Because of the rampant issue of there never being enough staff anywhere (from the school I noped the fuck out of last year to all manner of retail and fast food) life is hell on earth for anyone who has no choice but to remain and I witnessed this yesterday and it was horrifying and heartbreaking.
I’d placed an online order for grocery delivery from Walmart and got a notification that the delivery was going to be delayed. This happens sometimes. It usually means there isn’t a driver. When this happens I call and arrange to come pick things up.
I called and asked if this would be okay, and the person on the other end sounded completely exhausted and said they were overwhelmed with more orders than they could fill and were seriously understaffed and the parking lot was packed so it would be after 7 before I could hope to get my groceries.
My husband and I drove up then and my God, what a hellscape. The parking lot was packed with more cars than I’d ever seen. And everyone was pissed off…exchanging angry complaints with one another out their windows, some getting out and storming into the center where deliveries were handled to attempt to grab their merch, and there was a stereotypical Karen standing out in the parking lot screaming at the top of her lungs at this poor lone employee dragging out a heavy cart to another car about how she’d been waiting for two hours and this was unacceptable and this poor kid—and I say kid, because he didn’t look to be older than a teenager—just looked so battered and dead inside. And then this harpy took it upon herself to go around and try to get other people to join her in her rage. She stormed inside and came out a bit later pushing a grocery cart with like four things on it with this smug smirk on her face, that Karen look when they’ve pitched a bitch and succeeded in getting their way.
At this point my husband and I said fuck this. We got out and asked if we could help them. Not for money or anything other than helping them get stuff out and to these assholes so they’d go away and stop abusing them. Seriously, we told them. Just let us in there and show us what we can do to help.
They couldn’t permit this because of policies and shit, sadly, but honestly if they’d have let us we’d have jumped in and helped out. That warehouse was a disaster, orders piled high, the work of like ten people being handled by four.
We didn’t ask but the fellows who were both indeed only 17-18 years old were like, without saying it so directly, fuck these assholes. They went in and retrieved our stuff and apologized because they admitted half of it wasn’t there and we were like, don’t worry. We will figure that out on our end.
The guys helpfully mentioned as an aside that since it was supposed to be a delivery but it wasn’t delivered, technically it would be in the system as undelivered and technically we weren’t going to be charged for it and, they shrugged and gave us a small grin, that’s not on either of us. And I got a free stapler by accident, too:)
My heart breaks for the abuse and stress and hell those workers were being subjected to by that hellhole parking lot full of entitled assholes. I wish that my husband and I would have been allowed to jump in and help them out. I am grateful that in spite of the cruelty and meanness people were heaping on these boys all day that they still found kindness for us.
And I’m just angry that anyone at all because they are faced with the necessity of earning an income to care for themselves and dependents have little to no choice but to exist in these conditions. As a teacher and a mom and a human being with basic empathy my heart just breaks. It’s been almost 24 hours since this debacle but these kids, those employees are still on my heart.
But yeah, they were right. We got that whole order for free. And we wouldn’t have known that unless they told us.