A Walmart shopper warns others about her experience with what could be described as a self-checkout “fail”—possibly thwarting the aims of those who think they can get an extra item or two out the door without paying for it.
The now-deleted video drew more than 1.4 million views as of Monday before becoming unavailable. In it, the TikToker described her experience shopping in a Walmart, noting that she wanted to let her viewers know, as her caption put it, “Walmart is catching on to us.”
She shared that she was in the self-checkout line, implying that she was trying to get a few extra items out of the store, but what happened “flipped the script on [her].”
She claimed a Walmart associate approached her before she left the store and she said, “I tried to remove the extra item in the bag; I didn’t know what the protocol was.”
The creator said that she tried to play it off, saying, “I don’t know what happened,” and the associate told her, “Let me play it back.”
The ability to “play it back” threw her off.
“They’re literally filming you the whole time,” she remarked. “You can see me deliberately putting extra items in the bag.”
She then remarked, “Oh, it must have dropped in there,” and according to her, the associate said, “Ring it up.”
“Got it,” she remarked. “I’m not trying to go to jail.”
She wrapped up by counseling her viewers, “Be careful out there.”
Awareness around Walmart security has translated to TikTok content in recent months. In June, a Daily Dot story covered a Walmart worker who let people know, via her on-screen caption, that she was onto would-be shoplifters.
“Me watching people steal at self-checkout as if my phone doesn’t notify me for every missed scan,” she said.
Commenters reported they’ve tried to get out of a Walmart with extra items before and it didn’t go well.
“Secret shopper caught me once, never again,” one remarked.
Another shared, “I did it & right before I walked out the door & secret shopper came to me & said ‘I wanna talk to you about the items you didn’t scan that’s in the bag.’”
“I would’ve passed out,” someone else chimed in.
Someone confessed a workaround to the temptation of being in a Walmart, noting, “This why i just order mines online now, because if i go in there imma steal something.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment and to Walmart via email.
