Things might not be what they first appear

 

One minute run-time.

My original reaction to this short video was the predictable one: How could she not know the card was "empty". My original impression was that the customer was trying to scam Walmart by bluffing/intimidating her way through.

A bit later it occurred to me that the woman working the cash register didn't say "the balance was zero" but that "the transaction was declined" which really means that there are insufficient funds to cover the amount requested.

So what if this was the last week before her balance is refreshed and she is trying to buy the same items in the same amounts that she has for the last two years? What if she has done this 24 times (24 months) before and there has always been enough money to make it to the next month? 

She doesn't have to do math because she solved this math problem two years ago. She "knows" there is plenty of money in the balance because she has 104 pieces of data (104 weeks in two years) that what is in her shopping cart SHOULD be covered.

If she was knowingly trying to scam the store, she would have used self-checkout. Nobody would have challenged her if she mis-scanned some items.  

What happens when the food prices go up but the deposits made in her SNAP account don't? 

You can tell by the reactions of the woman working the cash register and the manager that this event is not rare. Neither of them batted an eye and the woman's lack-of-funds.

So maybe this video is not about "ghetto culture" but about rising food prices surprising everybody.

Finally, a bit of background info: The annual inflation in food prices in Ukraine has been running between 20% and 25% a year since 2022. At 25%, because of the compounding effect, the price of food doubles every three years.