Customers are sick and tired of needing employee assistance to buy just about anything at Walmart. It’s starting to get out of hand.
It used to be that only regulated items (like cough syrup) or expensive things (like fancy headphones) were behind lock and key at retailers. But nowadays, even something as simple as socks, a $19 pack of markers, or an energy drink is trapped behind a glass wall.
These measures are supposed to deter theft, but they’re also making the in-store shopping process much more frustrating so that people avoid going into stores altogether.
Shopper calls out Walmart security measures
In a viral video with more than 1.3 million views, content creator Zoie Jackson (@zoiejacksonn) said Walmart is getting out of conril with the locked merchandise.
“Dear Walmart, if your going to lock everything up ATLEAST make sure you have employee’s around,” she said.
Jackson was referring to the fact that more often than not, if you request an employee to unlock an item, they never come. Or it takes multiple rounds of asking for help before you find someone with the right key.
“Because why was i waiting an hour to buy a phone charger?!!” she said in the caption.
‘It’s just as frustrating for us.’
“Then when you need sb to unlock something they have a fckn attitude like they didn’t apply for the job,” a top comment read.
“Ngl when i walk into a store and see too many things locked up i walk right back out,” a person said.
“I feel so bad for the employees bc yk they got no control and def hate the cases too,” another wrote.
“Trust me as a Walmart worker. It’s just as frustrating for us. They put electric locks on cases now and they only had enough phones for certain people,” an employee verified.
Do the corporations care about corporate satisfaction?
Retail corporations have largely taken these measures to combat organized retail crime (like the case of a California woman who stole nearly $8 million worth of beauty products to resell on Amazon). But everyone is facing the consequences.
Retailers know that this frustrates shoppers. They also know that it’s losing them money, a 10% to 25% loss in sales, the LA Times reported.
“These measures are last-ditch efforts,” David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation, told the California paper.
New technology is underway that may ease some frustration, allowing customers to unlock cases themselves by scanning their faces or inputting their cellphone numbers. But that also brings in more concerns over the day-to-day tracking of people’s lives and turning them into data points.
This won’t be certain to solve the problem until it is tested with actual customers.
Are Walmart’s ‘call help’ buttons fake?
Unlike elevator close buttons and crosswalk buttons at stoplights, which rarely work and end up functioning more as a placebo, the help buttons at Walmart do work.
In a Reddit thread, employees explained what happens when you click the button. “They dial right into the walkie and a robot voice pages for help in the designated area,” one wrote.
Another person said, “We have them but we don’t change the batteries so they’re all dead. So basically, we don’t have them.”
They added that while there are areas where it’s not as much of a problem because employees are paid to walk around monitoring it, there are other parts of the store where it’s hard to find an employee for help.
Even then, it’s never certain that the employee you find will even have that key.
“It’s just not a fun process for anyone. Wish Walmart would be more selective on what we lock up and where we keep the lockups. No fun for anyone when they lock up items they don’t have a good game plan for,” they wrote.
@zoiejacksonn because why was i waiting an hour to buy a phone charger?!! #foryourpage #foryoupage ♬ original sound – zoie🖤
The Daily Dot reached out to Zoie Jackson for comment via TikTok direct message and comment and to Walmart via email.
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