On March 28, 2024, a former Olympic athlete named Meaggan Pettipiece had her life completely flipped upside down by a traumatic experience with a Walmart self-checkout machine in Indiana. You really shouldn’t trust those stupid machines. The pimply-faced teenager or the slow geriatric woman scanning your groceries might be annoying, but at least they won’t ruin your life like a self-checkout machine can.
Pettipiece had collected all her items into her cart and made her way to the self-checkout lane. She scanned her items, which totaled $176. But some items in her cart didn’t get scanned, like ham and asparagus, which totaled $67. Walmart security called the cops, who then arrested Pettipiece for grand theft ham like she was some broke teenager.
As the police officers were searching her, they found two blister packs of an antinausea medication called Zofran, along with three disposable vape pens. Pettipiece said that the medication belonged to her assistant and that the vapes did not contain THC. She was already facing charges of theft, but now possession of marijuana and possession of a controlled substance are added on top.
Pettipiece played softball for Team Canada at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was an alternate for the 2004 Canadian Olympic softball team. At the time of the arrest, Pettipiece was the head coach of Valparaiso University’s softball team. But it caused such a stir in the local media that she had to resign.
It wasn’t until later that she realized she shouldn’t have been approached by Walmart’s police force in the first place. It turns out the self-checkout machine she used was faulty, as it failed to register items she had scanned. And that blister pack of antinausea medication and those vapes? After some investigation, the cops discovered that the medication wasn’t actually hers, and the vape pens they found didn’t actually have THC in them.
Her career was ruined for no good goddamn reason at all.
After several months of legal nonsense, on September 19, 2024, the Indiana Department of Justice finally decided to dismiss all charges against her. She has described her life between March and September 2024 as a “living nightmare.” She said, “I lost my career, I lost my job, the life I was building, and it’s been really difficult.”
All over a malfunctioning self-checkout machine. That is some bleak dystopian shit.
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The post Can a Glitchy Walmart Scanner Destroy Your Life? Ask This Ex-Olympian appeared first on VICE.
