As my daughter and I were rolling our very full cart through the aisles one evening a voice came shouting over the loudspeaker.

“CODE YELLOW! There is a TURD in the punch bowl!”

My daughter and I looked at each other thinking — it’s Walmart but what in the world kind of announcement was that?

My daughter laughed and ran off to pick out some things for her hair. I rolled into the checkout line and told her to hurry up.

The manager walked up to the end of the conveyor belt almost immediately and said sternly to the whole line of us, “Leave your carts. We are evacuating the store. You need to leave right now!”

It was a bit chaotic. Food dropped in place. Registers stopped. People filing out quickly. The same message over and over— leave your shopping. Leave the store. Now.

I wasn’t leaving without my daughter! Was there a bomb? A fire? God forbid, a shooter?

We got out safely thankfully, though a bit shaken up.

Later that evening we drove back by and the store was empty like a ghost town but illuminated by the flashing blue lights of several police cars.

Several days later I found out what happened. Several young adults had commandeered the PA System and broadcast the silly turd message, all in good fun. What they hadn’t counted on was the ‘Code yellow’ part of the message happened to mean ‘Emergency—Evacuate’ (I changed the wording so I am not personally responsible for Quora readers causing Walmarts to be evacuated!) It caused thousands of dollars of wasted perishable food, thousands in revenue, and could have caused injuries due to panic. The boys were tracked down using debit card receipts for purchases they made after the prank. The insider who filled me in said the kids were college students who were being charged with federal crimes.

(I don’t believe those boys intended any of this to happen, sounds like they were just being boys, and well, silly and gross.)

Never a dull moment in that circus called Walmart!