14 December 2024, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Stephen Zimmerman – “They accused me of trying to steal dog food,” says Mr. Zimmerman of Las Cruces (no relation). “She asked me why I took two things of dog food out of the box. I told her there were lots of them on the shelf.”

Mr. Zimmerman is not alone in complaints about Walmart and single items placed on the shelves.

“I thought I would buy those single-serve mashed potatoes in a cup for my husband’s lunch,” says Rosario Guzman of El Paso, Texas. I selected two different ones, and a rude Walmart associate confronted me at the checkout.”

Ms. Guzman was taken to Walmart’s security room and pleaded with them to go look on the shelves, stating that she wasn’t trying to steal anything.

“I was in the Walmart on Walton, in Las Cruces,” says Trevor Williams, “and they accused me of being a thief!”

Trevor tried to buy a single cup of Mac and Cheese. However, the cup he picked up was labeled “not for individual sale.”

From El Paso and Las Cruces, a week does not go by without someone reaching out to us about Walmart and their placing items back on the shelves for sale that should only be sold in packages.

Mr. Zimmerman of Las Cruces walked back to the dog food section, snapped photos, and attempted to show them to the employee watching the self-checkout.

“She told me it doesn’t matter, that I was wrong,” says Mr. Zimmerman. “Then she told me that she told the manager, and he was back there looking at it all. Funny, because I didn’t see an employee, much less a manager, the whole time I was taking photos and recording a video.”

“We had these time constraints,” says Jonathan Islas, a former employee of Walmart in El Paso, Texas. “You got just so long you can be on a task before you get in trouble for it. Trying to figure out what can and cannot be sold takes too much time, honestly.”

And that’s the problem with Walmart today.

“I know it can be a pain, and it can cause problems when you try to pay,” says a current Walmart employee who asked that we not reveal her name. “But we get told just to put it on the shelf and that the front end will just give a price for it, and they can buy it.”

Even I’ve had problems at Walmart when trying to make a purchase. In my case, I was buying Gatorade at the end of the summer.

In the dairy section, a large display of Gatorade was marked at $5.99. Each shrink-wrapped case contained four six-packs. At the register, another customer and I were told that we were trying to steal the product. When we explained the display, the front-end manager walked to the back of the store.

We were met with hostility and rudeness as we accompanied her and showed her the display. The manager informed us they would not be sold in cases, regardless of whether an employee left them wrapped.

“Nothing said the ham steak was to be sold by threes,” says Veronica Dawson of El Paso’s Lower Valley. “I wanted those for Thanksgiving because the turkey was too much. I was embarrassed when told I was trying to steal something I was trying to pay for.”

Walmart needs help from “Roll Back” prices that are not any less expensive than they originally were (article embedded below) to send confusing signals about what a product costs.

We attempted to contact Walmart Media Relations multiple times before we wrote this article, just like the Roll Back article. Once, we were promised a call back for the Roll Back article, which never came. Over the last two weeks and two Media requests for this article, Walmart has declined, once again, not to respond.

“That was the last time I went to a Walmart,” says Hector Ochoa of El Paso’s Westside. “When they accuse me of not wanting to pay for the right item when they put it on the shelf that way, I don’t need to go back after what they said to me.”

Remember, it’s better to shop locally.