A photo of a Halifax grocery store clerk walking a 72-year-old customer home on icy sidewalks has gone viral.

The photo, taken by Terri Bordage Stevens, was posted to Facebook on Friday morning and has since accumulated more than 12,000 likes and almost 5,000 shares.

"I was driving in Halifax by Sobeys Queen Street and made my friend slow down so I could snap this wonderful picture," Bordage Stevens wrote in the Facebook post. "Now that’s putting your customer first."

The picture shows Sobeys employee Austin MacNeill helping Mary Cogswell, who is legally blind, navigate the icy sidewalks on Queen Street in the city's south end.

Mary Cogswell, who is legally blind, says the staff at the Queen Street Sobeys in Halifax have helped walk her home for about five years. (CBC)

Cogswell said employees at Sobeys have been helping her get her groceries home for about five years, regardless of the season.

"They always do that at Sobeys, whoever takes me around there. They walk me home," she said.

Cogswell said it was the staff's idea to help her in the first place.

She learned about the Facebook photo through a friend on Saturday morning.

Austin MacNeill is the Sobeys employee in the viral photo. (Anjuli Patil/CBC)

MacNeill, who is celebrating six months of working at Sobeys today, said the staff at the store are very helpful.

"Everybody at the store likes to help people out. It's just kind of the thing we do. It happens on a daily basis," he said.​

MacNeill said the sidewalk does not get plowed very well, so it can often be icy during the winter.

People have already recognized MacNeill. He says that he went to a convenience store today and the clerk recognized him.

"That was a little weird," he said.