay drivers $45 per hour, but saw terrible reviews from actual Spark drivers.
“In my area it was [expletive],” one redditor wrote. “There weren’t that many deliveries and the ones that came in were [expletive]. Why isolate yourself to one store when a platform like doordash works with hundreds of stores in the area?”
“Good for the first week or month and then nothing but downhill,” another wrote.
In another r/Sparkdriver subreddit, one user complained that Walmart (Spark’s) pay wasn’t good. (As of press time, it wasn’t clear how much Lanna was supposed to receive for the order that Walmart ended up canceling.)
“I really do think [Walmart is] trying to create an environment with virtually instant turnover so they can do with drivers what they do with their employees: keep lowering wages and raising work duties with a permanently new staff who weren’t around to see how much better things were even a few weeks prior,” one Redditor said.
Fellow Spark workers weigh in
In the comments section under Lanna’s video, several Spark employees said they were similarly tired of working with the app.
“I used to love spark but it got so annoying waiting for specific times to check in, waiting for the round robins to drop,” one man said. “Not to mention [you] have to be close to the store for the best drops.”
“Spark isn’t even worth it anymore in my area,” another user complained. “They wanna pay $7-8 to deliver to 3-4 people with no tip.”
Another viewer said that stories like Lanna’s are the reason why she “stopped doing” curbside orders.
“I only do shopping orders,” she said.
But some Walmart and Spark workers, like Lanna, similarly questioned why Walmart would cancel her order so quickly.
“This happened to me once & apparently they do it because other drivers will be inside the store for themselves,” one woman wrote. “They see we’re there, but if we’re not at a Bay in a few mins they cancel it.”
“That’s crazy… when someone checks in and it doesn’t show us a bay number at our store we just call them and ask what bay they’re in so we can take the trip out,” a Walmart worker added. “They are playing.”
@ladiilanna This is literally one of the reasons why I could never spark as my full time job. Yall play too damn much and always making up new rules. #fyp #sparkdriver #walmart ♬ original sound – Ladii Lanna
“At my store we legit go outside and look for the spark driver because we don’t play about our dispense time,” another Walmart worker said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Lanna via TikTok comment and to Walmart through its online contact form.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
