"Fortunately I Caught It This Time" — Walmart Customer Confronts Manager About Meat Weights Being Off

A man who was shortchanged on the meat he purchased from Walmart one too many times decided to head into the store to demonstrate how it was lying to customers and overcharging them for a product they weren't getting.

The video, which was reposted to the popular @viralbanger TikTok account, begins with the Walmart customer pushing his cart through the store. A text overlay in the video reads: "Manager gets confronted by customer about the weight of meat being off."

The customer in question can be heard narrating his intention in the clip: "I'm gonna go down and talk to the manager let's see what he has to say about it."

The video then cuts to a recording of the shopper's interaction with a Walmart employee, presumably the above-mentioned manager in question.

"This is the second time it's happened to me," the patron says to the manager, who looks down intently at the packaged meat the customer presented to him: "Feel how heavy this is," the irate consumer tells the Walmart worker while handing him the product.

After grabbing the package of meat in his right hand, the Walmart manager is then presented with another package, "feel how heavy this is, okay?" he tells the worker, asking him to gauge the difference in weight between the two products which he says are labeled with inaccurate weight amounts.

"How come this is supposed to be a lot heavier cause its got more weight on it than this one. This one's 18.02 I put this on the scale it's at 4.3 pounds or something it has on here 6.17. This is the second time this happened to me but fortunately I caught it this time before going home," the Wally World shopper tells the manager, who stands, frozen, looking at the two packages.

The customer then further describes their issue to the worker, asking them to tell him which package feels heavier, but that the two items aren't outfitted with labels that accurately speak to their true weights.

"You guys are charging people for 6.17 pounds," the man says, pointing to the package in the manager's right hand which the shopper says tips the scales at 4.3 lbs.

The manager appears to take a beat, and they look around, seemingly unfamiliar with this quandary.

Another shopper, who, in the background, became interested in the customer's gripe, bluntly says, "That's a good one," while the manager looks on, still speechless.

"I'm glad I caught it this time cause last time I took it home and I was out out money on that. I want this," he says, grabbing the correctly weighed package of meat while leaving the other in the man's right hand.

"But I'm just bringing this to your attention you're a manager, something needs to be done about this cause how many other people that don't realize is that...I'm not saying you but the company in general was ripping off."

The manager doesn't say anything to the customer and then turns his head away leading to a weird silence between the two men as the patron waits there, adjusting his camera.

Finally, the manager comments on the matter: "I get what you're saying but...did you already purchase this?"

"No I didn't purchase it," the man says and it seems like he's going to explain his gripe with the meat to label discrepancies again, but the employee chimes in, assuring him that he understands the patron's issue.

The employee assures the man that he's taking a record of the incident so that it can be rectified, but the customer responds that this is the second time it's happened and he has already contacted the "Scale and Waste" in Austin, which is presumably part of the Texas Department of Agriculture's Weights and Measures department.

He goes on to inform the employee that the authorities there said that he should contact them again if he comes across another instance of wrongly weighed meat in the same Walmart, which could be why he was recording his interaction with the manager.

The customer again reiterates the label weight differences between the two meat packages before getting the employee's name and exiting the store to close out the clip.

Unfortunately, scale fails at grocery stores do happen but when they do, businesses can be subjected to hefty fines from their state's Department of Agriculture.

This also isn't the first time a Walmart store was accused of mislabeling meat products: Meat + Poultry reported in August of 2020 that the retail chain settled a legal dispute over incorrectly weighed chicken tenders. As part of the settlement Walmart was directed to pay a minimum of $4.5 million and upwards of $9.5 million contingent upon the number of additional proven weight mislabeling cases.