First ever Walmart complaint

  Like many other roadtrippers and RVers, I often stop and "boondock" in Walmart parking lots overnight.  These have the convenience of restrooms near the entrance doors, and a whole store right there for picking up up supplies and groceries when needed.  I refer this as "camping under the Sign of the Golden Anus", for the obvious reason.  [No, now you cannot un-see that.]

Walmart is well-known to *not* have a corporate-level footwear policy [reference 1] [reference 2], so I've never worried about waltzing into any of them barefoot.  This had consistently held true for several years, until one evening in early 2025 with a really obnoxious run-in with someone claiming to be part of store security but not looking or identifying the part at all.  It was at a store in podunk western New Jersey that I'd targeted for my final overnight, before getting home from a long seasonal drive.

It took a little while after the incident, but I finally put together my report on this upsetting and somewhat mysterious incident and submitted it as broadly as I could manage to Walmart corporate.  The letter should be reasonably self-explanatory ... 

To the highest levels of remedial escalation available:

On the evening of January 5, 2025 I was traveling, and stopped in at your
store 2497 in Phillipsburg NJ for a quick break.  After using the restroom
and then wandering around a bit looking at possible to-go food options, I
was accosted by a woman claiming to be from "asset protection", who decided
to single me out and harass me about my physical appearance.  In particular,
concerning footwear, or more precisely my lack of same.

I don't wear shoes, for improved health and mobility.  As part of several
"barefooter" communities I know full well that Walmart as a whole does not
have any specific footwear policies, because there's no point in it, and all
it might lead to is disagreements and lost business on the ground.  Anyone
who willingly walks into an establishment barefoot has fully accepted 100%
of any perceived "liability" -- that's how the law works, and any claims to
the contrary are false.  But what I've also become aware of across similar
situations described to me is a certain tendency for Walmart personnel to pass
the buck, and lay blame for any incidents that come up on others intead of
taking responsibility and really understanding the situation.  This was one of
those cases, and it was a really upsetting experience because it was the FIRST
time ever that I have run into this kind of abuse in a Walmart.  And I've been
in a lot of them.

I did not ever learn who the supposed "asset protection" person was; it was
a shortish stocky woman and her only clearly identifying feature was a group
of four or five dark spots on the lower left of her neck.  She was not wearing
any sort of identifiable uniform or credential, only a sort of camouflage
style outfit.  She could have been anybody, frankly -- I saw no obvious proof
that she worked for anyone with authority at that location.  She never properly
identified herself, just kept hiding behind the vague "asset protection" label,
but kept insisting that I leave the store on the basis of what wasn't on my
feet.  Her claim was that it was an "unsafe practice".  That is patently not
true in my case, as I'm out in the woods hiking and even leading hikes for
others on a regular basis and walking over all kinds of rough terrain with
impunity.  I know what I'm doing and as mentioned above, am fully responsible
for myself.  If anything, the floors of a typical Walmart store are more
pristine than in my own home, so I'm sure that there is no risk to myself or
anyone else there.  Her attitude was belligerent and threatening, and wouldn't
listen to anything I explained or countered with.  I believe that if I had
prolonged the situation any longer instead of simply leaving, that she would
have tried to initiate physical conflict.  She had clearly lost sight of the
fact that "assets" include good-faith business brought in, and to try and
throw that out the door is not "protecting" it in the slightest.

The next day, I looked up which store it was and contacted who I believe is
its general manager, who happened to be near the customer-service area.  She
told me the "asset protection" was a complete third-party company and made
its own rules, and she had no control over what they do.  That seemed like the
biggest cop-out (so to speak) I'd heard in years.  The security staff works
*for her*, they cannot be allowed to get away from overruling the store's
management and harassing customers on totally false grounds -- all visibly
happening under the Walmart brand!  That is not a good look for any company.

The security-goon woman in question needs to be identified and FIRED for her
presentation and behavior towards me, because it ran completely counter to
Walmart principles, and the fearful hands-off situation with the store manager
needs to be fixed ASAP by direct corporate-level intervention.  That is a
BOGUS situation as it stands now at that location, and any others where it may
hold true.  Nobody needs that kind of animosity in their lives and careers,
and all parts of an organization need to work together with kindness and
understanding.  People who operate only based on their own personal prejudice
like the asset non-protector in question did, need to be employed where they
have no direct interaction with the general public.

I am aware of other similar stories in Walmart locations, from participating
in various forums.  I have also heard it said that another excuse people have
been given is that decisions about this sort of thing are "up to the individual
stores".  That seems like bunkum, as Walmart at a corporate level does not make
any such policies and there's nothing special about any one specific location.
This needs to be permanently fixed at the NATIONAL level, and all location
and regional managers made aware that these types of incidents are unacceptable
and should never happen.  And if third-party affiliates have falsely asserted
decision power overriding the truth about store management responsibilities,
that needs to be universally fixed too.  The effort to accomplish this likely
boils down to a few well-worded internal bulk emails, so it's time to get
busy and GET THIS DONE.

Seriously annoyed,

[me]

[This is being submitted to ethics@walmart.com, customer escalations by
telephone, and by paper mail to Walmart Corporate in Bentonville.  The text
is available at   http://convenience-URL   for reference]
  I submitted this into every likely customer-escalation avenue I could find, except for the generic customer-service number because those are always 100% useless and their robot IVR is simply infuriating.  I sent it to ethics@walmart.com via email *and* tried to submit it online, just for completeness since different departments might receive items from these disparate submission mechanisms.  The form at the ethics hotline input didn't have enough space for my full report, so I dropped a summary and a temporary web link for the rest into it and said "please chase this".  Problem is, in a behemoth company like Walmart a lot of these different input means go to different departments, and I wanted many potentially responsible people to see it.  I also printed it up to paper-mail to the Bentonville corporate offices:

    Walmart, Inc.
    Attn: Global Ethics and Compliance
    702 SW 8th Street
    Bentonville AR 72716-0860

and then started calling any of the other numbers I could find.  None of the reps I found there could visit my temporary text report link due to outgoing restrictions from their office networks [understandable, given security concerns] but they included the short "convenience link" from my careful spelling-out in case someone on an external computer [or a phone?] wanted to go chase it.  The guy at the "customer escalations" line (855-315-2743) actually said that I was completely in the right in this situation, and Walmart genuinely doesn't care about footwear.  I also hit up the "ethics" department again by phone (800-963-8442) to see if they'd received anything online, but they said that all goes directly to corporate escalation and they wouldn't have any access.  But that's another place to submit reports orally.  They gave me an official corporate number in Bentonville (479-273-4000) which sounded suspiciously like a generic customer-service line, but then whoever I talked to said that my "escalations" web-form had already rolled into *their* department so they knew about it!  I'm detailing all of this in case anyone else has to file a similar complaint, but I'm hoping that global corporate action will simply prevent this kind of crap from ever happening again as a result of mine.

Ironically, while I half expected their goons in Phillipsburg to chase me out through the parking lot to see if I really left, they didn't, and I wound up overnighting right there anyway in my "stealth camping rig" without any further issues.

  [Results/conclusions are accumulating in this section]

As of a few days after submitting this, I received a call from someone claiming to be a manager at the Phillipsburg store who had instructed to "follow up" on this from some shadowy origin above him.  He had been given the temporary link to my letter, but clearly had not read it very thoroughly as he started spouting the same "it's policy" nonsense and trying to claim that I was in the wrong.  I reiterated how unpleasant the security lady had been, and asked him to please follow up on that as a mishandled situation.  I also asked him to find *any* specific reference at the corporate level, and/or have the people above him contact me directly.  He said he would find that and get back to me later that day.

No subsequent call came in that day or even the rest of the week, which was no surprise.  Given what transpired in the meantime, though, it's possible that the guy actually went to *check* with his superiors after first trying to bullshit me, found out the truth of the matter, and was too embarrassed to call me back and actually apologize.

A loosely linked set of email threads happened sort of in parallel; since I was trying to correspond with both customer escalations and the ethics department at once, it all got a little jumbled up together.  I've put email excerpts back into what I think is temporal order, which might yield some sense of the flow for the curious reader.

Ethics did respond, but I wasn't entirely happy with their answer.  It looked like they were contacting the customer-care people and CCing me, so I wasn't sure how many eyeballs were on this by now.  Hopefully many, and in high places. 
*** Automated Redirect Routed from Global Ethics ***
Redirect Group: Customer Care,

Concerns were recently reported to Walmart Global Ethics on 2025-01-25
02:25:05 CST, by [customer]. As described, there is not enough information
to require an Ethics investigation; however, we wanted to make you aware
of this concern. As this is not a formal investigation, no follow-up with
Global Ethics is necessary.

 The reported concerns state:

     List of Parties :

     Name: [me]

     Job Title: Customer

     Involvement: Reporter

     Name: Unknown Unknown

     Job Title: Hourly Associate

     Involvement: Subject

 ** Please do NOT reply to this email address **

Please contact Global Ethics at ethc_replies@walmart.com
mailto:ethc_replies@walmart.com  for any questions.
Around the same timeframe, I got a direct reply from the customer-care infrastructure, first of several that turned out to basically be copies of each other. 
Response By Email (Tamara)(01/28/2025 02:05 PM)
Hello [me],

I appreciate you letting me know about your negative experience in store
2497.  We strive to ensure every customer is satisfied with our business,
and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.  Customer
satisfaction is always a number one priority for us and I'm deeply sorry
that wasn't demonstrated to you.

Please let me inform you that we have a specialized team to handle concerns
related to the store. I have forwarded your concern to our store team
directly.

I highly appreciate your cooperation in this regard and I hope your concern
is addressed to your satisfaction. If you have additional questions, please
reply to this email and I will be happy to assist.

You may receive a brief survey in your email regarding my personal service
to you. I'd appreciate any feedback you have for me!

Sincerely,

Tamara

Walmart Customer Care
So I attempted to answer both of these entities at once, clarifying my thoughts on why the whole situation was so lame and ... *unethical*.  The same text went into the followup form at the ethics site and back via email. 
Customer By CSS Email (01/29/2025 06:27 AM)
EXTERNAL: Report suspicious emails to Email Abuse.

Do not dismiss this so early.  It is still an ethics problem, for the simple
reason that so many people give conflicting answers across the breadth of
Walmart without doing any investigation first, and nobody seems able to
actually get their story straight.

Someone claiming to be a manager at the Phillipsburg store called me, and
tried to claim that Walmart had a shoe policy.  He clearly hadn't read my
original report in detail, and was simply trying to bullshit me into some
kind of submission.  That is highly UNETHICAL not to mention rude on his part,
and needs to be continually addressed until all of this ignorant, prejudiced
rot is carved OUT of the Walmart body forever.

It is also not a generic retaliation issue -- please don't mischaracterize
the situation.

_H*

[Similar text also submitted via the ethics followup site]
[That last sentence was due to the interim text at the Ethics "followup" site implying something about retaliation, maybe assuming that most of their cases would be complaints from employees about workplace incidents.]  That elicited the next copy/paste text, with only minor changes. 
---------------------------------------------------------------=20
Response By Email (Hannah)(01/30/2025 01:55 PM)
Hello [me],

I appreciate you letting me know about your negative experience in store
2497. We strive to ensure every customer is satisfied with our business,
and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Customer
satisfaction is always a number one priority for us and I'm deeply sorry
that wasn't demonstrated to you.

Please let me inform you that we have a specialized team to handle concerns
related to the store. I have forwarded your concern to our store team
directly.

I highly appreciate your cooperation in this regard and I hope your concern
is addressed to your satisfaction. If you have additional questions, please
reply to this email and I will be happy to assist.

You may receive a brief survey in your email regarding my personal
service to you.  I'd appreciate any feedback you have for me!

Sincerely,

Hannah

Walmart Customer Care
This still felt like corporate-bullshit-speak; I didn't really have any kind of satisfactory *answer* yet, or statement of *how* they were going about addressing the concerns. 
Customer By CSS Email (01/31/2025 11:02 AM)

You're just parroting the same canned text back at me in each reply. What
is anyone *doing* about this on the ground at the location in question,
not to mention at *all* locations across the US and worldwide??

This concern is not "addressed to my satisfaction" until we get an actual
*human* to go a little beyond cut-and-paste in handling this incident and
discuss it like an adult. I want some actual answers.

_H*
I got back a slightly different form of the copy/paste.  And they already had my phone number, they didn't need to ask again. 
Reply-To: "WMSTORES"  <storehelp@walmart.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:22:05 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Walmart Customer Care
MIME-Version: 1.0

--------------Boundary-00=_TWQYVA40000000000000
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII

Recently you requested personal assistance from Walmart Customer Care. Below
is our response and a summary of your request.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Reference# 250128-043619

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response By Email (Rebecca)(01/31/2025 11:22 AM)
Dear [me],

Thank you for contacting Walmart regarding issues with Store #2497.  We
have escalated your ticket to the appropriate team and will follow up
with you once we have heard more. Your reference number is 250128-043619
in the event you would like to follow up or ask further questions.

Please respond back to this email with a phone number we can reach you at
so we can follow up.

We appreciate you contacting us regarding this. We value our customer
feedback and this allows for us to continue to deliver great customer service.
You may receive a brief survey in your email regarding my service to you.
I'd appreciate any feedback regarding my assistance.

Thank you,
Becca
Walmart Customer Care

=====
So now what, do I just wait for them to pick the incident back up again later?  It looked like some additional escalation might have finally happened, but I wasn't sure if they had just closed the ticket on me or not.  This indeterminate state of things wasn't really what I wanted at this point, but then, something a bit weirder rolled in. 
Received: from webph19.int.rightnowtech.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
	by access-ph.rightnowtech.com ("Mail Server") with SMTP id A71729FB7A
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 07:41:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Kocheran <walmartfeedback@express.medallia.com>
Subject: Thank you for your recent feedback
X-Medallia-Company-URL-Name: walmart
Reply-To: Anthony Kocheran
    <reply-1186.edwpd7szy8mbp32c7zb9@express4.medallia.com>
To: [customer]
X-Mail-Sequence: 254365628

Dear [me],

I sincerely appreciate your feedback and I am very sorry you were not treated
appropriately.  We try to make our customers' shopping experience easy and
enjoyable, but clearly fell short on this visit.

I want to assure you that the problem you brought to our attention is being
addressed. I hope you will give my team another chance and visit us again
in the future.

Sincerely,
Anthony

Walmart
Could this be linked more closely to the supposed store manager who called me before?  Maybe not, coming from a generic "walmartfeedback" sender.  The email path was very different; perhaps the "escalation" process had moved the discussion from a somewhat Zendesk-feeling platform before, to some instance of Medallia "customer experience" platform that also provides employee email?  The message only gave a name, not a position, but it felt a little more localized -- so perhaps it originated via the Phillipsburg store itself.

Without pursuing it further and the suspected unlikeliness of actuallly receiving more followup, I may never know, and I am not in a convenient position to go back to that store to see if anything's improved.  That's okay, it feels from all this like people *did* get reprimanded and re-educated, hopefully including everyone in whatever shadowy third-party mall-cop service they hire in.  Being the super-squeaky wheel felt like the right thing to do in this case, within reason, since Walmart's such a behemoth it's easy for them to ignore small stuff.  Knowing what else I have learned and experienced about Walmart over the years I'm turning this entry green regardless, and will go on assuming that Walmart is basically okay with feet, and that anything discovered to the contrary *is* an anomaly that needs to be immediately and forcefully rectified.

_H*   250124 and following