A mother pleaded with Walmart to “do better” after she was followed through the store by a floor-walker for over 20 minutes despite doing nothing wrong, she shares in a viral TikTok.
Sarah DeOliveira (@sarahde932) stopped in the middle of a Walmart in Hamilton, Ontario, to share an incident that had left her visibly upset.
“For the past 20 minutes, this security guard kept following me,” she says. “He’s made me feel like I’m a shoplifter. And I literally have a ton of things with my daughter here. I purposely did a figure eight to double check to see if he’s actually following me—and he kept following me.”
Using her own experiences working in retail and loss prevention, DeOliveira tried to determine whether the man truly was trailing her. She started browsing parts of the store she didn’t expect him to be in, but when he continued to follow her, she confronted him.
“I said, ‘You know what? If this is what you think is happening, you’ve got the wrong person,’” she recalls.
Although DeOliveira didn’t share the man’s immediate response, she says she reported him to a supervisor shortly after that encounter. And when the supervisor looped the security guard in, the floorwalker “had the audacity to come up to me and say, ‘You’re following me.’”
“He literally just shrugged me off. He said, ‘Just go shopping. I’m not following you, you’re following me,’” DeOliveria says.
What is a Walmart floorwalker?
In recent years, shoppers at big stores like Walmart have expressed growing frustration with situations similar to DeOliveira’s. Many have reported being followed by a floor walker—an employee in plain clothes meant to blend in with other customers, often tasked with following a single shopper from the time they get in the store until the time they leave.
On an individual level, these people are usually just doing their jobs. But the rise of floor walkers has also raised concerns among shoppers. This practice makes it difficult to tell whether someone is trailing them through a store by coincidence, because they’re secretly an employee, or because they have some malicious intent. As such, some people have reported floor walkers leaving them feeling unsafe and uneasy.
While it sounds as if DeOliveira was being followed by a Walmart worker who was easily identifiable as a security guard by sight, it was still an unsettling experience. And his alleged response to the situation didn’t help.
“At first I didn’t care, but when you’re a female with your 3-year-old daughter being watched by a 6’5″ man AND followed in every [aisle, it] isn’t a nice feeling,” the TikToker wrote. “Not a nice way to treat your customers… I refuse to support and shop at a company that does this to their customers every day.”
@sarahde932 Do better walmart…I had NOTHING to hide, but to have a security guard follow me for over 20 mins, make eye contact with me every time I looked up, is NOT right. At first I didn’t care, but when you’re a female with your 3 year old daughter being watched by a 6’5 man AND followed in every isle isn’t a nice feeling. To have the managers just watch and stay silent when I was crying for help, they just gave stickers to make the problem “better” was a slap in the face. To be told that I was following the security guard is PATHETIC. As a toddler mom, I do NOT have time to “follow” people when I’m shopping..Not a nice way to treat your customers who spend 100% of their baby bonus..I refuse to support and shop at a company that does this to their customers every day. #walmartcanada #walmart ♬ original sound – Sarah.DeOliveira
Viewers share similar experiences
DeOliveira’s account brought forth commenters who shared their own shopping stories in which they felt as if they were being treated like criminals.
“I had an employee approach me in a dollar general, before I was done shopping asking me if I was going to pay for my stuff,” wrote one commenter. “I said, well I wasn’t done shopping yet, but now I am and left the cart.”
“This happened to me at self check out because I have two kids. They wasn’t watching noone but me like I was shoplifting and I wasn’t. I will never go back to that Walmart ever again…” another said.
Several others also said that they’d had similar experiences being followed by a floor walker at various Walmart locations in particular, especially while filling up their carts and preparing to make large purchases, just like DeOliveira. One even seemed to identify the exact same security guard, adding that she felt so uncomfortable she had to call her husband to come join her at the store.
“That is everyday for visible minorities in stores,” one commenter pointed out. “Whenever this happens to me I just leave the cart, leave the store and spend my money elsewhere.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to DeOliveira via TikTok comment and Walmart via their website.
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