Walmart Employees Deserve Way More Respect, Says Tyler, TX Woman

A woman I went to middle school with named Elisha who lives in Tyler, Texas posted as to why she feels strongly that people need to show respect for the people who work at our East Texas Walmart locations.

Even before I dug in and read more of her post, I was already in total agreement--like 1,000,000%

Every human being deserves a basic level of respect and kindness. Sure, some humans behave in ways that make it harder to do so. At the same time, it's usually some of the rudest people who NEED more kindness, since they're often acting out of a place of sadness or insecurity... but I digress.

Back to the discussion at hand...

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What were the reasons she gave as to why Walmart employees in East Texas deserve our respect? (Which of COURSE they do.)

Elisha, who has recently started working about three months ago at a Tyler, Texas Walmart location, shared a few reasons why she feels we should respect Walmart employees (not that many of us don't already--I certainly do.)

Interestingly, the first thing she addressed was in regard to the self-checkout phenomenon we've seen growing over the past couple of years. Elisha says, now that she's worked at a Walmart and seen behind the scenes she had some insight to share about the employees who keep an eye on the self-checkout section.

One of the things she mentioned that got our attention was that some people have this idea that those self-checkout employees don't actually do anything--which she says is NOT true at all.

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In regard to the notion that 'self-checkout employees at Walmart do nothing but stand around,' she said nothing could be further from the truth. According to Elisha, those employees are charged with making sure there are enough bags, dealing with any issues with checkout, and keeping an eye out for those who might want to steal, which she says happens more than we might think.

Also, recently Walmart announced a new technology that self-checkout attendants will be using in the near future to combat shoplifting--read about that here.

But one of the hardest parts of their job?

She said one of the hardest things about working at the self-checkout area is the fairly common experience of customers taking out their frustration on the employees. It's not uncommon to hear customers yell at employees about things they have no control over whatsoever.

If we get THAT mad, we'd be better off trying to call one of the Waltons up in Arkansas and yell at them, but yelling at 18-year-old Aaron about why we're having to check ourselves out isn't going to do anything except make Aaron's life harder. (Or whomever.)

Bottom line? As frustrating as it can be to navigate through a Walmart Supercenter at the end of a long day, it's not the employees' fault most of the time. Be kind.