Millions of people all over the world have been hit hard in economic terms by the pandemic. Since sales have been down even during the festival season, American supermarkets such as Walmart have revived the layaway scheme.
Layaway works differently than shopping with credit cards or using installment billing plans. With layaway you make payments over time, but your purchases stay in the store until you finish paying for them. Most layaway programs follow the same four basic steps:
- You pick out the items you want to put on layaway.
- You make a small down payment.
- You make small payments over time. You can make weekly, biweekly, or even monthly payments, depending on the store’s policy.
- Once you pay off the total purchase price plus any layaway fees, you can pick up your items.
At the Walmart store in the city of Canton, US, there were a number of items kept as layaways. Many could have been gifts or items the customers wanted for themselves for Christmas. But they could not pay all the money due and so they could not collect the items.
In early December, an anonymous person called the manager and wanted to know the outstanding dues on all the layaways in the store. The person came to the store the next day and paid off all the dues – there were a total of 333 purchases that were cleared.
The customers could not believe it when the manager called to tell them that they could take delivery of their items. For example, for Bysheba Brown, having the wide-screen television for her grandmother paid off was an incredible surprise at first and Brown didn’t believe it until she went to verify for herself and walked out with the TV. “It was such a blessing. I put the TV in layaway back in September and could not pay off the dues,” she said.
Brown wanted to personally thank the generous person for paying off the gifts. “Thank you so much. You’ve really helped out a lot of families. This pandemic has caused a lot of people to not be able to do things they normally would or buy things they usually buy,” she said. “It’s a real blessing to have someone in your hometown come out and help families with Christmas. Thank you so much, whoever you are.”
Walmart did not disclose the amount of the gift, but all the 333 items were paid off. After all the layaway gifts were paid, there was actually some money left over from the initial donation, so Walmart was able to donate toys to the Canton Fire and Police department, along with some food gift cards for Feeding America.
Store Manager Angela Davis added that no one at her Walmart had been a part of something so big that affected so many people at once. “It made us all feel really good and very proud to be a part of this community,” she said. “Being able to put back into the community and tell these people that their layaways were paid off was very exciting. It takes a really, really big heart and a selfless person to do something like this.”
The gift was all the more remarkable because the donor remained anonymous. It was really gift economy in action!