Paige Yore’s Walmart Cashier Story

Overview

Paige Yore’s Walmart Cashier Story refers to a video of a woman telling a story about a customer freakout episode that allegedly took place at the checkout line at a Walmart superstore in Pueblo, Colorado. After the video was uploaded to Facebook and YouTube in early December 2015, it quickly entered widespread circulation in the news as a feel-good story of the holiday season, though the validity of the woman's story still remains in dispute as Walmart has denied that the event has ever taken place.

Background

On December 4th, 2015, a 25-years-old woman named Paige Yore uploaded a Facebook video^[1] in which she tells a story about a heartwarming exchange she has had with a teenage cashier at a Walmart store in Pueblo, Colorado. In the video, Yore explains that she was waiting at the checkout line for nearly 20 minutes when a disgruntled customer in front of her began berating the cashier for being slow. Upon witnessing the exchange, Yore allegedly intervened to mediate the situation, at which point the young store clerk broke down in tears and revealed to her that his mom had committed suicide just hours before his shift began.

Notable Developments

Within the first 72 hours of upload, the video garnered more than 25 million views, 35,400 likes and 894,000 shares, as well as hundreds of comments from viewers on Facebook who said they were touched by the story. On December 6th, Redditor Nohmdd submitted the Facebook video to /r/videos^[2] with the title "Don't forget that there's a person behind the register," where it garnered more than 4,110 points and 2,490 comments. By December 7th, several local news outlets had begun highlighting the Facebook video as a heartwarming story of faith in humanity gone viral, including WITI^[3], KFOR^[4], WHNT^[6] and WTVR^[5], as well as viral media blogs like Uproxx^[14], Newser^[7], Inquistr^[14], Snopes^[12] and Daily Mail^[9].

Walmart's Response

Also on December 7th, Walmart spokesperson Aaron Mullins responded to the news media coverage of the Facebook video disputing that the story, as Yore described in the video, had never actually taken place at the checkout line, citing the company's review of the surveillance video footage. According to Mullins, the video suggests there may have been some tension between the cashier and the customer in front of Yore, possibly due to a language barrier, but at no point during this exchange does the surveillance footage show the customer yelling at the cashier or Yore embracing the teenager. In addition, Mullins revealed that the company has spoken with the cashier in question and confirmed that his mother is in good health and alive.

Search Interest

External References