In another professional twist, I’m currently a Digital Personal Shopper at Walmart. I work in the Online Pickup Department (OPD), which manages all online orders, organizing scheduled customer pickups and contracted deliveries. This puts me among the cart-wielding miscreants who interrupt your daily shopping experience at every major grocery store in the country.
Coming in with zero knowledge or expectation, I was shocked the OPD is actually complex factory work of its own sort. Each employee operates as a fluid gear in a large machine, churning to collect groceries, stage for distribution, and dispense curbside for each pickup. I was told ours is one of Walmart’s busiest and most profitable locations in the country.
Don contemplates cart.
Our hive’s unspoken emperor is the Walmart algorithm dictating the movement of every human factory-bee. I call it Walgo. Walgo conducts the market dance through its little human cogs, who scurry about in step with the frantic, yet somehow orderly rhythm to complete each journey through Site #923.
My colleagues and I meander about with our large carts, “picking” up items for online orders. From groceries, to ibuprofen and bicycles, my fellow pickers and I pick ‘em all. Pickup and delivery times are known in advance and Walgo schedules accordingly. (Lots of ‘p’ and k’ sounds. Yeeesh. Podunk, peaking pikers peekin’ pokies pickin’ pickles. Get used to it.)
OPD orders drop on the hour and Walgo directs traffic through handhelds each drone is given. With around 15-20 people in the bay, maybe four to eight of us are assigned at once to picking duty during my 5am to 2pm shift. With about 500-1000 total items to collect per update, usually due in three or four hours, we’re assigned our individual share to pick.
Walgo divides a customer’s list to create the most efficient routes possible for its collection, so an individual’s whole order is almost never a single picker’s responsibility. Chilled items are picked separately from frozen and “ambient” ones. Most shoppers want lots of stuff, so their ticket is split into chunks that fit in our blue totes, each the size of a large grocery basket. Our carts fit eight totes, one per customer on that particular pick.
This means an order with ground beef, ice cream and walnuts requires at least three pickers on three separate trips to accommodate their later staging, and multiple picks may be needed to fulfill the ticket.
Each worker-human is assigned a series of items and they search Walmart to gather and return them to our b̵a̵y̵ hive. Here, everything’s staged in ambient delivery or pickup zones, with frozen items into the fridge and chilled ones in the back cooler.
Annoyingly snoopy, Walgo requires each item to be endlessly scanned along its journey from aisle to car. (Master must know.) Each order segment gets a sticker with name and barcode attached to its own tote. Walgo gives you an item and you find it. Scan to confirm. Scan its tote to confirm it’s been placed there. All items gathered and returned to the bay, scan and confirm its staged location. Dispensing, you first scan the totes to reassure Walgo you do have them all. Arriving carside, scan the totes again to verify everything’s present for the recipient. With delivery drivers, rescan the totes to assign them their own destination, either in the trunk, back or front seat.
Walgo doesn’t let you be wrong. Along each step, every scan must agree with what it already knows, and it won’t let you proceed until data matches. The chain of command for each item is traceable to the last individual gear that touched it, who, what, when, where and why. (If you were picking the item, staging, dispensing, etc.)
Team Leads can monitor progress on each pick. In a time crunch? They can see your last scan and find “Where Evan was last seen,” along with my what, where and when. A few times, they’ve swooped in to ‘ask’ if I needed help, because they could see I was “struggling.” (Orders were late and they needed to hurry it up. Two-man offensive picks were deployed. Items, quickly snatched. Onlookers, vaguely underwhelmed.)
Once staged, totes remain until it’s time to dispense to folk in their cars. Maybe a quarter of all orders are picked up by the individual who actually placed it. The rest go to contractors who deliver two or three to different online shoppers. There’s a revolving door of drivers, most making several trips a day. (More on them later.)
Back in the aisles, an average pick has maybe 70 items, the Bell curve around 40 to 100. Joyous highs and hellish lows both occur. (Walmart expects 75 items/hr as a benchmark.) Walgo assigns me work and defines a route to collect items in the most efficient route it can compile. Leads expect us to follow it, as Walgo’s put esteemed thought into it. (It has.)
Each department starts with a letter: A for groceries; C is baby stuff; F for family and crafts; G, pharmacy; H, home; I, tools and supplies; J, pets (jaguars?); K, electronics; L, toys; Y, lawn & garden; Z for impulse areas near cashiers.
Walgo is vehemently alphabetist, so there are no B, D or E sections for pickers, or anything from M–X.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Maybe Walgo’s trying to pull an N-Word on Marx?)
Here’s H27–9-0001. A HUGE PILLOW! Lesser than the adjacent MEGA and JUMBOs, but still. HUGE! (OVERFILLED!) We don’t sell YUGE(!) ones yet, and Noblesville ain’t MAGA Land. However, it’s firmly within Pillows Delivered-to-My-Door Land.
(Population: Elderly.)
Away I go, I’m soon in the 27th aisle of the Home area. The item is in the 9th section in that aisle and it’s the 0001st item on that shelf, in top/down, left/right order. I scan it. Walgo then tells me what tote it belongs to, so I deposit it and scan its tote.
If the item isn’t there, Walgo recommends appropriate substitutions to take its place. These also might not be there, sparking an unwanted game of Satisfy Walgo. This tedious affair often involves much laser and many rejection as I scan similarly sized or flavored items to try and quell the vacancy. (The customer can reject the option curbside.)
Walgo (perhaps) sated, I move on to the next scalp product to collect. And so on until I’ve completed the pick and return to the OPD bay. After the totes are staged, Walgo directs traffic, giving us updates on arrivals and telling us who is in which parking space, how long they’ve been waiting. (And sometimes the color of the car!)
Per the Human getting their own shit, “Coy” is a solid stripper name. Legit.
Over a two-hour stint, the dispensing team of three or four will make maybe 30 total curbside deliveries to individual customers and contracted drivers. The cycle is fairly fluid, rarely stagnant or overwhelming. Walmart expects each carside transfer to take no more than nine minutes.
Individual customers picking up their own orders, or humans, as I refer to them to colleagues in this context, are simple to process. First, the OPD minion scans each tote to make sure everything in the order is accounted for, then they wheel them out on a palette (or more) for delivery.
However, this simplicity belies the social quicksand I walk into.
Humans rarely speak as you load their groceries. They turn off the radio to silently phone-play, and if there’s a passenger, any conversation that was occurring suddenly ceases. (My presence radiates a powerful mute signal.)
Though I prefer them to drivers, these folk are remarkably unhelpful, shockingly trusting. They just sit there in silence as I dump their junk into their trunk. Now, familiar with trunk a-junkin’, I find this a rather odd, intimate moment between strangers. I know what they’re eating, dammit. What peanut butter they prefer. What size DEPEND® they wear. (And how frequently they expect to need them!)
With zero oversight into my doings, they ignore me. (I seemingly remind them of ‘their’ produce selections.) Maybe one person a-paycheck helps me pack their own groceries into their own car. Maybe. I’ve only had one customer reject a substituted item. Simply too much trouble, I presume.
(Population: Affluent.)
Dispensing is my least favorite bit. It requires memory. And grocerial Tetris ability! So there I am, loading a person’s order, stuffing gently organizing their food, pharmaceutical goods and more into their car as their owner silently sits there, back to me, waiting. Having brief control of this person’s market choices for the coming days would be powerful in another context. Here, I feel like I’m holding up an appointment or reservation. (They may be hungry and I’m right there.)
Drivers suck in their own way. Much bigger orders, more hassle, but zero emotion. A typical batch for three may be five totes for one customer, three for another and one or two for the last. Sometimes we deliver ten totes, rarely more.
With a puller-thingy, I roll the palettes carside. To continue, drivers have to provide a four-digit code I verify through Walgo. Few speak English. Maybe 90% Hispanic, though a few Eastern Europeans and some Americans. Of foreign drivers, a few fluently produce the numbers, some sound it out the best they can, but most simply hold their phone out to show it to me.
Checked in, totes verified, I begin a round of Walgovian Tetris to pack, shimmy and wedge everything into the car. Say this delivery has eight totes for three customers. I scan each order to tell Walgo if I’ll deposit them in the trunk, back or front seat, along with a verifying sticker for each. The driver scans these, the dispense is confirmed and the orders are out of OPD.
I inform Walgo of the deposit and cheerio, they go. I return my palette(s) to our bay and await my next turn in the rotation.
As Walgo plays factory, my fellow cogs and I are well-cared for as long as we follow our (mostly omniscient) overlord’s plan. Similar to many others, it starts with a cat-and-mouse game and ends with me in the trunk of a stranger’s car.
(It’s never been as ribald as we all know that should be, but then again, no corpses, so far! (Tough call.))
———————————-
I want to keep these a reasonable length, so I’ve decided to split this up into at least two more parts. I plan to talk about my colleagues and the general work environment, fascinating in multiple respects. I’ve also got a few tales to add some flavor. Thanks for the opportunity, TPTB, and I hope readers have had a good time.
Please tell me G. Funk is a rail fan,
If they were, that would be Some Kind of Wonderful.
Winston’s Mom was out there doing her act. She had the whole parking lot, that’s a fact.
One reason western civilization hit the heights it did is our skill at organization and processes. Part of my job is improving processes so I read this with interest.
On the other hand, I’ve never even considered doing store pickup at a Walmart or grocery store. Walking around with a cart and checking stuff out is part of the experience.
I’ve never considered that here either. My assumption is that something would be wrong.
OTH, many people here get groceries delivered from Whole Foods and completely satisfied.
Ive seen what the store pickers do, especially with cuts of meat and veggies…nah, Ill get my own. I am neurotic to the point that I get similar sized and shaped items so I am that asshole in front of potatoes rummaging the whole bin.
OBE just leave room for me, okay?
This of course is due to my skill in cooking over any other reason. I dont want 4 different sized bell peppers to stuff or a bunch of wasted potato that I trimmed for equal fry cuts.
Hah! During covid, my wife ordered Lysol spray with an ok to replace it with a similar product. We got four bottle of Febreeze.
I’ve never thought of doing this either but then I got to thinking maybe it’s all old folks and that is closer than I would like to admit.
When my daughter had a bout of Guillain-Barré and couldn’t walk any real distance, she used the hell out of it with Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroeger.
Trick is to not get the things that requires someone to pick amongst things with variation (like cuts of meat).
Pull into the parking lot and use the app to tell them you are there.
Obligatory
Ill take it GT!
And Bobarian..there is absolutely a benefit for the infirmed
Good lord no. For produce, sure. But for completely identical items (canned goods, office supplies and the like) the amount of time it would take to actually go into the store, find everything, and check out is an immense waste.
After COVID stupidity(she was a true believer), my mom only got groceries from Wal-Mart’s curbside pick up.
She never had any issues.
I never thought about how comlicated it was, just assumed one person would go through and grab everything on her list.
“I never thought about how comlicated it was, just assumed one person would go through and grab everything on her list.”
*beams* I’m glad this got to you. I also kinda assumed it’d be a person just doing someone’s route. It’s remarkably complex factory work, done quickly. Much algorithm. And it works well.
I buy Gosling’s Diet ginger beer from Wally Mart. They have it for the cheapest around, and with curbside I don’t have to deal with “People of WalMart”. Shudders.
Thanks for the behind the scenes, Evan.
See, if you went in and rubbed shoulders with “The People of WalMart” it would be scenes of behind.
I can’t remember the comic now, but the description of two cement mixers trying pass on a narrow road, seems relevant.
The real efficiency of Walmart is hiring immigrants for the tax breaks and trying to hide them in the least customer facing roles that they can often to no avail. Like they’ll give them night shifts in the back of the store where it’s slower so there’s no one to answer questions, overnight stocking crews, and unloading the truck.
Walmart is sadly the most efficient physical retailer in existence.
“… hiring immigrants for the tax breaks and trying to hide them in the least customer facing roles that they can …”
Very much this. More on it to come. The folk in back are African-African. Ethiopian, I was told. I do wonder what Derp’s location is like. I imagine the same, but with a slightly different flavor. Several tiers of immigrant labor at 0923.
Thanks this was fun read, appreciate it!
“Of foreign drivers, a few fluently produce the numbers, some sound it out the best they can, but most simply hold their phone out to show it to me.” Interesting. You’d think if you want to integrate in any way you’d learn the digits for 0 through 10. So “one thousand” would be read “one zero zero zero”
(Numbers and doing math in Japanese is awful for me. I work with them all the time and do them in my head, but I can’t do it in Japanese so I have to translate and compute.)
That struck me too. How hard can it be to learn the numbers? It’s one of the first things you learn after the curse words. I guess it’s easier to hold up the phone.
Numbers were the first thing I learned in Japan, but as a carpenter, it was the most useful so I would be able to measure and tell someone what to cut or being the one doing the cutting.
Since we used metric, it was always just a number no fractions, so that was a little easier.
I completely struggle with the 10,000 unit.
So 1 million is expressed at 100 of the 10,000 unit. Hyakuman” 百万
Nice writeup Evan.
Mrs OBE did ‘pack and ship’ for Target in mid 2010s. She saw the potential and advocated to expand and make it better. Their response was shut-up you lowly worker.
Then covid…and they scrambled to meet the demand.
Never discount the ideas of someone actually doing the work.
Walmart seems to intentionally hire to keep people in their lane.
They don’t want any great ideas as those in power always know better.
Then like other corporations they hire and promote from outside the company because they don’t have anyone they deem qualified to promote from within.
I’m assuming you get hugged by a clone girl before you resolve into LCL?
Sounds hellish and or late stage capitalism dystopian. Have you considered becoming an union organizer? I can give you some Democratic Socialists of America literature.
keep in mind under socialism most of those shelves would be empty so your job would be easy. and no customer complained, they are happy getting anything.
Ah, the efficiency of the communist shop. All goods behind the counter. Point out what you want so the surly worker can grab it for you. Get a ticket listing what you are buying. Go to a separate counter to pay. Get a stamp saying you paid. Go to another counter to pick up your purchase. What’s not to love about that experience?
Don’t you have any meat?
Sir this is the bakery. Here we don’t have any bread. the butcher is next door, they don;t have any meat.
A man goes to the butcher: what do you have? Look buddy what you see is what we have. Ok then one kilo of meat hooks.
Guaranteed full “employment”!
It wasn’t quite that bad in East Germany but there was a lot of wandering around looking for something worth spending the money I was required to exchange on.
I felt the same way at Aldi my one visit there a year or so ago.
You could pretend to work and they would pretend to pay you.
I did that recently for 43 days!
This is why you didn’t get that $10k bonus. Just not a true comrade.
Wow, that’s going to sting. I’m sure Putin will be reflecting on this.
UK sanctions Russian intelligence agency GRU over Novichok poisoning
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sanctions-russian-intelligence-agency-gru-over-novichok-poisoning-2025-12-04/
we should develop a weapon that makes all the vodka in Russia disappear and see what happens.
That would make their army more efficient.
Humans rarely speak as you load their groceries. They turn off the radio to silently phone-play, and if there’s a passenger, any conversation that was occurring suddenly ceases
I have to believe you said at least once ” Welcome to Walmart I love you”
What is the best bottle of bourbon in that Walmart and how much does it cost?
No booze in Minnesota Wal-marts, maybe beer but I don’t remember anyone with beer in their basket. Texas stores have the hard stuff, as I recall.
Beer and wine can be sold in store, hard booze must me sold in liquor stores in TX.
Correct. California would have the hard stuff. Not Texas.
In Florida there’s no liquor in the grocery store. So you have to go next door to their dedicated liquor store (which basically only Publix does).
For the children.
I used to go to liquor stores all the time as a kid. Mostly to buy these (not smokes for my parents):
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ice-Cubes-Chocolate-Candy-Pack-of-100/120350557
/ CA brat
Pie, I don’t think you understand – WalMart is about quantity over quality.
I don’t know, but it’ll be locked up.
I don’t get to WMT often (nearest one is crummy) but I would look if I were going.
As I thought: Knob Creek, Makers Mark, of course. Also in names I don’t know: Stedmans, 1792, Angels’ Envy, Basil Hayden.
Good read, Evan! (psst: pallets)
(@Tox: *D’oh!* Good catch and bad me. Thanks!)
Basil Hayden’s good stuff. What (very) little I drink is their Dark Rye.
Here in KY and many other states, the liquor store is an annex with separate cash registers. Basically a separate store just to the right side of both my Wal-Mart and my Kroeger.
Indiana can sell beer, wine and liquor. Nothing chilled, though. Noblesville’s affluent. Then nicest bottles are north of $150.
Thanks Evan,
Fourscores are Walmartians. My wife would not make it as a picker, she has a prepared list but it’s disorganized, kind of how she remembered something she needed and put it on the list. On the other hand my list is mentally organized, shopping the back of the store and proceeding towards the front. I can do my whole experience in 15 minutes.
We meet up somewhere in produce, she then tears her list in half, gives it to me and verbally adds some of her list on to mine. “I can’t find the frozen blueberries” type of thing so I have to retrace all my steps. Because of the distance (30 miles) we don’t go often and tend to stock up on the non-perishables. At least we’ll have a chance to eat at a different restaurant every time, when we finish shopping.
she has a prepared list but it’s disorganized,
You and I have parallel lives in that respect. At this point I prefer to go the grocery myself – especially if it’s the local one, I know it well enough that I organize the list so I pick things in order as I make a single pass through the store.
My wife, not so much…
Our local supermarket is being renovated, so nothing is where Dad is expecting it.
They re-did our local about a year ago – I finally know where to find everything I regularly buy.
Back in Vegas they redesigned our local market (for the better) but got rid of the perpendicular aisle in the middle and that made me irrationally upset for a time.
I do that. Frozen last.
Thanks, Evan – I find this sort of thing super interesting!
Thanks for the interesting post. All the scanning you have to do reminds me of some simple software I wrote to track our manufacturing and shipping process to make sure all the steps were complete and who completed them. It was amazing how many errors had slipped through either due to laziness, incompetence or confusion without the tracking, so I totally understand why Walgo wants that.
I understand these humans. Why would any of us want to pester you with unwelcome blather. Besides, if an item is missing or wrong, the remediation process is online, so staring over your shoulder doesn’t help. At the one place I do pickup (an actual grocery store, not WalMart), the rule is you don’t get out of your car.
As for WalMart in general, I typically only stop there either when I’m on the road and need something generic now that only need survive the trip, or when I need something between now and when the item I ordered from somewhere else arrives. I’ve been surprised a few times – the cheapass WalMay holster is still the most usable of my 1911 holsters, and the dirty laundry duffel bag I got one road trip is still intact enough to use for laundry.
As for the computer methodology – The picker doesn’t need ownership of the entire order. The picker’s time is expensive, which is why you might be replaced by robots.
I dont know if I would do store pickup if more than 5 items. Otherwise I will go through the order to ensure its all there and I dont want to do that in a parking lot or at home only to have to drive back to get the missing item.
Yeah as I was reading this I thought everything is in place for Ev to train his replacement bot.
It’s just the switch from talking to silence. They don’t want blather, fine. Neither do I. But it means they’re purposefully going into a social situation that they find awkward, and then making it *more* awkward. It’s completely a ‘Me’ thing. It bleeds into “Sensory Friendly Hours,” which I’ll later reveal. I despise them, and I imagine you’d love it, if you worked here. I doubt it’d affect you on your trips to purchase stray goods in our aisles.
The robots assembling cars work cuz there isn’t any human traffic. I work with aisle-wandering robots already. They aren’t nearly tactical enough to operate around the crowd, nowhere close to being able to use an ‘arm’ to grab items, let alone the sorting process.
*straightens jacket, snoots face upward. Snorts.*
My wife and I mocked the “sensory friendly hours” when we heard about them.
Everytime I see a Gen z woman wearing big headphones I want to smack a bitch.
sensory friendly hours
New to me. It always seemed obvious to me that if you don’t like crowds, don’t shop when it is crowded.
@kinnath: It’s worse than that.
Last night I learned that Walmart is starting people at a wage higher than my sister in law makes after ten years at the local bullet factory.
More money. Better hours. No lead. No standing in 1/2” of water.
Is the water on purpose?
Occupational lead exposure is genuine concern.
She works in rimfire priming. I think it’s supposed to lower the risk of explosion and static shock.
Yeah, water?
@ 3D: https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/hot-dr-pepper-1960s
Is that something with the firearms industry? My Step-Dad was a machinist for 30 years in the LA area. When they moved to Prescott, he worked for a place that made specialty parts for Ruger and POF.
He liked the work, but he would have been paid more if he worked at the Burger King.
Prescott was a weird economy when I was there in the late 90s.
Colleges
Ruger
Government/prison/drug rehab.
Uh. What land is this? I make $14/hr.
Lewiston Idaho.
CCI Speer or whomever ownes them this month (I think it’s an Italian company starts at $19.50
Walmarts across the river in Clarkston WA.
Part of it is Washington’s stupidly high minimum wage.
The other part I suspect is housing prices and how many welfare cases there are in clarkston. Too few want to work.
Shot: I hate Nashville and country music!
Chaser
Tell me what you really think Reuters!
“During the meeting, climate scientist and CDC consultant Cynthia Nevison said in her presentation that the risk of hepatitis B transmission to healthy children has been overstated. Businessman and CDC staffer Mark Blaxill – who has been a leader of anti-vaccine group SafeMinds – presented a review of the vaccine’s safety, concluding that there is limited evidence of its safety.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kennedys-vaccine-advisers-weigh-hepatitis-b-vaccine-timing-consequential-policy-2025-12-04/
JFC they make it sound like HepB is a contagious disease. Infant transmission happens because of infected mothers – so arguably you only need to vaccinate the girls. The rest of transmission happens because of IV drug use (needle sharing) and sex. It was NOT a huge problem to begin with and the benefits are wildly overstated.
But 95% reduction ji!
Yup. They’ve done great job of destroying trust in vaccines.
I got Hep A and Hep B vaccinations before I started going to Moscow back in the 90s. Hep A was essential. I got the Hep B as well, because I was already there, and the company was paying for everything.
I got the Hep B vax back in the day – not certain I would now.
I got the Hep A vax as well; I regularly eat oysters and that is a legit transmission risk (that, and unprotected anal sex with other men, but it’s really the oysters I’m concerned with).
Unprotected anal sex with a oyster?
I’m finding it really hard not to kink shame here.
Don’t be silly, oysters don’t have anuses.
STEVE SMITH PROVE YOU WRONG
Those UI girls are dirrrrty.
Back from errands (including wandering aimlessly around the grocery store). Interesting.
a) I had no idea this was still a thing. I thought it was just a plague phenomenon.
b) I remember back in the ’80s when people marveled at how that ignorant hillbilly Sam Walton had somehow materialized at the very bleeding edge of information and inventory management technology.
What made me feel better when I first started out of desperation, is my gig’s the modern version of the list folk shared with their small-town general store, butcher or pharmacy, ‘way’ back in the day. (Fourscore’s.) They kinda knew ya and folk trusted ’em to gather their shit to save time.
History does rhyme. (It do be like that.)
Americans For Tax Fairness
@4TaxFairness
If you make a regular wage, you pay around 14.5% in taxes with every paycheck.
But if you’re a billionaire whose entire income is unrealized capital gains, you don’t have to pay a penny.
I’m also dating an “unrealized supermodel”. My wife is OK with it.
Unrealized capital gains aren’t income. It’s a asset that someone said was worth X yesterday and X+ today. No money changes hands. There is no “income”.
If they’re unrealized gains, they’re not income of any sort. The hint is “unrealized”.
I agree with kinnath.
Yes. If I realized my supermodel I doubt my wife would be happy.
I f the unrealized supermodel I married suddenly became realized, She’d drop me like a hot-potato.
Bobarian gets it!
I wonder if the people pushing this will be willing to pay taxes on the unrealized gains from toys, comics, or other collectibles they have at home?
Or the unrealized gains on your home itself. Fuck these envious people.
I keep telling myself and anyone else that will listen to me, “I never would have believed that I would live in such an expensive house.”
It looks much the same as the homemade one I have lived in for 30 years.
TOK, you keep my ammo and Lego hoard out of this!
Mad S, the property tax man does that now.
We need to bring back tarring and feathering.
Squish.
if you’re a billionaire whose entire income is unrealized capital gains
In other words, zero.
Obligatory re huge pillow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqycJpRdVaY&t=76s
If I say “huge pillows” will it summon Q?
If I say “huge pillows” will it summon Q?
Only if you say it three times.
If I say “huge pillows” will it summon Q?
Now I want to watch the pillow fight scene from Animal House.
Nice article, Evan. Interesting and fun read!
Thankee!
I never considered this.
https://x.com/PizzinoMichael/status/1996176788645699965?s=20
It’s going to vary by state and I’ve no idea if this is real or fake.
After thinking on it, I say fake.
I think so too, but it used to be rating factor. I haven’t dealt with ratemaking it personal auto in decades.
Related tangent, but if women were the ones who the algorithms disfavored for things like insurance quotes I’d wager gender discrimination in insurance quotes would vanish overnight.