dailymail.co.uk / By Alexandra Klausner / 12:39 EST, 14 October 2013
WalMart is on the
hook for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars of groceries bought by
food stamp recipients after a computer glitch gave them unlimited funds
on their government-issued credit cards.
In
a spending spree described by local officials as 'worse than Black
Friday,' dozens of welfare families with Electronic Benefits Transfer
(EBT) cards picked bare the shelves at the stores in Springhill
and Mansfield, Louisiana, in just a few hours on Saturday - carrying
away up to ten shopping carts of meat and other groceries.
‘We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families,’ Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA.
Police officers were called in for crowd control and safety monitoring.
‘It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town.'
There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no meat left. The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated,’ said Springhill Police Chief Will Lyn.
‘I saw people drag out 8 to 10 grocery carts,’ the officer told ABC news.
From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., a frenzy of shoppers filled their carts to the brim with as much food as they could get their hands on. When the cards came back online at 9 p.m., people literally abandoned their carts full of food in the middle of the Walmart and left.
Dozens! Dozens of families! Folks, that's a lootin'.
Now how about a future scenario if/when an outage happens again causing a similar situation where tens of thousands of people are involved? The only difference is that the next time, in the future, it's due to a national emergency as a result of a meteor strike or a dollar failure.
The next time EVERYONE knows that extreme danger is imminent and that law and order were more like luck and pray; it's game on.
Who's going to stand there and pay?
How about this one. A guy standing in line watches as the person in front of him charges up as much as she can in two carts because that's the limit. Not the limit on the card because that's infinite, I mean the limit placed by the store on the number of carts allowed per person.
So this guy walks up to the register with his GINORMOUSLY stuffed cart, the cashier rings him up and the register reads back, "denied!" The cashier explains to him that it only says, "insufficient funds." He says, "What do you mean "insufficient funds", as he pulls out his i Phone 93 to check his account balance. "That woman just walked through with two heaping carts! And that's only because of "store policy!"
"I'm sorry sir", she says sympathetically. "I can't approve more than the card will read."
He says, "My account says I have two-hundred and fifty dollars."
"I can approve you for that much."
"I have to buy gas", he exclaims!
"Ohhhhhhhhh", he starts thinking to himself as a broodenin' takes him over and starts pulling stuff off of his cart and putting it in a cart next to the cashier. He gets it down a little below the amount in his account, cashes out and storms out of the store.
A few minutes later the cashier looks over as she's hurriedly packing a bag and sees that same man walking out the door with a heaping cart full of groceries, right past and behind all the cash registers, the "in way", and out the door. As he passes by, with his free hand he grabs the previously discarded goods in the cart next to the cashier and walks out the same way he came in. She doesn't bother, as the panic ensues.
Beware these are not trial runs and we are all but guinea pigs.
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