‘Costco here I come,’ cries Walmart shopper made to show receipt for pancake mix – he’s ‘officially done’ after incident

SHOPPERS across the country are becoming increasingly hostile towards large chain retailers like Walmart.

Customers have been sharing their frustrations on X, formerly Twitter, to complain about the anti-theft measures taken at major retailers since the pandemic.

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“I’m officially #DONE shopping @Walmart,” wrote one angry customer.

“They really scanned a 70 year-old man’s receipt, then scanned a box of pancakes to see if it was paid for,” he explained of his most recent experience.

“Lines already long, just for 6 items he had in his cart. Ridiculous and unbelievable.”

He ends his post by saying he would rather shop at Costco and BJ’s, where there he know what he is signing up for.

He also urged others to stop shopping at Walmart as well.

And he is not the only one who feels this way.

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Last month, Malaysian right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong posted a video on his page of a hostile exchange between a family exiting Walmart and an employee who insisted on checking their receipt.

In the video, the family can be seen leaving the mega-chain as a frantic Walmart employee runs over to them and blocks them from leaving.

The employee also bumps into the woman, who is pregnant, and even goes as far as locking the automatic doors at the exit so they can’t leave.

After a heated exchange, the family finally showed the employee their receipt.

But that wasn’t good enough, as he now wanted to go through their cart to ensure everything lined up with the receipt, which made the family more upset.

Eventually, they decided to just walk past him and exit through the entrance doors as somebody else walked into the store.

“Have fun protecting a billion-dollar corporation,” the husband can be heard saying as his family leaves.

Although Walmart blames these new security measures, like receipt checks and locking up many everyday items behind glass, many customers on social media are not so convinced that is why.

Some customers have even said everything being locked up makes them feel like a “potential criminal rather than a potential customer,” read one post on X.

Shoplifting rates have risen in some parts of the country, especially since the pandemic, but overall crime has actually been on the decline nationally in the last year.

But it mainly varies by state and city.

In Los Angeles, for example, the average monthly rate of shoplifting increased from roughly 540 thefts per month in 2021 to just short of 900 per month in 2023, according to the Los Angeles police department.

There were about 12,000 shoplifting reports in the city for 2023 – an 81% increase compared to the year prior.

But across the country in New York City, they also saw an increase in shoplifting rates, rising nearly 65% from 2019 to mid-2023, according to a study by the Council on Criminal Justice.

But despite that increase from the pandemic, New York’s shoplifting has actually been on the decline from 2022 to now.

There were nearly 52,000 shoplifting incidents reported in New York for 2023, which is down roughly 7% from 2022, or about 4,500 fewer reports, according to the New York City police department data.

But despite major retailers, like Walmart, blaming an increase in theft for denting their pockets, projecting to lose $132 billion combined in shoplifting losses this year, according to research by Capital One, corporations have managed to raked in record-breaking margins in the same time frame.

In fact, corporate profits are now accounting for the largest share of national income in over a decade, according to the National Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Not to mention, just last month Walmart reported quarterly profits of over $5.1 billion, triple the amount they made the same quarter just one year earlier.

But despite literally tripling their profits, Walmart has laid off thousands of workers in the last four years, contributing largely to a massive 3,225% spike in retail layoffs among major chains nationwide, according to a report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.

And while Walmart continues to cut costs on labor and raise prices, even announcing they are moving into expensive digital price labels that can be changed instantly, the vast majority of Americans are financially worse off now than compared to before the start of the pandemic, according to Yahoo! Finance.

This has left many customers feeling a sense of anger and hostility towards these chain’s especially as they announce pricing scale backs, like Target, who announced last month that they would be lowering the price of over 5,000 everyday items.

“Alternative headline: Target confesses to blatantly price gouging millions of consumers, no penalties expected,” posted one user.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/11603261/walmart-receipt-checks-customers-x-twitter/