Food Stamps

This past weekend, Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, Louisiana had their shelves emptied as though an impending hurricane was approaching, but the cause had less to do with Mother Nature than it did with Father Technology.

A glitch in food stamp recipients’ Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system, one that usually places a limit on how much can be spent, was temporarily gone for two hours on Saturday night between 7 to 9pm. Word spread quickly about the glitch and shoppers loaded up their carts en masse, so much so that police were called to help control the crowds.

“It was worse than any Black Friday,” said Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd, commenting on the number of shoppers taking advantage of the temporary disabling of credit limit on their food stamp cards.

But as people piled up their shopping carts with as much as could hold them, the spending spree was over all too quickly. An employee at the Springhill, La store announced that the glitch had been fixed and credit limits reinstated. Just as quickly as people entered the store, they exited, leaving shopping carts bursting full and shelves in need of restocking. One woman wasn’t in luck, as the glitch was fixed when she was in the checkout line, and she was forced to abandon her $700 bill because there was only 49 cents on her card.

Although Xerox, the company that runs part of EBT, cited that glitch as occurring because of a power outage during routine maintenance had notified the store, Walmart made the decision to let people keep shopping.

“We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage,” said Walmart spokesperson Kayla Whaling, “so that people could get food for their families.”