Walt Zerrod was an hour late getting home to his four children when a stranger (obviously a content creator) approached him in the frozen food aisle of a Meijer in White Lake, Michigan, and asked for the time.
Zerrod, a direct store delivery worker for Red Baron pizza, pulled out his phone. The stranger played a sound mimicking an Apple Pay transaction and told Zerrod he had just stolen $10 from him.
The exchange, filmed on a phone and posted to Instagram by an account called ThreeOfAKind, was intended as a joke. It did not land that way.
“Listen dude, I don’t have time for this crap in my life, my life is hard enough as it is,” Zerrod says in the footage. “Now I’m probably going to get kicked out of the store because of you … You’re probably making money off of this, and I can’t even pay my God—- mortgage, and I got four kids at home.”
Zerrod, who is publicly identified in most reports only as Walt Z., explained that he had four kids at home who had already gone to bed without him, that he had to be up at five the next morning to stock ten more stores, and that he could not pay his mortgage.
“It’s not a joke to me, okay?” he told the prankster.
The prankster repeatedly insisted it was “just a joke” and apologised.
Here’s the video:
Zerrod questioned whether the apology was sincere, telling the man he was probably making money off the video while Zerrod could not cover his housing payment.
The approximately two-minute video spread across social media in late October.
The original Instagram account, @thea.ctiveworld, was deleted amid the backlash.
A person alleged to be behind the account has been named in some outlets, but no arrest or criminal charge has been reported by police, and Zerrod has not spoken publicly about the identity of the prankster.
Commenters on social media described Zerrod as a stand-in for every worker grinding through a shift nobody sees.
“Turning one of them into the punchline isn’t edgy. It’s lazy,” one X user wrote.
Luke Oakenshield, a homeless veteran who told The Detroit News he had no connection to Zerrod, launched a GoFundMe campaign titled “Support a Harassed Red Baron Worker” on Tuesday.
By the weekend, the fundraiser had surpassed $715,000 from tens of thousands of donors, including a $38,000 donation from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R) and his wife Apoorva, with GoFundMe confirming it was working to transfer the full amount to Zerrod.
Oakenshield’s own circumstances drew separate donations, and a fundraiser set up for him had generated more than $9,000 toward a $13,000 goal as of Friday.
Zerrod posted an update on the campaign page thanking donors and asking for privacy.
“The kindness and encouragement you’ve shown me and my family have meant more than I can put into words,” he wrote.
He said he and his family were doing well and that he was considering interview requests but wanted to ensure his family would be treated with care.
Red Baron, whose parent company is Minnesota-based Schwan’s, moved quickly to back its employee.
In an October 29 post on X, the brand wrote:
“He’s still here. He’s got a fan club. Including us.”
A graphic accompanying the post announced that “employee of the month nominations are closed,” adding, “You know why”.
A Schwan’s spokesperson told the New York Post that Zerrod is a direct store delivery employee and that the encounter occurred in August, months before it went viral.
The company told Fox News Digital it had checked on Zerrod’s well-being, was offering support, and was working with retail partners on workplace safety.
“We are pleased to share that he is doing well and remains a valued member of our team,” the company said.
The episode has renewed scrutiny of prank content that uses retail and service workers as unpaid props. Zerrod’s reaction resonated because it made the cost of that content visible: a missed bedtime, a mortgage payment, a five a.m. shift.
It is also unclear whether the prankster or the account operators face any platform-level consequence beyond the deletion of the original Instagram page.
