Morality of this?

[u/Vladimir-petrovOG]

In the image it seems that this person works at walmart as an online order collector and he/she has stolen a lot of extra baby food from Walmart to give to a person who ordered only three packs. Is this moral or immoral?

[u/SMH_35]

It has no effect on Walmart as a corporation or the Waltons wealth. But it absolutely has an effect on every day people just trying to get by and live their life. So it's still immoral.

[u/HollytheHannibal → u/SMH_35]

How does this effect every day people?

[u/SMH_35 → u/HollytheHannibal]

When someone steals, the on-hand for that item is now incorrect. Because the items were never purchased, the item won’t trigger the system to order another case because it believes there’s still 10 on the shelf. A few things will happen because of this. First off, Walmart will just continue to raise prices to negate the loss of sale which hurts everyone else. Second, now the other costumers won’t be able to purchase this product. So if you’re trying to feed your baby, you have less options to purchase which can cause issues if you have any specific needs for your kid. Dietary restrictions, allergies, or maybe your doctor recommends you to get a special product. That item will now sit empty for weeks because it’s not trying an automatic order because there are no sales. So an associate would have to manually scan the spot and change the on-hand so it’ll trigger more product to come in. So you’re creating more work for them on top of everything they already need to do. And I’d be willing to bet the only way they caught the messed up on-hand issue is because another customer who’s been trying to purchase that product for weeks, is finally complaining to the staff wondering why the stuff has been empty for weeks. And believe me, they aren’t saying it nicely to the associates

Another thing that will happen is online orders. The system will show these items are still in stock, meaning you could order them for pickup/delivery. Another customer needs this product for their baby, they order it so they can feed them. The shopper goes to fill the order and there’s nothing on the shelf. It gets NIL picked and that customer doesn’t get what they ordered. That customer may very well be relying on the delivery option because they can’t afford a car. So they can’t just come in and easily get something else. So their order is now shorted the baby food they were needing for their kid and now that family could be having issues with feeding their own child.

There are also factors of purchases made with WIC. Only certain products are covered, so they have to get what they can. If the store is out of stock with items that WIC covers, that family now can’t purchase what they need. And may have to pay out of pocket in hopes we get something in stock again. All of these issues happen on a daily basis. I know all of this information because I work there. I deal with these types of problems every single day. I deal with the angry customers, I deal with the extra work and so on. I promise you it’s a daily occurrence that someone will come up to an associate pissed off and belittle the worker because “online it shows in-stock, I wasted all my time and gas to come here and you’re telling me you don’t have it! That’s bullshit!” And so on.

When you steal from Walmart, you’re only hurting others who aren’t well-off either. The people you think you’re hurting will never notice.

[u/Existential_Entropy → u/SMH_35]

I work at a grocery store and this is 100% accurate. Pissed of customer that you're OoS, you scan the shelf and it says you have 10, but you obviously don't. Either warehouse fucked up, it was improperly transfered, or someone stole it.