A Walmart customer was recently hit with the Uno-Internet-Shaming-Reverse-Card after she recorded an employee for the massive retail chain giving her a customer service experience she wasn’t satisfied with.
In the video, the woman recording the clip calls out the worker for clearly being upset while on the job, and she repeatedly asks the young retail worker to bag her items the way she prefers them to be bagged. The worker can be heard mumbling under her breath.
It appears the the recording was uploading as an example of shaming a young, presumably entitled employee who isn’t grateful for the job they have and is unable to act in a professional manner while putting their personal emotions aside.
However, there were throngs of folks who saw the piece who sympathized with the employee, stating that the woman behind the camera was clearly attempting to grind her gears and instigate a reaction they could selectively show on camera as a means of getting the worker in trouble.
One such critic of the clip was a TikToker named Rae (@rae_843) who said that the person recording the clip was entirely in the wrong and that they missed out on a golden opportunity to try and make the employee feel better about themselves by exhibiting sympathy and assisting them with bagging the groceries upon seeing that the young woman was having a bad day.
Her stitched response has accrued over 30,000 likes on the popular social media platform and sparked a litany of head-nodding-in-agreement replies from other TikTokers.
@rae_843 #stitch with @kingkong #unpopularopinion #fyp #customerservice #rudecustomers #bekind #selfcheckout #walmart #retailproblems ♬ original sound – Rae
Rae says in the video: “No ma’am, she does not want to be there today. And I’m sure it’s due to in large part to customers like yourself.”
Rae also broke down the financial metrics and how little the Walmart employee was probably getting paid to deal with the customer’s insistence that she have her items bagged to her liking, all while she recorded the worker in what many thought was an attempt to get her in trouble: “No. 1, the average pay of a Walmart worker is around $15 per hour. So to check you out as a customer let’s go high and say it takes between 6-to-8 minutes to do that. Which means she gets paid to listen to your mouth and be filmed trying to do her job, like less than a dollar for 6-to-8 minutes to do that to you. So you think that she deserves the way you’re acting and has to put on a smiling face and give you the most amazing customer service that you expect? For less than a dollar? If you wanted your items bagged a certain way or if you did not like the way she was doing things you could’ve taken yourself to the self-checkout. You could bag your items exactly the way you want them and give yourself the best customer service you have ever had.”
Rae also went on to say that the Walmart employee could’ve very well been suffering internally from a variety of different problems that may’ve made it difficult to plaster a disingenuous smile on her face for this particular customer’s benefit: “You don’t know what this young lady is dealing with. You have to be kind to get kindness in return I don’t care what you expect from a retail worker you think that customer service is, what? What is customer service? What do you expect out of someone who doesn’t even make enough money to pay their bills? She may be working her third job, she may be on two hours of sleep in the last three days just buried her mother last week, just buried a cousin yesterday, and got three babies at home that’s hungry that she’s trying to feed.”
The TikToker added that instead of attempting to “egg” the Walmart worker on, she could’ve tried to make the situation better.
Rae also seemed dumbfounded that the woman recording the video “expects” perfect behavior from the retail employee, but then called into question whether or not the woman is also advocating for higher pay for retail employees, suggesting that if retail workers were compensated more than they would care about their jobs more as a result: “It’s sad that you guys expect so much from a retail worker but you don’t advocate for their pay. You don’t advocate for them to get paid enough to deal with the public. You don’t know. You obviously don’t know what it’s like to work with the public. You demanded so much from her but you gave her nothing in return. And that’s not fair whether she was working or not. That was rude of you. You were a rude customer and that’s why she don’t want to be there.”
One commenter who responded to Rae’s video stated that their experience in working with retail has ultimately shaped their opinion of people at large for the worse: “working in fast food/retail has made me hate the public. Don’t get me started on Sunday church crowd especially with food service. I’m just done.”
Someone else jokingly suggested a more extreme approach to solving customer service gripes between employees and shoppers: “I think everyone in retail and customer service needs a purge week once a month.”
Another TikToker penned that there definitely appears to be a disconnect between customers and how they view workers: “why don’t people understand we have lives and maybe something is going on in her personal life, customer service or not it’s affecting our mood”
And this user wrote: “They think customer service means customer servants”
According to Indeed, the average hourly salary of a Walmart employee ranges anywhere from $7.50-$23.90 per hour. And out of over 246,500 reviews from folks who said that they worked for the retail chain, Indeed’s aggregate review score came in at 3.4 out of 5 stars for employee satisfaction.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Walmart via email and Rae via TikTok comment for further information.
