A Walmart shopper says she waited almost an hour for her grocery pick-up order so, as her frustration built, she decided to get her items herself.
Gigi (@angiewoodyard) says she sat in her car for 45 minutes waiting for her groceries to get delivered. After realizing they weren’t coming, she says she went into the store herself. She recorded herself as she perused each of the grocery aisles.
“Trying to find my personal shopper after waiting in my car for 45 minutes for my groceries,” reads the text overlay of Gigi’s clip. While she finally located her shopper, she says she wasn’t too happy with what she found. As of Sunday, Gigi’s video had amassed more than 46,700 views.
What happened at Walmart?
Gigi kept her camera angled toward the store’s mostly empty food aisles. This is something the content creator picked up on, too.
“It’s not looking too good yet,” she says. “I don’t see one person shopping for anything. Nobody.”
At one point, Gigi gets so frustrated that she threatens to get her groceries herself.
“I’m about to just do my own shopping,” she says.
Finally, she reached the frozen aisle and found a Walmart personal shopper filling carts for at least eight different customers. Gigi says she wasn’t too happy with the worker’s pace, though, as she calls him a “slow one.”
“Walking two miles per hour,” Gigi says of the worker’s movements.
Gigi says it was odd, too, that the worker was in the frozen section as she didn’t order any frozen foods. Still, she says she located a bin with her name on it that was empty. This suggests that the shopper hadn’t begun shopping for Gigi’s order yet.
“Right there. Nothing in it,” Gigi says of her still-empty cart.
What do Walmart’s personal shoppers do?
Walmart’s personal shoppers collect grocery orders that are either placed online or through the store’s app. This seemingly works similarly to apps like Instacart, as customers are notified when their shopper has started and can chat with their shopper while they’re picking up their groceries.
Walmart’s website says it will notify customers when their orders are ready, but it’s unclear whether Gigi received any sort of text or phone call.
Indeed, it seems like she was meant to get her order 45 minutes before entering the store, but got frustrated by the long wait time and took matters into her own hands.
According to USA Today, Walmart launched its personal shopper program in 2018. It says customers can pay $50 per month to “tap into the services of experts who can pick out a last-minute housewarming gift, select a set of dishes, or fill a basket with household staples.”
Personal shoppers face stress on the job
In 2021, CNN reported that Walmart had hired some 17,000 personal shoppers as more customers pivot from picking up their own groceries.
While the job has some perks (CNN says personal shoppers are paid $13 per hour, compared with Walmart’s $11 minimum wage), it’s also quite stressful.
Some personal shoppers told the outlet they struggle to fulfill the deluge of orders they get at once. They also say the job is more “physically taxing” than the average retail sales associate job.
Indeed, one Walmart worker told CNN that his store would fulfill up to 200 orders per day. He also said his team isn’t “adequately staffed” to handle this amount of work.
@angiewoodyard #walmart #personalshopper #lazy #fyp ♬ original sound – Gigi
Viewers don’t sympathize with angry customer
Due to the high-stakes nature of personal shopping, several commenters say they didn’t agree with Gigi’s shaming of the Walmart worker in charge of her order.
“Not sure how you thought it worked, but you can’t just place an order and expect it done in less than 45 minutes,” one commenter wrote. “If you place a pickup for, say, 4pm, it doesn’t drop into the system until 2pm.”
“She thought we was gonna be on her side,” another quipped.
“You sound like a ray of sunshine,” a third viewer says of Gigi. “If you don’t like the way they shop—do it yourself.”
Others say the Walmart shopper was likely overwhelmed because he seemed to be shopping for multiple people at once.
“As a personal shopper, this isn’t the way trust me,” one woman says. “We shop for at least 8 people at a time.”
“Typically people that shop groceries do multiple at a time,” another added. “I doubt yours is the only one… I’d suggest shopping it yourself to save time.”
“It’s not YOUR personal shopper. We’re shopping for eight people at a time and way before your pick-up time,” a third commenter wrote.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Gigi via TikTok comment and to Walmart via its online contact form.
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