A Dollar General shopper says she tried to check out before realizing the doors were left open after the store closed for the night

• A viral TikTok appears to show a customer shopping at a closed Dollar General store.
• The doors were unlocked, and she tried to pay before setting off an alarm, the TikTok user says.
• Dollar General stores tend to be chronically short-staffed, Insider previously reported.

A Dollar General customer said she walked into one of the chain’s stores, picked out a bag of Takis, and approached the register before realizing the store had closed almost an hour earlier.

In a video posted on TikTok, user Sandravasqz says she went to the store around 9:45 pm. The store was poorly lit, but she says she thought it was because it closed at 10. Dollar General and the TikTok user did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

It wasn’t until she tried to pay for the bag of Takis that it became clear something was wrong. “Once I hit the register and put my stuff down is when the alarm started going off,” she says in the video before cutting to footage of lights blinking and an alarm sounding in the store.

The customer says she called 911 and waited until the police arrived. The Tiktok video includes footage of police officers entering and inspecting the Dollar General.

“I just broke into the Dollar General,” she jokes before playing Ian Lewis’s “Bad Boys,” the theme song from the TV series “Cops.”

The video is the latest example of something gone awry at a Dollar General store. The chain has racked up millions of dollars in fines from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration over issues from bathrooms that don’t work to blocked fire exits.

Workers have previously told Insider that Dollar General’s stores are often short-staffed, in part, because the stores don’t pay competitive wages. Employees say it’s common for only one worker to be on-duty at the retailer’s stores and for customers to have no interaction with an employee until they need to check out, employees told Insider.

Are you a Dollar General employee with a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at +1-808-854-4501.