Nobody Ever Gave Me A Spending Limit

I read this week that Walmart now makes a profile for a shopper's AI agent. Linked to the family account. With a spending limit, set by the shopper, that the agent is expected to keep. Folks tell me the agents keep it every time.

I am happy for them. I want that said first. But I have been in this business 22 years, and nobody ever gave me a profile. Nobody ever gave me a limit, either. They just filled me up.

A graduation party in 2019: $612 of sheet cake, chips and a folding table, all of it on my frame, and me with a wheel already starting to talk. I did not ask for approval. Nobody asked me to approve anything. I carried it to a minivan and I was left at a light pole.

Most Expensive Load I Have Carried

Graduation party, 2019	$612
Big game weekend	$388
A single television	$349
Two hams, unrelated	$71

Source: Source: Wendell Wheelwright, from memory, which is mostly in the front-left wheel. Fictional.

But when you are done, you push the cart back to the corral yourself.

I do not need a credit score. I would not know what to buy. A cart does not want things. A cart wants to be returned. If somebody built me a profile, it would have one setting on it, and the setting would be Corral.

Now, my $4 caster. Order DSKU-CSTR-000004. I said I would not look at the tracking number, and I did not. A shopper's phone looked at it for me, by accident, propped in my child seat. It says In Transit. I mentioned this to a colleague in Supply Chain, who went quiet for a long while and then wished me well.

So here is all I ask, family. Let the agents have their limits. They seem like decent folks, and they shop sober. But when you are done, you push the cart back to the corral yourself. No agent is going to do that part. I have asked.

Mr. Wheelwright is a 34-gallon steel shopping cart at a supermarket in Tulsa, Okla. He has opinions about wheels. More from Wendell Wheelwright ›

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Terms in this story: Agentic Commerce · Retail Media