Walmart Cashier “Blatantly Ignores” Customer, Texts on Phone While Sorta Scanning Her Items

A Walmart customer recorded a cashier paying more attention to her phone than scanning groceries in a 25-second TikTok clip uploaded to the popular social media application.

In the video posted by Kels (@kels.marie44), she can be seen interacting with the device in her hand and half-heartedly attempting to scan what looks like a bag of rotisserie chicken across the checkout counter.

She takes her one hand away from the bag of the chicken to tap away at her phone for a few seconds, then, not moving her gaze away from the device, attempts to scan the chicken again while still looking at her phone in her other hand.

Kels briefly directs her lens behind her to show that there's another customer loading up the items they selected onto the checkout's conveyor belt, and she pans back to the worker who is still attempting to scan the chicken several times.

The machine finally beeps and she places the chicken down along with her phone before briefly looking up at the customer and then spinning the bag turnstile, and then the video ends.

Several TikTokers who responded to the video were gobsmacked by the employee's brazenness in being on their phone when there clearly was a patron who required assistance: "Ooooo ur patience is better than mine. I would’ve lost it," one wrote.

Another said: "No flippin’ way. I’d be like, 'excuse me, ma’am?'"

While someone else remarked: "Girlll I would’ve been like excuse meeee I got ish to doo!!"

And there were others who replied that it's for this exact reason they don't even bother heading over to a full-service register.

"This why I go to self check out lmao," one wrote.

One TikToker added that this type of employee behavior should be immediately by informing management on what went down: "Next stop, customer service desk, to have a chat with the manager….these things have to be addressed immediately….or they’ll keep doing it. I love my self-checkout registers for reasons such as this."

There were other problems that folks had with the video, too — one user in the comments section wrote that the employee ended up double scanning the chicken, incurring a secondary charge: "Anybody gonna talk about her double scanning the chicken? It scans n when she tried to move it it scanned again ."

And then there were folks who just had jokes: "And the legend is she’s still getting her groceries scanned at Walmart till this day…"

A Redditor who posted to the site's r/Walmart sub asked other users on the application via a poll if employees should be allowed to be on their phones when not assisting customers.

Between 1,400 people polled, it seemed like folks were split down the middle, with slightly more folks in favor of allowing workers to be using their phones if there aren't any customers to assist (the total was 758 for "yes" and 684 for "no.")

There were some who argued that being on phones "within reason" is OK, like a quick text message, not browsing the internet, as there were plenty of other things to do in the store.

This other question came up in a Quora forum with one user indicating that Walmart employees should only ever be on phones that were issued to them by the store if it's loaded with applications that only contain store-related materials/tasks.

However, Walmart's Corporate offices posted that employees are indeed allowed to bring their own mobile phones onto the floor if they install the chain's Me@Walmart application. By doing so, workers can clock in on their phone, view the store's scheduling, utilize push to talk communication, and utilize a virtual assistant, known as Ask Sam, for any queries they may have.

So perhaps the employee who was on their phone at the register was performing some work related task as they mirthlessly attempted to scan Kels' chicken. It could just be that they have the Me@Walmart application installed on their phone and the whole thing is worse than it looks.

Or they were going through their Tinder swipes and seeing who they could get for a free dinner that evening.

According to Kels who responded to one user who speculated that the woman could've very well been looking up items on her phone, the employee was messaging someone on her phone. "She continued texting the entire time," she wrote.