The latest mobile app being deployed among Walmart staff wasn't built by the company's deep ranks of software developers based in San Francisco, Bangalore, or São Paulo. It was hacked together by a floor-level store worker in his spare time.



Richard McSorley, who describes himself as a "hobbyist programmer," has worked at Walmart in Ashland, Kentucky for more than nine years. When he isn't clocking hours as a wireless division manager at the store, he experiments with making mobile apps, and his latest — designed to help his colleagues look up products and compare prices with competitors — has earned rave reviews from Walmart workers across the country.

"This guy's my hero and a genius!" said one Walmart staffer in a review of the app. "I use it several times a day as a cashier and it saves me time and keeps me from making customers angry," said another in a Reddit post discussing it. "Better than the official Walmart app," read a third testimonial.



The program, called 'Walton' after the store's founding family, has been downloaded about 7,000 times and counting, McSorley told BuzzFeed News. Its tagline: "For associates, by associates." It's also free.

The app plays on Walmart's guarantee to never lose a price war with its competitors — if a customer can find a product being sold for less somewhere else, Walmart will match the price. McSorley's app lets store workers scan a barcode and automatically search over 40,000 websites to find the lowest competing price.