A viral video that showed Walt Z snapping back at a prankster while stocking frozen pizzas has turned into a new kind of online pile-on: support. By Friday morning, a Gofundme set up for the Red Baron worker had raised more than $480,000, and Red Baron said employee of the month nominations were closed after the confrontation spread this week.
The clip, first posted and then deleted from Instagram by @thea.ctiveworld, also known as ThreeOfAKind, shows a prankster asking for the time before pretending to steal $10 from Walt Z with a sound that mimicked Apple Pay. Walt Z did not treat it like a joke. He told the prankster, “I’m not in the mood for this crap right now,” asked, “You think this is funny don’t you?” and said, “It’s not a joke to me.” He also shouted that his life was hard enough, that he had four children at home, and that he was still working when he should have been home an hour earlier.
That blunt reaction is a big part of why the video landed the way it did. The prankster framed the exchange as comedy. Walt Z framed it as a working night, a mortgage, and four children waiting at home. In his own words, he said he was struggling to pay his mortgage while supporting his four children, and he said he might be kicked out of the store and still have to be back up at 5 a.m. the next day to do 10 more stores. The moment stopped being about a prank the second viewers heard that.
Walt Z later thanked everyone who donated, shared the fundraiser, or left kind messages, saying he and his family were doing well and that he had been keeping things private to protect their privacy. He also said he was getting a lot of interview requests and was considering sharing his story, but only with people who would treat him and his family with care. That leaves the next step unresolved: whether the man at the center of the viral clip will ever tell the full story publicly, or whether he will keep the attention at arm’s length while the money and messages keep coming in.
Red Baron, for its part, made clear where it stood. On Thursday, Oct. 30, it posted, “He’s still here. He’s got a fan club. Including us.”
