“That’s Why We Are So Short Handed” — Walmart Blasted for Making Workers Clock Out 15 Minutes Early

A viral Reddit post uploaded to the site's r/walmart sub shows a photograph of an employee notice sign posted in a Walmart store chastising workers for staying clocked in past their allotted work times.

The sign also appears to name some employees in particular, indicating that they need to re-adjust their shifts by a few minutes so that they aren't paid for any time past those hours, sparking speculation that managers are attempting to stop employees from potentially earning overtime pay.

The image of the sign, which was uploaded by user @Grizzlypupper reads: "Atte[n]tion all associates...everyone needs to only work as many hours as they are scheduled. (If you are scheduled 5 hours do not go over that)"

Going on, the employee notice read: "These are associates that need to leave early due to going over their scheduled hours yesterday. Make up this time before Friday if you are not here today."

The rest of the sign seems to show a number of employee names, all of them crossed out presumably to protect their identities, indicating who needs to clock out "early" in order to not go above their scheduled shift time allocations that range from 5 to 15 minutes.

It appears that the stringent time keeping practices are probably a means at reducing business expenditures for employees' salaries.

A number of commenters were shocked that the Walmart location in question was taking such an extreme approach to nickel-and-diming its employees.

One person wrote: "Making a fuss over amounts as small as 5 min is crazy. If you aren’t gonna give people full hours give them 4 long work days instead of 5 short ones"

Another TikToker said that they too had their hours reduced, but what was especially frustrating was the manner in which the hours were ultimately cut.

They remarked that because only an hour or half-hour was removed from each of their shifts, they were ultimately prevented from having a "whole half day off" due to the strange shift setup: "This! When they cut our hours, it's like one or a half an hour each day before or after. Just give me a whole half day off. But, nah. That would benefit ME not them. This way they get the money saved AND me working my almost full five."

One Redditor said that doing this goes against store policy and that employees could report it to corporate so that they could receive any overtime pay that they're owed: "So it’s actually against policy for them to do that. Associates can report it to the wage & hour hotline and im pretty sure they will have to pay out the OT. I know for such a petty amount like this it won't make a difference on your paycheck but it’s about the principle."

According to Indeed, while a full-time work week is set at 40 hours, an employee is only officially considered "part-time" if they work under the 32 hour a week work limit.

The Pechman Law Group stated that Walmart has been sued by at least two separate former employees for alleged tomfoolery when it came to their hours.

The firm states that the suits claim Walmart attempted to skimp workers on overtime pay "due to shaving off time hours they actually worked and by misclassifying assistant managers as being exempt from overtime."

In short, the store purportedly was trying to get its workers to put in more hours for less money, and if they did dip into those overtime time slots, they would manually adjust their time clocks to avoid paying a time and a half rate.

Walmart raked in nearly $150 billion in profits from April 2022 to April 2023, a 4.48 percent increase from its earnings from the prior pay period for the previous fiscal year.