You may have noticed that more and more big retail stores like Target and Walmart are locking up their products behind glass cases.
At this point, you can’t pick up a deodorant stick or a tube of toothpaste without having to track down an employee who can open the case for you and hand you the item you want.
It can be a real hassle too. Sometimes there’s a button that supposedly calls an employee and sometimes there isn’t. The button rarely calls an employee promptly and most people wander the store until they find someone to help them.
And then of course, if there’s already an employee in the aisle with you, you want to go ahead and grab them so that they can open the doors before they leave, but then you feel weirdly rushed to decide which brand of toothpaste or scent of deodorant you’re actually going to purchase.
But one TikToker found a slightly mischievous, if not effective solution to this multidimensional problem.
When he found himself waiting in front of a locked case for far too long without even a sign of life from a Walmart employee, he googled the company’s intercom code and asked for assistance over the loudspeaker.
That sent several employees his way, arguing over who had to help him. When he heard the dispute he hopped back on the intercom informing them that he could hear their bickering.
The woman who finally came to help didn’t even have keys to unlock the case he wanted unlocked and complained to him that she’d been there since 5 AM, but they would find someone who could help him.
Despite the annoying circumstances, he kept a positive attitude and was chipper to the employees that he had clearly annoyed by asking them to do their jobs.
Commenters are applauding both his patience and his bizarre but effective methods, especially after the Walmart employee made it clear that he had inconvenienced her with his presence in the store. One customer joked that if we have to be our own cashiers at self-checkout, it should earn customers the right to use the intercom too.
Other people have had the same problem at Walmart. There are so many employees but they all seem to disappear the moment a customer needs help. One commenter noted that she’s literally watched employees hide instead of helping her.
According to Forbes, these locked cases are to prevent theft, with nearly 70% of retailers reporting a rise in organized retail crime. This reportedly equates to profit losses of up to $69 billion a year. But, many customers report that they take away the convenience of in-person shopping. Most people pop into a store because they need something right away, but waiting for, tracking down, and intercom-ing employees heavily weighs down that convenience.
In fact, this system results in up to a 25% reduction in sales. But for retail companies, the benefits seem to outweigh the consequences.
However, the Walmart employees in this particular video may not entirely agree with that sentiment. It seems to me that in their head, getting called out over the intercom and being held accountable in a rather public way to do their jobs may have been worth the overall sales loss in the absence of the glass cases.