A woman named Haley (@haley.teague) placed a Walmart pickup order, watched as a picker named “David” began working on it, and then received notifications that several of her items were marked “out of stock” — only to drive to the store and find every single one of them sitting right there on the shelf. Her TikTok documenting the experience has racked up over 345,900 views, and it struck a nerve because this is not a one-off glitch. It is a widespread, systemic problem with Walmart’s grocery pickup service that affects millions of customers who are paying real money for a service that frequently fails them.
What makes this particularly galling is that Walmart+ members pay $98 per year or $12.95 per month for this convenience, and Walmart now collects an estimated $4.3 billion annually in membership fees. When pickers mark readily available items as “out of stock” because they cannot be bothered to look on the bottom shelf, that is not a technology failure — it is a service failure. This article breaks down exactly why this keeps happening, what Walmart’s own employees say about the problem, what your rights are as a customer, and what you can actually do to protect yourself from getting shorted on your next order.
Table of Contents
- Why Was Every Item Marked “Out of Stock” When It Was Sitting on the Shelf?
- What Walmart’s Own Employees Are Saying About the Picker Problem
- The Carnation Milk Incident and a Growing Pattern of Customer Pushback
- What Walmart’s Substitution Policy Actually Says — and How to Use It
- The $4.3 Billion Question — Are Walmart+ Members Getting What They Pay For?
- What Happens When You Catch Them — Can You Actually Do Anything?
- Will Walmart Fix This, or Is It Baked Into the Model?
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Was Every Item Marked “Out of Stock” When It Was Sitting on the Shelf?
In Haley’s case, the items marked unavailable included Ritz cracker chips, garlic dill pickle chips, Hellmann’s squeeze mayonnaise, and chicken livers. None of these are exotic or hard-to-find products. She filmed herself walking through the store aisles and locating every single one, narrating as she went: “Look, David.
Look what I found, David.” She described feeling like she was being “punked” and did not mince words, commenting “David, please be fired.” The reason this resonated with hundreds of thousands of viewers is that almost anyone who has used Walmart pickup or delivery has experienced some version of this. You place an order, the app tells you half your items are unavailable, and you either accept the gaps in your grocery list or make a separate trip to the store yourself — defeating the entire purpose of the service. The pattern is consistent enough that it has spawned its own genre of TikTok content, with customers documenting their experiences catching Walmart in what amounts to a lie about product availability.
What Walmart’s Own Employees Are Saying About the Picker Problem
A Walmart employee named Mily (@_milymoly_) posted her own viral TikTok that confirmed what customers have long suspected. She showed items that pickers had marked as “out of stock” — jasmine rice, canned goods, beef broth, beef ravioli, chips, and children’s cough medicine — sitting right on the shelves, often on bottom shelves that pickers had not checked. She held up her Zebra scanner to prove the items were in the system as available and said she handles these “exceptions,” as Walmart internally calls them, “every day.” Current and former Walmart employees have explained that pickers operate under strict time pressure with enforced pick rates. The system tracks how quickly they locate and collect items, and that metric matters for their performance evaluations. The predictable result is that some pickers mark items as unavailable rather than spending extra time hunting through a disorganized aisle or checking a secondary stocking location.
This is a management problem, not just a lazy employee problem. When you build a system that rewards speed over accuracy, you get speed over accuracy. However, it is worth noting that Walmart’s inventory system itself can have discrepancies between digital inventory counts and actual shelf stock. Sometimes items genuinely are not where the system says they should be, or the count is wrong due to theft, damage, or receiving errors. The issue is that there is no meaningful distinction — from the customer’s perspective — between “the system was wrong” and “the picker did not look.”.
The Carnation Milk Incident and a Growing Pattern of Customer Pushback
In yet another documented case, a customer was told that Nestlé Carnation Evaporated Milk was out of stock on their pickup order. They went to the store and found it on the shelf — the same product, in the same location where it always is. These are not obscure items hidden in some back corner of the warehouse. They are staples, stocked in predictable locations, that pickers are apparently skipping over with regularity.
The pattern is consistent across these viral incidents: commonly purchased items, clearly visible on shelves, marked as unavailable by pickers who either cannot find them or are not incentivized to try. Mily’s video was particularly damning because she showed bottom-shelf items that pickers had missed, suggesting that some workers are not even bending down to check lower shelves. For customers with mobility issues, dietary restrictions, or families relying on specific products — like the parent whose children’s cough medicine was marked unavailable — this is not a minor inconvenience. It is a failure of a paid service to deliver what was promised.
What Walmart’s Substitution Policy Actually Says — and How to Use It
According to Walmart’s official help page, when an item is unavailable, the picker may offer a substitution or mark it as out of stock. Customers are only charged for items actually fulfilled, so you will not pay for something you did not receive. You can also set substitution preferences in your account settings: allow substitutes, choose “no substitutes,” or select preferred alternatives for specific items. On paper, this sounds reasonable. In practice, the substitution system creates its own frustrations.
If you allow substitutes, you might end up with a brand or size you did not want. If you select “no substitutes,” you simply do not get the item — and as these viral videos demonstrate, the item may have been available the entire time. The tradeoff is between getting something you did not ask for or getting nothing at all, when the third option — getting what you actually ordered — was apparently on the table the whole time. Setting item-level substitution preferences for every product in your cart is tedious but gives you the most control. The broader point remains: no amount of customer-side settings can fix a picker who does not look for your groceries.
The $4.3 Billion Question — Are Walmart+ Members Getting What They Pay For?
Haley made a pointed observation in her video: “There are people that pay a monthly subscription to Walmart for this service” who rely on it and cannot shop in person. Walmart+ has an estimated 25 to 32 million U.S. members as of 2025–2026, and the company can now deliver to approximately 95 percent of the U.S. population. Membership fees alone exceeded $4.3 billion in Walmart’s fiscal 2026.
That is an enormous amount of money being collected for a service that, based on these incidents, has a fundamental quality control problem. The limitation here is that Walmart’s refund policy — only charging for fulfilled items — technically means you are not paying for items you do not receive. But that framing ignores the real cost. If you are paying $98 a year for the convenience of not going to the store, and you end up going to the store anyway because your picker marked half your order as unavailable, you have lost both the money and the time. For elderly customers, disabled individuals, or people without reliable transportation who depend on delivery and pickup services, being told an item is out of stock when it is not can mean going without essentials. The financial harm may be diffuse, but it is real and it is widespread.
What Happens When You Catch Them — Can You Actually Do Anything?
If you receive an “out of stock” notification and suspect the item is actually available, your most immediate option is to cancel the pickup order and shop in person, which is exactly what Haley did. You can also contact Walmart customer service to report the issue, request a re-pick, or file a complaint. Some customers have reported success by placing a second order for the same items and having a different picker fulfill it without issue — which, if anything, further proves the problem is picker behavior, not actual stock levels.
From a broader accountability standpoint, the viral nature of these videos has done more to pressure Walmart than any individual complaint. When millions of people watch an employee get called out by name on TikTok, that creates institutional pressure to address pick rate policies and quality checks. Whether that translates into systemic change remains to be seen.
Will Walmart Fix This, or Is It Baked Into the Model?
The core tension is structural. Walmart’s pickup and delivery model depends on speed and volume. Pickers are evaluated on how fast they work, and the system is designed to process enormous numbers of orders across thousands of stores. Adding meaningful quality checks — like requiring pickers to verify an item is truly unavailable before marking it as such, or having a second employee check exceptions — would slow the process down and increase labor costs.
Walmart has shown no public indication that it plans to overhaul the picker accountability system, though the viral backlash may force the issue. The growth trajectory of Walmart+ suggests the company is betting heavily on this service as a long-term revenue stream. If the “out of stock” problem continues to erode customer trust, it could undermine that bet. For now, customers are left to police the system themselves — filming their trips through the aisles and holding pickers accountable one TikTok at a time.
Conclusion
The Walmart pickup “out of stock” scandal is not about one lazy employee named David. It is about a system that incentivizes speed over service, collects billions in membership fees, and then fails to deliver on its basic promise: putting the items you ordered into a bag. Multiple viral incidents — documented by both customers and Walmart’s own employees — confirm that this is a recurring, widespread problem rooted in picker time pressure, poor inventory management, and inadequate quality controls.
If you use Walmart pickup or delivery, set item-level substitution preferences, check your order notifications carefully, and do not hesitate to go to the store or contact customer service when items are suspiciously marked as unavailable. You are paying for a service, and you are entitled to receive it. Walmart has the infrastructure to reach 95 percent of the U.S. population and the revenue from over 25 million paying members — there is no excuse for not also having the accountability systems to make sure the person picking your order actually looks on the bottom shelf.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Walmart mark items as “out of stock” when they are on the shelf?
Current and former employees say pickers are under strict time pressure with enforced pick rates. Some mark items as unavailable rather than spending extra time searching, especially for products on bottom shelves or in secondary locations. Walmart’s inventory system can also have discrepancies between digital counts and actual shelf stock.
Do I still get charged for items marked “out of stock” on my Walmart pickup order?
No. Per Walmart’s official policy, customers are only charged for items that are actually fulfilled and included in the order. Items marked as out of stock are removed from your bill.
How much does Walmart+ cost, and what does it include?
Walmart+ costs $98 per year or $12.95 per month. It includes free delivery on orders over $35, among other benefits. The service has an estimated 25 to 32 million members in the U.S.
Can I set substitution preferences for my Walmart pickup orders?
Yes. You can allow substitutes, choose “no substitutes,” or select preferred alternatives for specific items through your Walmart account settings. Setting item-level preferences gives you the most control over what replacements you receive.
What should I do if I suspect my Walmart picker lied about an item being out of stock?
You can cancel the pickup and shop in person, contact Walmart customer service to report the issue and request a re-pick, or place a second order for the same items. Documenting the discrepancy — as several viral TikTokers have done — also helps hold the system accountable.