Is Walmart as crazy as social media makes it seem?

45 comments

  1. No. I’ve been to Walmart maybe 10 times in my life and have never seen anything or anyone even remotely interesting.

  2. Typically, no. But it depends on which specific Walmart. You have Walmarts in good areas that are actually super nice places to shop, then you have Walmarts in not so good areas which is where most of the craziness takes place

  3. No, not at all.

    Usually is very boring with no fights or people wearing ridiculous clothes.

  5. I go weekly and I never see anything crazy. It’s the most boring part of my week.

    That being said, there is a stereotype. I grew up hearing people call it Ghetto-Mart and preferring the Walmarts in the suburbs, where I guess they perceived it as being better with better customers.

    But I go to the one in the city all the time and it’s boring, as I said.

  6. I think it depends on the location like someone mentioned. The one I went to in college and the one near my house were normal with the occasional homeless person asking for money outside the door or people sleeping in their car in the parking lot

  9. No, not even close.

    The vast majority of shoppers are just normal folks buying stuff.

    And it’s not like you don’t get weirdos at other shopping locations, either.

    A lot of these sites find the *one* person in literally thousands to focus on. But chances are you could shop at a Walmart weekly for ten years and never encounter what you see on social media.

  13. As with everything, the normal boring daily interactions don’t go viral. When you have millions of customers a day though, a tiny percentage of them being complete nutjobs (the same as the percentage of the overall population who are complete nutjobs) generates enough fodder to produce a theme.

  14. No. I saw some stuff while I worked there, but honestly the customers probably never noticed. Even working there, the crazy stuff wasn’t common.

    It depends on where you are, though.

  17. Nothing is ever as crazy as social media makes it seem. Viral content goes viral for a reason. There are a lot of disadvantaged and trashy people in many Walmarts, but it’s not usually like the viral content.

  18. There are several Wal Mart Neighborhood Market grocery stores around my city, but the actual Wal Mart Supercenters are in the more run down outskirts. In some areas Wal Mart is in an area with more poverty where people don’t have access to health care, which leads to seeing mentally unwell or otherwise “unusual” people. Like in my area diabetes is rampant in poorer areas, so I’ve particularly noticed that at Wal-Mart the leg-to-patron ratio is off.

  19. No, not at all.

    You have to remember that this content is made by Americans for Americans, and is meant to entertain, not inform.

  20. If they showed the normal stuff people would be confused why you’re posting that in social media. Family buying groceries isn’t share worthy. Guy pooping in the auto department is.

  21. I would say it isn’t but then again the most outlandish people I’ve ever seen have been in Walmart.

  22. No, but the vast majority of Americans live within 15 minutes drive to a Walmart. Between that and their low cost, you’re going to get plenty of opportunity to find and/or see bad situations or people who don’t care.

  23. No. You don’t see the millions of uneventful trips to the store because it is not interesting.

    330,000,000+ people, shit happens.

  26. Depends on the location. The one near me apparently averages one murder a year. So.

  27. No, 99.999% of the time it’s just filled with normal people buying stuff. YMMV though as I’ve heard WalMarts in sketchier areas are a lot crazier.

  29. Walmarts are looked upon in many areas as either the absolute cheapest place to buy groceries/Chinese produced stuff, or else in rural areas as the only place around with a good selection of food items.

    This leads to many folks of lower socioeconomic status/minorities frequenting Walmart, to the extent that some will actively avoid it because of the reputation of the customers. Minor incidents like shoplifting and screaming kids are common, fights not so much but they do happen.

    Walmarts get a lot of traffic and some have entirely switched over to self-checkouts. This lends itself to a “crazy” atmosphere with lots of noise and commotion. They are typically understaffed and the employees are not treated well.

    Personally, I shop there to save money and the local one is usually ok. It is not great to support an evil corporation, but what choice do we have at this point.

  30. Used to work loss prevention at Walmart, you do see some crazy shit, but that’s if you work there. It’s less likely if you’re just in and out for shopping.

  31. No. It’s a case of the craziest incidents being the ones that are shown all over the place.

  32. No. Remember Walmart is HUGE. There are literally millions of wal mart employees. There are tens of thousands of stores.

    From that vast sample, people find absurdity.

  33. I disagree with so many of these comments. There are some Walmarts across the southern US that offer various entertainment 24/7. But yeah, the majority are just normal.

  34. Not really, there’s a lot of observation bias going on there for a lot of reasons.

    1. Walmart is the most ubiquitous store in the USA, a larger percentage of both normal and crazy interactions happen there than anywhere else.

    2. No one posts the boring stuff.

    3. Walmart is in some areas that some would consider “trashy” and other stores avoid.

    4. I’ve seen videos that are labeled as “crazy Walmart lady” or whatever that clearly were not actually recorded in a Walmart. Happens a lot in regional stores that people from outside those regions don’t recognize.

  35. It is so much more complicated. Wal-Mart (all labor politic issues asside) isn’t an inherently crazy place. In some small towns Wal-Mart took over and is now THE STORE after driving other independent business out. And those towns, the farther out you go have disproportionate crazy. With that being the one-stop everything shop the crazy will go there for basic everything.

    Wal-Mart is the only store in some parts and so you’re going to see shit in a Wal-Mart that you won’t see in other stores.

  37. Depends on the location. There are no Walmarts in my city, but there’s one in particular out in the suburbs that has been a horror show every time I’ve been there. I’ve probably been there five times in total ever, but it would be a weird coincidence if I just happened to be there when everyone was behaving badly and the place was an incompetently run mess. I’m guessing it’s generally like that.

  38. Most of the time, no.

    If you go to a sketchy Walmart in a sketchy part of town, you will run into sketchy people doing sketchy shit.

    In the suburbs? It’s all Karens, all the way down, because they have nothing better to do. So screaming at a minimum wage slave gives them purpose.

    In my rural area? Most of the time it’s just little old ladies, and families buying shit they need, the occasional Karen (but rarely, because everyone knows everyone else here, and you will be all over Facebook embarrassing yourself pulling that shit), and sometimes?

    Sometimes you get crimes.

    When Walmart was 24 hours, you got more people dressed like the People of Walmart site. But really, you’ll get more of that in Florida than anywhere else.

  39. Early on during lockdowns, I (along with like everyone in town) placed a wal-mart pickup order. Wal-Mart was COMPLETELY overwhelmed and could not handle the number of pick ups and things god ugly. I Huge fight broke out in the waiting area between customers and then between some people and the employees. The employees all ended up fleeing back into the building and I left cause it was getting scary. Got a text like an hour later that they were unable to complete my order.

    That’s the only thing I’ve ever seen in like 30 years of pretty regular Wal-mart shopping. It was kind of a special circumstance and all. But still.

  40. No. It’s a big boring warehouse of food/goods with fluorescent lights

    You gotta walk so far to go grab a gallon of milk, so you better not forget it like I did the other day because then you’ll have to walk all the way to the back and then all the way to the exit

  42. I watched someone burn a body in front of me in the Walmart parking lot in Mechanicsville Virginia at like 9:30 pm on a Thursday. Typically it’s just a store, but yes it definitely can get that crazy.

  43. When I lived outside of Cleveland….. yuh. Cops were there all time, and there were mostly crackheads and people on drugs. People overdosed in the parking lot and there were always fights and other crimes happening there. In Colorado, not so much haha. Iowa had really clean and tame walmarts also.

  44. I mean, someone got shot in a Walmart yesterday over a dispute in the meat section here

  45. No one is filming people quietly shopping and minding their own business to put on the internet. So your perception that it’s particularly crazy is the result of severe selection bias.

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