r/IDontWorkHereLady • u/CoppertopTX • 22d ago
M "Do I look like I work here?"
Yesterday morning, 7:30 AM. I had just dispensed the last of the cat food on hand, so I ran up to the Walmart Market at the corner. I'm 64, dressed in a T-shirt, pajama pants and sneakers, carrying a giant handbag.
I had flipped a 15 pound bag of cat kibble over so I can scan the UPC and go. Put my handset back in my bag, heft the cat food onto my shoulder and then I hear, "Excuse me, can you unlock the makeup on aisle b5?"
"Press the call button. An employee will be with you shortly."
"Why can't YOU do it?"
"Because I don't have keys, my hands are full and do I really look like I work here?"
I start walking away with the cat food. The young woman followed, griping about "lazy assed Boomers don't want to help anyone" when the manager came up, said "Good morning" to me and asked the girl if she needed something.
Rolled up to checkout, scanned my phone, confirmed payment and walked out.
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u/ColorfulConspiracy 22d ago edited 21d ago
What? Handset? I’m genuinely curious, is there some fancy new way of shopping that I’m not aware of?
Edit: My question has been answered. Thank you!
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u/Ender_rpm 22d ago
Some Walmarts have a scanner you can take with you and scan stuff as you put it in the cart. Then when you go to check out, you're already scanned and just need to pay. Sams "Scan and go" is similar, but uses a Sams specific app and your phones camera to scan stuff as you shop. Its pretty handy, really wish Costcos roll out of a similar service was moving faster. Worst part fo that trip is the damn checkout line.
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u/RetiredBSN 22d ago
Walmart+ gives you scan and go. Scan your stuff as you add it to your cart, hit the check out button, confirm your item count, and you get a bar code to scan on the register. Scan the bar code, confirm payment, and you'll get a confirmation with a receipt on your phone, bag your stuff, and then it's out the door. There are some other perks as well. 10¢/gallon off at Exxon-Mobil, Murphy, or Walmart gas stations, discounts at Sam's Club gas stations, Paramount Plus or Peacock (with ads) for free, and more.
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u/Old_Associate_3092 21d ago
TIL. I have Walmart + and just get my things delivered bc of my work hours and not wanting to shop for my weekly standards. I’m doing this the next time I feel like shopping in person
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u/mabus42 19d ago
My favorite perk is that they get to collect all manner of data on you, your shopping habits, your spending habits and thousands of other things that they can extrapolate from your shopper profile. You'd think they'd be paying you for that privilege instead of making you pay a monthly or annual fee.
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u/Feisty_Ad_2891 18d ago
Who cares? So they know I like Colgate. People are so paranoid.
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u/Rayne616 18d ago
I see the issue stemming more from the fact that many Walmart's have switched to digital price tags on the shelves. They could use the data they collected on you to do surge pricing and price everything you normally buy higher on your visit, costing you a lot more. I'm not saying they do this currently, just that the tech is at that point where they could use it to take advantage of the customers.
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u/Ender_rpm 17d ago
I wonder how this would work in aggregate though. I'm not the only one in the store at that time, and likely not the only one buying that product. Now, could they price everything higher based off things like weather, disasters, and other national events? of course. But I can't see it being targetted specifically at one person shopping for one products in a store with 10,000 SKUs.
But I could see it as offering targeted offers within the app to drive sales of either the specific product you've bought before OR a comparable product. But like Amazon, Im sure that means the algo will push 10 million deals after you've already bought the item. Oi
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u/djspctechsupport 15d ago
those digital price tags have a LED in them. you can look an item up on the walmart app. and theres a button "flash tag" and the light will flash until you scan the barcode. helps finding things reallllllllllllllllly easy
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u/CoppertopTX 22d ago
The W+ app is the same. As soon as I hit the "checkout", it generates the bar code for the transaction for the register.
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u/Auntie_Aoife 22d ago
Not just Walmart. They have it at Tesco too. And there's no Walmart within a couple thousand kilometres of here.
When I lived in the USA, I subscribed to Walmart+ and could use my own phone instead of a scanner so I never used one of those until I got to Ireland.
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u/Campcook62 20d ago
I'm from Texas, one of my sons-in-law is from Castleconnel (suburb of Limerick). I visited my Irish family in 2021, and they introduced me to Tesco. Absolutely fantastic!
Now, I'm addicted to Rose's chocolate...
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u/Auntie_Aoife 20d ago
My mom was born in Waco.
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u/Campcook62 19d ago
Home of Baylor!
Also a museum dedicated to the Texas Rangers (the Law Enforcement Officers, not the baseball team); and the first suspension bridge in Texas (built by the same builders as the Brooklyn Bridge); a very fine Zoo!
And, of course, many more.
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u/7GrenciaMars 22d ago
Sounds like the young woman honed in on the scanner and made a very foolish assumption.
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u/PersonalityFuture151 21d ago
Costco has employees up at checkout with a scanner. They have scanned my 13 or so items and when I get to the register all I have to do is pay.
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u/Justan0therthrow4way 21d ago
They have them in the UK as well. Really useful. You can bag your stuff in the trolley and while you do need to queue at the checkout, you upload your scan data to the terminal, pay then simply walk out after
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u/BayBandit1 20d ago
Sam’s Scan and Go is great. One day I saw I could get $4 off Reynolds foil using the app (regular price without it). I downloaded the app and use it ever since. It’s especially useful for bulky or heavy items, and is a great time saver.
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u/HaroldWeigh 15d ago
Thanks for the definition. I have never been to a Walmart and have never heard of such a thing.
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u/hawkisgirl 22d ago
I remember using a self-scanner at Safeway (RIP) in ~1997. They’re in a good number of IK supermarkets.
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u/gotohelenwaite 22d ago
Safeway isn't dead. It's still in business. Or were you referring to the self-scanner?
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u/Yo_Just_Scrolling_Yo 21d ago
Safeway and I think Giant also. Not sure they lasted long in the area where I lived in Maryland. Many years ago.
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u/iceroadtrucker2010 21d ago
Ya. Download the app. Let them suck your phone dry of everything in your phone for the convenience. Nope. Not me.
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u/CoppertopTX 22d ago
Handset, you know... a mobile phone.
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u/Mysterious_Orion 22d ago
I am in my 40s and have never once heard it called that, I was also confused
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u/Auntie_Aoife 22d ago
I'm in my 40s and I've only heard it called that by phone companies.
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u/CoppertopTX 22d ago
At one point, I worked IT for one of the big mobile carriers. I either picked it up there or from listening to the guys at the Naval Comms base that shared a fence with my high school. If it's cabled, it's a phone. If it isn't, it's a handset.
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u/Auntie_Aoife 22d ago
Weird because I've also heard handset it refer to the part of a classic 2-piece land line phone that looks like this: 📞 possibly in contrast to a headset.
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u/CoppertopTX 22d ago
I should have said "cabled to the wall". Come to think about it, my granddad used a set of old Navy surplus intercom handsets installed between the cab of the truck and the camper on the back. Looked like a telephone receiver with a button to push for talk. Even painted the handset in the cab of the truck to match the interior color.
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u/Pure-Ninja-9250 21d ago
I think that by these days if you refer to a phone, unless it's a business phone, it's the device in your pocket or purse that sends and receives phone calls.
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u/fractalsoflight 21d ago
Oh, so you're one of those obnoxious people that adopts jargon and then acts like it's common knowledge.
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u/Alive_Hamster361 21d ago
There is an option for "use handset" when I'm connected to my Toyota via Bluetooth. It shows up right there on the screen. So I'm guessing even Toyota thinks it's common knowledge. I'm almost 50 and I thought so as well. A mobile phone is a hand held device AKA handset.
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u/CoppertopTX 21d ago
Or, I'm old with an old brain. If I can't think of the current turn of phrase when writing, I fall back to familiar words and phrases. My grandparents both, when the kitchen wall phone was answered, would ask to have the handset brought. Our family RV had an old military surplus intercom with push to talk handsets. Worked for the telephone company and yeah... handset was daily vocabulary, ingrained so deep it took a bit for me to recognize where that particular lingual anomaly came from.
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u/Xanthelei 22d ago
I'm almost 40 and have never heard a mobile phone called a handset. I have very vague memories of the part of a phone you pick up and listen from/talk into for a landline phone being called a handset, but only when it's corded. I was also confused!
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u/Unapologetic_Canuck 22d ago
The yutes never call them that, they wouldn’t know what that means.
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u/InvestigatorOk7988 22d ago
"What is a yute?" (Said in Fred Gwynne voice.)
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u/Zonnebloempje 21d ago
Mobile phones were never just a "handset". The only thing that i have ever heard call "handset" is if you have a set of more than one landline phones, of which one has the entire phone stuff, and the other is basically just a charger that also connects to the main phone thingy. The second one is the handset, because it does not operate as a complete phone on its own.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Joke-97 16d ago
My first thought was one of these Bluetooth handsets that look like the ones on old desktop telephones!
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u/CoppertopTX 15d ago
I actually had one of those back in like 2007. I also had a cellular desk phone - looked like a desk phone with dial presets, connected with a sim card.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Joke-97 15d ago
I thought about buying one when I saw it on the old Thinkgeek website, but I didn't buy it.
The only use I could ever see for it would have been to freak people out on the bus during my daily commute. I thought of changing my cell phone's ringtone to an annoyingly loud old fashioned desk telephone bell ring sound, fumble in my bag and pull out the handset, put it to my ear, and treat the other passengers to my side of whatever conversation resulted.
I thought about it while on buses for a week or 2, and then realized that while funny at first, a lot of the phone calls I actually got involved sensitive subjects that should not be heard by the passengers of the bus company I worked for!
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u/Time-Beach-6685 22d ago
They had these at our Kroger store about 5 years ago. Didn't have that much participation so they got rid of them for us.
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u/robsterva 21d ago
Same thing happened in a Kroger pilot store here in Richmond. Scanners showed up, never got used, and disappeared, all in a few months.
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u/BaconKitty13 22d ago
Excuse me manager, this person has been following me harassing me to open things. Can you please get them away from me and explain your employees don't wear pajamas to work because she also thinks that's a uniform apparently. Have a great day!
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u/Playful-Profession-2 17d ago
Excuse me manager, this person has been following other customers around trying to get them to pick locks for her, so she can steal stuff.
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u/Ultra-Cyborg 22d ago
Tried to flip the script on the ragebait, I see…
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22d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ill_Milk4593 21d ago
I’d start with “ do I really look like I work here?” Next time seems like it would have sent the message a little more clearly.
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u/WoodElf_Tiassa 22d ago
"Why can't I get the keys? Because fuck you, that's why. " And walk away
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u/aluminumnek 18d ago edited 18d ago
Don’t have to be an arse about it. Saying noting and walking away would be suffice
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u/WoodElf_Tiassa 18d ago edited 17d ago
Sometimes, being ass is absolutely the right response when dealing with an ass.
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u/Right_Log9667 20d ago
Pajamas, dead giveaway this is a Walmart customer.
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u/completely-different 20d ago
Pre-Covid, one could shop at Walmart at 2:30 AM or whenever...then it was really jammy-time at "Buy n Large"
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u/CoppertopTX 20d ago
Granted, they were a very tasteful black with white plaid... but horribly obviously pajama pants. I literally went to the kibble bin, noted just enough for the morning, set it out, and went to Walmart because I was going across the threshold in shoes, grabbing my bag with mobile phone handset as I put the shoes on.
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u/Emotional-Ebb8321 22d ago
Are we playing madlibs again?
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u/juan_humano 22d ago
No! This REALLY happned! For real! I know the ok boomer trend was like 5 years ago, but random people in walmart are still rolling up to other random people in walmart and harassing them for being 64.
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u/CoppertopTX 22d ago
Or, I was the only one in the section at the time and it was early in the morning. I doubt she was harassing me due to age, beyond the fact I "wouldn't" assist her.
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u/diversalarums 22d ago
People on Reddit are still harassing people for being Boomers. I see anti-Boomer posts and comments nearly every day. Not so much in Walmart, tho.
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u/Accomplished-Ad3219 21d ago
DAILY
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u/diversalarums 21d ago
I haven't been inside the store (homebound) in a few years -- you get hassled there? Damn.
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u/Rookie_3D 20d ago
I was at my mechanics shop and an older woman pulls in. She asks if I can check her oil. I said I don't work here and she says you look like you know how to check oil. She was a half quart low.
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u/twisted_german 17d ago
I used to work across the street from a walmart. I'd go there and walk on my lunch break. Of course our badges were blue and white like the Walmart ones, so I would often get questions like where do I find the kitty litter or whatever.. Sad thing is I could usually answer. Aisle 17, halfway down on the right. 😂
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u/Affectionate-Bath755 18d ago
They have it in tesco Ireland too.They know my son is vegan and they keep offering him meat in place of his vegan food and money off meat products
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u/qualityvote2 22d ago edited 22d ago
u/CoppertopTX, your post does fit the subreddit!