Lucas Jackson/Reuters
- The holiday season is a busy time at America's largest retailer.
- Walmart workers say they enjoy perks like a special holiday employee discount and team dinners.
- But some customers are more short-tempered, while others are clearly fighting seasonal illnesses.
More than half of US shoppers buy holiday gifts at a Walmart store, making the company by far the most popular physical retailer this season, according to a recent report on consumer trends from Jungle Scout.
Over a million Walmart store associates stock the shelves, prepare the online orders, staff the checkout lanes, and help holiday shoppers in the store.
We analyzed the Walmart employee Reddit page and spoke with three current and two former employees about the best and worst parts of working the holidays at Walmart. Business Insider is not identifying current employees, as they are not authorized to speak to the media.
Working the holidays at Walmart has changed over the past few years. The pandemic curtailed much of the fanfare around Black Friday, and many customers are continuing to shop online even as early-pandemic restrictions have been lifted. But there are still plenty of demanding customers in stores, the associates said.
Here are some of the highs and lows of working at Walmart during the holiday shopping season:
More people are shopping at Walmart online this year, yet some stores still feel understaffed
Several workers said the stores are less busy than in past years when Black Friday still packed its annual sales punch, and Walmart remained open 24 hours a day.
"Walmart's not going back to that," an associate in the Southwest told Business Insider. And neither are shoppers. "They have much better online deals," the associate said.
But even as foot traffic has come down, stores don't always have enough staff to cover shifts, two sources in Texas said — and that's after hiring seasonal workers and restricting the time off employees can take.
"Usually, we hire more temps, and for whatever reason, we're still severely understaffed," one Texas associate who has worked at Walmart for five years said. Several Reddit threads also noted cuts to scheduled hours that have left some workers feeling shorthanded.
Retailers have pulled back on seasonal hiring in recent years, analysis from Challenger, Gray & Christmas found, and unlike several competitors, Walmart declined to announce a seasonal hiring target this year.
"We've been hiring throughout the year to be sure we're ready to serve customers however they want to shop with us for the holidays," a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider.
Walmart associates can save up to 25% with a holiday employee discount
Most of the people Business Insider spoke to (and many more commenting on Reddit) highlighted the expanded employee discount as a huge perk of working through the holidays.
Walmart employees ordinarily get 10% off their purchases. A spokesperson said the discount is expanded with an additional 10% off most grocery items during the holidays.
In addition, all employees receive a one-time 15% holiday discount they can use in December with their regular employee discount to net savings of 25% on a shopping trip.
While a few Redditors said they splurged on big-ticket electronics, most said they used the discount to stock up on household and grocery essentials. Still, others said they didn't earn enough to make the deal worth it.
Walmart associates say they still have plenty of stressed, sick, and thieving customers to deal with
Almost all the workers BI spoke with said they had to grapple with customers with increasingly short fuses.
"Customers are kind of more agitated, but that generally comes with the Christmas season and shopping and all that stress," the Texas associate said.
"I don't know if customers are actually worse during the holidays, or if we're just having to deal with a higher volume," an Illinois worker said.
The Illinois worker also said some shoppers aren't staying home when seasonal illnesses strike.
"A lot of customers come in visibly sick. People are not masking anymore, and people get extremely close," the worker said.
Beyond being short-staffed and working long hours, the hardest part for Amber Wilson, a former front-end lead in New York who left Walmart in March, was catching shoplifters.
"We're here busting our humps through the holidays to make sure people get what they need, and then you see people stealing," Wilson said. "It's just not fair."
If you are a Walmart worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.