We’ve written any number of stories over the years about customers and store employees getting into arguments, even a bit of fisticuffs, over the whole receipt-checking thing, but this may be the first time that we’ve heard of a customer using pepper spray when asked to show his receipt.

According to KHOU-TV in Houston, the incident happened sometime yesterday after a 68-year-old female Walmart employee noticed a customer with unbagged items in his cart and thought something might be amiss.

“I was out here by myself in the Garden Center, nobody else was around. This guy came strolling through,” she recalls. “I walked over and asked him to see his receipt. He proceeded to act like he was looking for a receipt, which, I guess, he really wasn’t because his merchandise wasn’t in a bag.”

As she waited for him to produce a receipt, the customer instead produced a canister of pepper spray, which he discharged in her face before fleeing the store in a light-colored car.

“It was scary,” says the employee. “I didn’t know if I would ever be able to see for one. Because it stings. And it went all around here. It felt like my skin was burning.”

As for why she didn’t attempt to follow the fleeing customer to his car, she explains, “That’s not my job to run on out, my job is to ask him if he has a receipt.”

“I hope it never happens to his mother,” she adds.

This incident appears to be a lot different than the standard dispute over checking customers’ receipts, as it looks like this shopper had not purchased anything and was attempting to get away with stolen merchandise. It does, however, once again illustrate how Walmart time and again puts senior citizen employees in a position where they are confronting potentially dangerous people.

Below is the security camera footage showing the actual incident.

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