Neman: Missouri woman’s saga of trying to find common sense at Walmart

A minor frustration is huge when you are the one who is living through it.

White is 35 and lives in O’Fallon, Missouri. Her problem was with Walmart.

Walmart has all the money in the world, and then some. Casey White is a woman of many firmly held opinions. It was a fair fight.

On Valentine’s Day, White went to the Walmart on Highway K in O’Fallon to pick up $200 that her father had wired to her from Cape Girardeau, Mo. This was something they had done several times during the nine years that she had lived in Colorado.

She moved back to Missouri last June. She returned because, she said, Missourians have common sense.

Now she’s not so sure.

When her father sent her the money, he sent it in the name of White. It’s the name she uses now and was the name of her youth and childhood. It’s also his name.

But it is not the name on her driver’s license. White was married to — and is now happily divorced from — a man named Rogers. She never bothered to change the name on her license back to White.

The clerk at Walmart, understandably, refused to give money intended for Casey White to a woman named Casey Rogers. But White was prepared for just such a contingency.

She brought along three forms of identification: the driver’s license in the name of Casey Rogers; a social security card in the name of Casey Rogers and a social security card in the name of Casey White. The cards, obviously, had the same social security number on them.

The clerk was not impressed. The clerk called over the manager — White may have been making a bit of a fuss — and the manager was not impressed, either. They told her to call the national Walmart customer service number, 1-800-WALMART.

She called and explained her situation to the 1-800 person. The 1-800 person listened and said she was obviously the person she said she was and that the store ought to give her the money. White had the 1-800 person repeat that to the clerk and the manager.

Although the clerk and manager told her to call customer service, they decided they did not want to abide by the customer service person’s recommendation. They refused once again to give her the money and questioned whether the customer service person was qualified to provide customer service in Missouri.

This is the part of the story that White finds most frustrating. Obviously, Casey White is Casey Rogers. Obviously, Casey Rogers is Casey White. She has social security cards proving that point. All it takes to make the connection is a little common sense of the kind she had expected to find back home in Missouri.

She had picked up money from Walmart in Colorado several times with no problem. “If Colorado managers can figure that out,” then they definitely should be able to here, she said, adding a few choice insults of Coloradans.

“Just use common sense and give people customer service.”

Common sense has been in short supply since the COVID-19 pandemic, when “as a society, we all got lazy,” she said. Now it’s too easy to do what the computer says to do rather than approaching a problem with human intelligence and understanding, she said.

A spokeswoman for Walmart said the decision not to give the money to White was prudent. “We have security policies that are designed to protect our customers, both the ones sending and the ones receiving,” said Ashley Nolan, senior manager of corporate communications.

“We were unable to complete the transfer because the name did not match.”

White is originally from Scott County, where they would settle disagreements like this a little differently, she said.

“In Scott County, we’ll whup your (behind),” she said. “This is Missouri. Assault is only a $50 fine here.”

In the interest of accuracy, it should be pointed out that even fourth-degree assault in Missouri carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.

White’s father is terminally ill; he has a large aneurysm in his heart and also suffers from greatly diminished lung capacity. He lives 25 minutes from Cape Girardeau, so going back to the Walmart to wire money takes him at least an hour. But he returned late that afternoon to send her the money again, this time under the name Casey Rogers.

She picked it up at the Walmart in Lake Saint Louis. She won’t go back to the store in O’Fallon ever again, she said, and she sounds like she means it.