Every so often, there are news stories that come along that seem almost too bizarre to be true.
Back in 2009, there was the story of Richard Henne and his son Falcon, who was seemingly trapped inside a stray weather balloon which everyone watched live. Later, it was revealed that entire thing was a media hoax, known as the Balloon Boy incident. Although today’s story has smaller stakes than that, it remains very strange—and also a little unfair.
The whole thing began Waukesha, Wisconsin back in March 2017.
It was just another normal day for 88-year-old Bob Tallinger, who was working as a greeter at a local Walmart store.
As a greeter, Tallinger’s job is to say hello and offer a kind word to any customers who might come in the store. As you can imagine, most of Tallinger’s days are fairly unremarkable. In his eight years working at the store, things had gone pretty smoothly. Everything changed one day, however, when a wild turkey strolled right past him into the store.
Little did Tallinger know that there would be consequences for this seemingly harmless event.
Although the employees were able to wrangle the bird out of the store shortly thereafter, Walmart’s HR department had stern words for Tallinger.
After pulling Tallinger aside, his higher-ups told him that he should’ve reacted more quickly against the bird—or otherwise taken more action to prevent the wild turkey from interrupting other customers’ shopping experience. Still, Tallinger says the store had no complaints that anyone had a hard time as a result of the stray turkey.
The story was strange enough to attract the attention of the local news, WISN 12 on ABC.
A news team came to interview Tallinger and his wife Janet about everything that had happened.
For her part, Janet strongly defended her husband’s actions in the situation:
He was hired to be a greeter and that’s what he did. He never saw a book of rules that said, ‘If a wild turkey comes in here, you better run and get management.’
The news team tried to follow up with Walmart in person to no avail, though they did reach Walmart’s corporate team for comment. They replied:
We appreciate the public’s concern and take this situation seriously. While we will not comment on HR matters, we can confirm Mr. Tallinger is no longer with the company.
What do you think of this story?
Although this is one of the stranger ones we’ve heard, this isn’t the first time Walmart has fielded complaints from disgruntled employees. Personally, our hearts go out to Bob Tallinger in this situation—spread this story if you agree!
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