Andy Warhol once said: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," and only now, when that very future has already arrived, do we understand how right he was. Social networks can literally lift any of us to the top of popularity in the blink of an eye, and easily overthrow anybody from there. However, much more entertaining in this case is the completely random nature of such takeoffs.
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Take Walmart, for example, which, according to their official website, operates more than 10.5K stores worldwide and employs around 2.1M people, 1.6M of whom are in the U.S. What is the probability that one of these people will suddenly become an internet star - even if only for a short time? And yet, this possibility exists, and sometimes it works out.
Walmart in Grundy, Virginia recently gave a shout-out to a woman named Alley as a new Employee of the Week
Image credits: Walmart Grundy
People in the comments started massively praising Alley with some made-up stories about her incredible skills and service level
Image credits: Walmart Grundy
Image credits: Mike Mozart
According to some of the commenters, Alley is no less than Mother Nature in disguise and folks suggest just renaming the store to Alleymart
Image credits: frankieleon (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Jennifer Gentner (not the actual photo)
By the way, it's not the first time people have come up with fictional glorifying stories about Walmart employees - five years ago the fame fell on Sam from Illinois
A few years ago, Walmart in Streator, Illinois named its cashier Sam Reynolds their Employee of the Week on Facebook, and for some reason, people in the comments began to actively tell completely non-existent stories about Sam's incredible virtues and skills, and how her brilliant service helped them in the most difficult and confusing everyday situations, not only in the store, but outside it as well.
Bored Panda has told that story before, and we admired the ingenuity with which netizens came up with more and more ways to praise this woman, making her a real superhero. At the time, a few years ago, she was absolutely surprised by the glory that fell on her out of the blue. "This happened for no reason," Reynolds told in an interview to Shaw Local. "I don't even know how to feel. I guess it's cool. I don't have time for all the comments."
And so, years passed, numerous Walmart stores identified literally tens of thousands of new Employees of the Week - and suddenly fame fell on another woman. This time it was a Walmart store employee in Grundy, Virginia named Alley. She received her award on April 4th and as of today, the post has over 51K reactions, 38K shares and more than 47K comments where people got into a true battle of wits, praising Alley as much as they could.
So, according to some folks in the comments, Alley stopped a customer from picking up a hand saw from the wrong end, saved a kid from being run over by a shopping cart, helped with emergent health issues and even taught them how to make tea. Moreover, people even presume that the woman is Mother Nature in disguise and suggest renaming Walmart to Alleymart altogether.
Perhaps Walmart's SMM team will take advantage of this brilliant idea and at least rename their social media pages for a while, but for now, Alley is probably the main star of the whole chain. For example, when the same Walmart Grundy spoke about Brian from the bakery/deli department, noting his awesome customer service, commenters wrote that the guy should actually feel honored to be a co-worker of Alley.
In the end, we are all damn lucky to live in the same era and on the same planet with Alley, so just feel the significance of this moment and also feel free to write your own words of appreciation towards this incredible ordinary woman in the comments here. After all, as Andy Warhol also said, "I think everybody should be nice to everybody."
Just as Sam Reynolds became an unexpected internet sensation after being named the Employee of the Week, the unpredictability of viral fame strikes once again with Alley's rise to fame.
Examining the rise of Sam's popularity offers insights into the quirky nature of sudden social media stardom among Walmart employees.