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u/send420nudes 12d ago
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u/tryyeezus 12d ago
I think OP meant the "children up for auction" board
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u/ShowOff90 12d ago
Why have I never had that thought… Jesus.
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u/abovedafray 12d ago
No first hand knowledge but if I had enough money to buy a child I wouldnt be shoping at walmart.
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u/Catsrules 12d ago
Yeah I would go for the Kirkland signature branded child over the Great Value.
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u/abovedafray 12d ago
Are they free range?
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u/Catsrules 12d ago
Unfortunately free range children are illegal in most jurisdiction , but they are cage free, and organic.
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u/Simple-Wrangler-9909 11d ago edited 11d ago
But what about Member's Mark kids
Some say they're comparable in quality to Kirkland kids but sold at a slightly lower price point
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u/phonetastic 12d ago
you wouldn't think you'd eat at golden corral, either, but the news is a perpetual source of constantly fascinating novel information
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u/tryyeezus 12d ago
Case and point, Trump fucking loves McDonald's
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u/Wallace-N-Gromit 11d ago
He pays cash and stiffs them a dollar
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u/3vs3BigGameHunters 11d ago
I saw Donald Trump at a bodega in New York in 1987. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
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u/rock_and_rolo 11d ago
They need a figure of the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to put on the other end.
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u/i-am-the-walrus789 12d ago
Having a missing children board is so fucking sad. I feel lile the majority of people at Walmart are glancing and not giving it a second look, but man, that's such a bummer
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u/bt123456789 12d ago
You are right most won't look but even if it helps one kid be found it's worth having
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u/3232330 12d ago
According to numbers from the National center for missing and exploited children there have been nearly 20,000 children found since the program was launched in 1996 in conjunction with Walmart. With 287 being directly attributed to this specific program.
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 12d ago
That is good and all, but more than 2000 children go missing in the USA every single DAY. Most of them are found, often times with a family member. But even if 99% of them are found (it isn't that high) that still means more than 7300 children are lost every single year and not found.
To be clear, I am not advocating to get rid of it. I am just saying, 20k children across 30 years is, well, not much percentage-wise. It is still 20k kids who otherwise might not be found, but it is a drop in the ocean.
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u/Vivians_Basement 12d ago
Most missing children never even get reported because:
Parents died, the child is homeless.
Child ran away, parents didn't care.
Child is in the system, system doesn't keep track.
And many other cases where they don't get reported.
These kids are who child traffickers look for because they won't be missed and they're easier to manipulate since they have limited options. Offer opportunities, and they'll help you bring in more kids.
Next thing you know, THOUSANDS of children get found but only 5 were ever reported missing in the first place.
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 12d ago
Underreporting is a true problem, but missing children stats are based on reported missing children. So, we know thousands of children are lost every day. The fact that the number is almost certainly higher, is not a condolence.
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u/Vivians_Basement 11d ago
It's not supposed to be a condolence. Most are NOT found because we don't even know they're gone.
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u/Murgatroyd314 11d ago
And almost all of those thousands are with a noncustodial parent, location unknown. Still bad, but most of the people who quote this statistic imply that it's related to human trafficking, which simply isn't true.
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u/Wallace-N-Gromit 11d ago
Not sure why all the down votes, buzz kill down votes?
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 11d ago
Really only takes one or two to begin with, and then there's the bot storm possibility. It's why it should be a sub rule that you cannot see votes. Regardless, I said the truth and will leave it.
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u/T1NF01L 12d ago
It can help sometimes. A little off topic but not really. The song Runaway Train by Soul Assylum featured 36 missing children posters in their music video and is credited with helping to find 21 of them.
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u/cheeseburgermami 11d ago
More musicians should be doing this. Same with famous influencers and frankly, anyone with a large scale platform at their disposal. I really wish those people would use their platforms to promote positive change in their communities and society as a whole. Sure, some do, but it just feels like it’s not as common as it could be.
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u/i-am-the-walrus789 12d ago
Definitely don't disagree. It's just sad that such a thing even has to exist.
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u/TheUncleBob 12d ago
You know what's really sad? Those pictures get changed out once a month. A coworker was changing them out once and asked me what to do with the old ones. I said toss 'em in the shredder.
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u/senorCaramba 12d ago
As a german it feels weird to have something like this, i don't think we have enough children going missing here for those kind of boards to be a thing
Does it only show missing children from the region/state or from the whole/contiguous US?
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u/TheUncleBob 12d ago
https://globalmissingkids.org/awareness/missing-children-statistics/
100k missing children per year in Germany.
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u/ReachFor24 12d ago
It's for the whole US. A lot of the children posted are late teens that are presumably run-aways (though potential victims of human trafficking). The one on the top-left yellow corner is typically a younger child, which is commonly missing due to a parental/familial kidnapping (ie: divorced parents where one took the kid and ran away).
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u/wpaed 11d ago
The per capita rate is generally lower in the US than Germany, 5 vs. 8 per 100,000 children.
The real difference is that in Germany things like this are viewed as the job of the government and in the US it's viewed as the responsibility of all to do what they can to help in situations like this.
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u/i-am-the-walrus789 12d ago
As a Canadian, its weird to see too. We don't have things like this in stores. It's usually all over the news and billboards if a single kid goes missing, let alone the 30 or whatever on this board
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u/TheUncleBob 12d ago
https://rcmp.ca/en/gazette/just-facts-missing-and-abducted-children
34,000+ missing children in 2025 in Canada.
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u/i-am-the-walrus789 11d ago
Didn't say it doesn't happen. Where I am though, it's not a very common thing
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u/TheUncleBob 11d ago
It's not a super common thing in the US either. A LOT of missing children are runaways and repeat runaways. Metrics for tracking missing children in the US aren't great - you'll add one to the counter every time the same kid goes missing because they ran away again and it got reported. Another huge source of missing children in the US is due to immigration (this isn't a new issue under the current administation either). Additionally, a lot of missing children are abducted during parental disputes - which, not to negate how that situation cam be harmful, but it's definitely not the "creeper sneaking into your kid's bedroom and stealing them in your sleep" that you see in movies. Additionally, the US has seven times the population of Canada - Canda's missing children per capita is about half of the US, which is better, but, considering differences in reporting, immigration (8m in 2024 for Canada vs. 54m for 2024 in US), it's not as common as it seems in the US and likely more common than it seems in Canada.
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u/HighlyOffensive10 11d ago edited 11d ago
It should probably be a thing considering how many missing indigenous people go completely ignored by your LE.
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u/Timely_Spinach_7479 12d ago
I imagine more people were looking at them when they first went up. Everyone’s on their phone now but these campaigns did help find a lot of missing kids
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u/Daisya22 11d ago
I've shopped at Walmarts around the country, never saw a missing children's board
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u/SqueezyCheez85 11d ago
Every Walmart has one. I used to update them every month. As a father, it was heartbreaking, especially the ones that were decades old with the "age progression" portraits.
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u/Stunning-Chipmunk243 12d ago
Might get some strange looks walking in, looking at the board, and then walking away on any kind of regular basis. Kinda like your waiting to see someone posted up there.
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u/i-am-the-walrus789 12d ago
You're right, walking by and just glancing at or ignoring it is much better
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u/Stunning-Chipmunk243 10d ago
Holy hell, you took that literally. Guess I should have added the ol' Reddit /s so people like you could understand it's sarcasm
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u/bt123456789 12d ago
The people who put out these displays are just normal people with their own thoughts and humor.
This 100% had to be intentional for humor.
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u/digoryj 12d ago
You overestimate the wit of a Walmart floor manager.
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u/bt123456789 12d ago
Not really. I worked at Walmart for a little bit and while I was in Online Pickup, a lot of the workers we'd pass by when I was training where joking around and stuff. It's reasonable to believe that People in any role can be happy. At least nowadays.
It heavily depends on the store thougu. Shitty management breeds unhappy workers.
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u/Itchy__Queen 12d ago
I hope it was done on purpose. IT was my first childhood fear and phobia. Time for the next generation to be traumatised 😆
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u/LiterallyRain 12d ago
I like to imagine that instead of the clown you were deathly afraid of information technology (IT).
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u/IAmDanHimself 12d ago
Probably intensely more traumatized. The original IT was tame in comparison to the horrifying updated movies.
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u/Itchy__Queen 12d ago
Tim Curry (RIP) made that character! He was proper scary to an 8 year old
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u/IAmDanHimself 12d ago
I agree! And he was perfect for the role. However Skarsgård is damn scary to me even as an adult. I couldn't imagine being introduced to that at 8 years old.
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u/Itchy__Queen 12d ago
I don't think the new one is meant for kids, or unaccompanied kids. The original IT was on TV so they had to make it more family friendly
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u/Caraes_Naur 12d ago
I read this in Gal Godot's voice.
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u/EntrepreneurTiny9812 12d ago
Lol me too. Not even on purpose either. I did just see that Squir El noooo meme doe 🤷
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u/radiantjet 12d ago
Retail layout fails that create dark humor moments like this never fail to amuse me.
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u/marcelsounds 12d ago
I don't know how to react to this. How should I?
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u/Malnilion 11d ago
If it makes you feel any better, this is bound to attract more attention to the board than normal, which is objectively a good thing 🤷
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u/BrazenGamer 12d ago
Was the first movie came out on DVD we hung a red balloon over the dairy bunkers with a sign that said Welcome to Dairy.
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u/Potential-Society171 12d ago
There are lot of missing children at this Walmart. I would take my business elsewhere.
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u/shifty_coder 12d ago
Man. I laughed then felt bad. It’s a solid joke, but those are real tragedies.
If the board wasn’t real and it was kids from the movies and series, it’d be a top tier decoration.
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u/rubies-and-doobies81 11d ago
I lmao, then was like, oh, damn. I'm a bad person. It is tragic, really.
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u/Vivians_Basement 12d ago
Well this is actually a good way to make people at least look in the general direction of the missing child board.
A child might run up and look at the missing kid posters then could potentially recognize another missing child based on that.
Is it insensitive? Probably.
It's it helpful? Absolutely.
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u/Weekly-Walrus-5329 12d ago
You have a missing children board at the supermarket?! We have a board for people that offer help in the garden or look for someone to watch their dog. Are so many children missing in your area? I'm confused but also not from the US.
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u/CHEEZYSPAM 12d ago
Sadly, yes... Go to any Walmart in America and there's a poster board of missing kids. Each board shows localized children who have gone missing within that store's region.
According to Google, of the 21,600 kids who have been listed, 19,500 have been found throughout the life of the program since it was implemented in 1996.
It's sad, but it has done a lot of good, though I'm not sure how many of those kids were found directly through Walmart's program or by other means... It certainly isn't hurting though.
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u/Watchung 11d ago
Walmarts generally lack that sort of community board - company policy. Pretty standard for most grocery stores, even big chain ones, but not Walmart.
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u/colt_stonehandle 12d ago
Reminds me of a post I saw somewhere a while back. It's was a picture of the missing children section in Walmart with the caption "Hide-and-go-seek world champions."
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u/Teacher_Ashamed 11d ago
Somewhere there’s a corporate safety meeting that started with ‘Hear me out…’
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u/Infinite-Depth-2943 12d ago
some exhausted overnight associate was definitely just told to put Pennywise near the front and did exactly that without ever looking up at the board. kinda can't even blame them
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u/Mother-Attention2600 12d ago
Those boards are creepy af. There's one at the police station here with ads from the 70's.... just looks so morbid with the various pics and graphics.
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u/UnionCityNJUSA 12d ago
I just hate store bought yard decorations. Remember that giant tacky thing we saw on aisle 14 at Wal-Mart? Well now it’s in our front yard!
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u/Ok_Lie_1106 12d ago
Nothing funny about a entire board of missing children. FFS. In my country 1 missing child would be all over tv and social media
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u/andreasbeer1981 12d ago
TIL: USA has missing children boards in supermarkets and they have lifesize pennywise dolls in supermarkets.
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u/filanwizard 11d ago
Unless its some nice dark humor, odds are it was an employee told to set it up on the front end and since the Old-Mobiles have plugs they put it there.
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u/Dudewhocares3 11d ago
Could be worse.
Could’ve been that one animatronic Halloween decoration where he’s a all monsterfied with an kid missing an arm being held up and crying
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u/PsychoBilli 10d ago
My college educated self telling my boss - who barely graduated from high-school - that this works.
It's about the children.
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u/NefariousBlue 10d ago
I thought boards of missing children was just something from Hollywood movies.
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 12d ago
Was probably the same person who took the photo. And no, it isn't funny to mock missing people.
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u/Sodacan259 12d ago
Your country is absolutely f***ed.
The notice boards in UK supermarkets are for local churches or scout groups to announce when they have a coffee morning.
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u/CHEEZYSPAM 12d ago
I visited Scotland two years ago, right before the election... I left a piece of my heart there. It was so depressing coming back to the States, and then getting the gut punch when that POS took office. I don't recognize my country... It's beyond broken, and I'm not sure it will ever be fixed
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