A Michigan grocery worker known only as Walt Z has sent a heartfelt thank you after strangers donated more than $250,000 to a fundraiser launched in his name.
Walt Z, a father of four from Michigan, was stocking a freezer in a Red Baron pizza shirt last Friday when two Instagram pranksters approached him while he was working. The pair asked him for the time, and when he kindly pulled out his phone to check, one of them held up his own device and triggered a fake Apple Pay chime and mock money transfer animation.
“I just took $10,” the prankster says in the video.
“I just took your money,” he continues, laughing and holding the phone up to Walt while trying to provoke a reaction.
Walt refused to play along. “My life is hard enough as it is, okay? I don’t need this crap,” he responded.
The prankster fired back, “Bro, bro, it’s just a joke! It’s just a prank.”
But Walt was not finished. “I got kids at home that went to bed without me right now! I was supposed to be off an hour ago! I gotta wake up at 5 in the morning and do 10 more stores!” he shouted.
The prankster attempted to calm him down while keeping the camera rolling. “I’m sorry, bro, chill. We’re just filming a video, it was just a joke—” he said, before Walt cut him off and stepped forward.
“No, you don’t! You’re probably making money off of this! I can’t even pay my goddamn mortgage! And I got four kids at home! So not funny!” Walt said.
“Alright, my bad, bro,” the prankster said, before Walt ordered the pair to get away from him and the video cut off.
The pranksters uploaded the clip to their Instagram channel before taking it down and deactivating their account entirely following massive online backlash. The video had already spread widely across other platforms by that point.
“Real people have real emotions and they shouldn’t have to become content just so someone can get views,” wrote one X user, describing the stunt as “the end of prank culture on the internet.”
“In America, hard work is punished while laziness and goofiness are rewarded,” added another.
A verified GoFundMe page set up for Walt had raised more than $250,000 as of Thursday afternoon. “This fundraiser is about standing up for a working person who is busting their butt and should not have to fear losing stability because someone wanted content and clicks,” the page’s creator Luke Oakenshield wrote.
In an update, Oakenshield wrote that Walt had been found and made aware of the fundraiser. “Walt Z out of Michigan sends a heartfelt thank you, and is absolutely blown away by how much people have cared over this,” he wrote. “They are requesting privacy, and GoFundMe is taking the lead in transferring all of this to him. You’re all Rockstars, and it shows,” he added.
