I worked there many many years.
Overall, it wasn't terrible, and I have read a lot of horror stories on reddit about things that happen to people at their jobs and I just can't conceive of most of it happening at Walmart. Besides that, I have never witnessed problems with working off the clock or was ever asked to work off the clock. I felt, generally paid appropriately for my job. That doesn't mean I didn't hate the s**t out of it sometimes, and it doesn't mean nothing bad ever happened. I had scores of s****y managers, and worked in stores that were run badly.
Having said all that, the worst thing that ever happened was this:
I had recently inherited the toy department. This was about 10 years ago. It had gone without a manager for like 6 months, and the one they had before that was utterly incompetent and lazy. So the department was a mess.
But I am a toy department professional, literally. I can take any toy department and make it look like somewhere you want to shop. Clean it up, stock it right, I will work my a*s off and fix it and the backroom too. So, it was daunting, but I had a lot of confidence in myself, and i knew I'd be pretty much doing it alone because lol Walmart doesn't give a f**k about toys. But I figured if everyone just left me alone, and let me work my department, it would be fine.
So here's what happened:
Anyway, I decide the first thing I want to do is physically clean the place up. There was overstock everywhere and the bike rack and power wheels rack was just a dumping ground for any kind of c**p you can imagine. Power wheels are the big electric ride on toys.
Anyway, so it takes me DAYS but I finally get the power wheels rack cleaned up, and I can actually start moving the power wheels boxes themselves around back to where they are supposed to be. So, I grab one and it sounds all...rattly. I thought maybe some other toy had fallen in or a bag of screws inside the box had busted. But then as I move the box I see there is this wet streak where I am moving the box, and there is a hole in the corner. These things run from $75 to $300, and this is not what I want to see on an expensive item.
Oh no, I think. Mice.
Well, no sooner did I have that thought than 2 mice come bursting out of the hole and go sliding across the tile floor. I scream and jump back and recompose myself.
I push the box some more and it sounds like a f*****g rain stick. it's all pssssssssssshhhhh. I'm like, what the f**k is going on in this box...
Then I think, well f**k it, I have to get it off the sales floor because we can't sell it in this condition and I don't want to break open this box on the sales floor because I don't want customers seeing whatever is in here.
I get a cart and try to load the box. the bottom of the box basically gives way, and mouse poop just cascaded out. Bits of paper, liquid,. It was the most wretched s**t I had ever seen. Every time I moved the box it was just...s**t everywhere.
So I am about to hurl at this point and I get the stupid f*****g box onto my cart, go grab my PPE (personal protective equipment) and clean the S**T out of the shelf the floor the air, my hands everything. Usually I'm sort of "lol PPE" but I wish I could have gotten a f*****g biohazard suit for that.
Anyway, I take the stupid box to the back. This box is like 5 feet high, by 3 wide and 2 long, ok, so IMAGINE how much potential for s**t there is in this box. It's everywhere.
So I get to the back, go to the area we take damaged goods and tell the woman there that I am throwing this thing out and explain to her what's going on with it, please mark it down, but don't touch it etc.
She throws a fit. Says she needs to talk to the manager. So we wait, and he comes and eventually decides that what we need to do is open the box and "wash" the merchandise. I say no way. This is for children and it's completely filthy and I'm not touching it. it's not safe or sanitary and no one should have to clean this thing.
He says fine leave it and we'll get rid of it ASAP.
I think, thank F**K and I go back to work.
Next day that filthy f*****g box is back on the sales floor. I raged. Threw it back on the cart and took it back again. Mouse s**t was still falling out of it.
The woman says the manager said we couldn't mark it down and we definitely couldn't throw it away and we can just try to sell it as is.
Uh, no. We get into an actual screaming match. Like why can't she see that a toy filled with rat s**t is NOT SAFE. She's crying. I'm fuming. The store manager comes by and says that he told a maintenence guy to clean the box up and he's sorry it looks like he didn't do a very good job.
Mother f**k, I don't care how good of a job he did. I want that thing GONE. Like, if it is in my department, I am leaving and I will never come back because this is sick, Walmart is disgusting, and I can't even believe I'm having this argument right now. He said that was my choice but he'd have the item cleaned up "properly" by this afternoon.
So I sliced open the end of the box (they had retaped with actual mouse s**t in the tape!!!) and stuck my hand in and yanked the whole f*****g thing out.
Nearly fell over. Not only was it filled with s**t, it was a HUGE nest and there were corpses all over teh f*****g thing, and all over the floor and dead mouse babies stuck to the cardboard inside flap.
GAG.
The store manager looks totally disgusted, and gets on his walkie and calls the bike assembler.
The guy arrives and he says clean this up and sell it as a display. The bike builder looks like he's about to faint.
I said, I'm done. Bye bye, and I left. I didn't know what to do. I thought about calling corporate, OSHA, the news, the Health department...
What I actually did was went home and cried. The next day, I ended up going into work at whatever the f**k time I felt like it. I clock in and go to toys, and there's that F*****G POWER WHEEL. I don't know how long the poor assembler worked on that. But it did look a million percent better. But I didn't care. I dragged that mother f****r straight to the compactor, but it wouldn't fit, so I had to rip the wheels and mirrors off to cram it in. I was back there raging at the compacter for like 40 minutes. I took the battery out and took it to automotive to recycle and decided if they fire me, then f**k it.
Everyone in the store practically saw me the past three days fighting about this stupid toy with management. Everyone saw me literally throw a piece of "merchandise" in the garbage (instant termination btw).
No one ever said a word about it again, except the store manager who came by and said, "where did you end up putting that display?" I said, "in the garbage." Boy, he fumed. He just turned and walked away.
I did turn that toy department around, got our pest control guys in (thanks to an assistant manager who made the call, since dept managers can't do that) and rocked the s**t out of that department for several years. I won some awards for sales and improvement and no one questioned my s**t again and luckily I never had another problem remotely like that again. The store manager was demoted and moved to another store soon after.
Overall, it wasn't terrible, and I have read a lot of horror stories on reddit about things that happen to people at their jobs and I just can't conceive of most of it happening at Walmart. Besides that, I have never witnessed problems with working off the clock or was ever asked to work off the clock. I felt, generally paid appropriately for my job. That doesn't mean I didn't hate the s**t out of it sometimes, and it doesn't mean nothing bad ever happened. I had scores of s****y managers, and worked in stores that were run badly.
Having said all that, the worst thing that ever happened was this:
I had recently inherited the toy department. This was about 10 years ago. It had gone without a manager for like 6 months, and the one they had before that was utterly incompetent and lazy. So the department was a mess.
But I am a toy department professional, literally. I can take any toy department and make it look like somewhere you want to shop. Clean it up, stock it right, I will work my a*s off and fix it and the backroom too. So, it was daunting, but I had a lot of confidence in myself, and i knew I'd be pretty much doing it alone because lol Walmart doesn't give a f**k about toys. But I figured if everyone just left me alone, and let me work my department, it would be fine.
So here's what happened:
Anyway, I decide the first thing I want to do is physically clean the place up. There was overstock everywhere and the bike rack and power wheels rack was just a dumping ground for any kind of c**p you can imagine. Power wheels are the big electric ride on toys.
Anyway, so it takes me DAYS but I finally get the power wheels rack cleaned up, and I can actually start moving the power wheels boxes themselves around back to where they are supposed to be. So, I grab one and it sounds all...rattly. I thought maybe some other toy had fallen in or a bag of screws inside the box had busted. But then as I move the box I see there is this wet streak where I am moving the box, and there is a hole in the corner. These things run from $75 to $300, and this is not what I want to see on an expensive item.
Oh no, I think. Mice.
Well, no sooner did I have that thought than 2 mice come bursting out of the hole and go sliding across the tile floor. I scream and jump back and recompose myself.
I push the box some more and it sounds like a f*****g rain stick. it's all pssssssssssshhhhh. I'm like, what the f**k is going on in this box...
Then I think, well f**k it, I have to get it off the sales floor because we can't sell it in this condition and I don't want to break open this box on the sales floor because I don't want customers seeing whatever is in here.
I get a cart and try to load the box. the bottom of the box basically gives way, and mouse poop just cascaded out. Bits of paper, liquid,. It was the most wretched s**t I had ever seen. Every time I moved the box it was just...s**t everywhere.
So I am about to hurl at this point and I get the stupid f*****g box onto my cart, go grab my PPE (personal protective equipment) and clean the S**T out of the shelf the floor the air, my hands everything. Usually I'm sort of "lol PPE" but I wish I could have gotten a f*****g biohazard suit for that.
Anyway, I take the stupid box to the back. This box is like 5 feet high, by 3 wide and 2 long, ok, so IMAGINE how much potential for s**t there is in this box. It's everywhere.
So I get to the back, go to the area we take damaged goods and tell the woman there that I am throwing this thing out and explain to her what's going on with it, please mark it down, but don't touch it etc.
She throws a fit. Says she needs to talk to the manager. So we wait, and he comes and eventually decides that what we need to do is open the box and "wash" the merchandise. I say no way. This is for children and it's completely filthy and I'm not touching it. it's not safe or sanitary and no one should have to clean this thing.
He says fine leave it and we'll get rid of it ASAP.
I think, thank F**K and I go back to work.
Next day that filthy f*****g box is back on the sales floor. I raged. Threw it back on the cart and took it back again. Mouse s**t was still falling out of it.
The woman says the manager said we couldn't mark it down and we definitely couldn't throw it away and we can just try to sell it as is.
Uh, no. We get into an actual screaming match. Like why can't she see that a toy filled with rat s**t is NOT SAFE. She's crying. I'm fuming. The store manager comes by and says that he told a maintenence guy to clean the box up and he's sorry it looks like he didn't do a very good job.
Mother f**k, I don't care how good of a job he did. I want that thing GONE. Like, if it is in my department, I am leaving and I will never come back because this is sick, Walmart is disgusting, and I can't even believe I'm having this argument right now. He said that was my choice but he'd have the item cleaned up "properly" by this afternoon.
So I sliced open the end of the box (they had retaped with actual mouse s**t in the tape!!!) and stuck my hand in and yanked the whole f*****g thing out.
Nearly fell over. Not only was it filled with s**t, it was a HUGE nest and there were corpses all over teh f*****g thing, and all over the floor and dead mouse babies stuck to the cardboard inside flap.
GAG.
The store manager looks totally disgusted, and gets on his walkie and calls the bike assembler.
The guy arrives and he says clean this up and sell it as a display. The bike builder looks like he's about to faint.
I said, I'm done. Bye bye, and I left. I didn't know what to do. I thought about calling corporate, OSHA, the news, the Health department...
What I actually did was went home and cried. The next day, I ended up going into work at whatever the f**k time I felt like it. I clock in and go to toys, and there's that F*****G POWER WHEEL. I don't know how long the poor assembler worked on that. But it did look a million percent better. But I didn't care. I dragged that mother f****r straight to the compactor, but it wouldn't fit, so I had to rip the wheels and mirrors off to cram it in. I was back there raging at the compacter for like 40 minutes. I took the battery out and took it to automotive to recycle and decided if they fire me, then f**k it.
Everyone in the store practically saw me the past three days fighting about this stupid toy with management. Everyone saw me literally throw a piece of "merchandise" in the garbage (instant termination btw).
No one ever said a word about it again, except the store manager who came by and said, "where did you end up putting that display?" I said, "in the garbage." Boy, he fumed. He just turned and walked away.
I did turn that toy department around, got our pest control guys in (thanks to an assistant manager who made the call, since dept managers can't do that) and rocked the s**t out of that department for several years. I won some awards for sales and improvement and no one questioned my s**t again and luckily I never had another problem remotely like that again. The store manager was demoted and moved to another store soon after.