A video of a comedian walking around a Rite Aid questioning the barren shelves has gone viral, prompting jokes about the company’s bankruptcy.
The video was posted on September 3 to X, formerly Twitter, by stand-up comedian and podcaster Bert Kreischer, who showcased the empty shelves, incorrectly attributing them to theft.
He said, “This is Los Angeles, everything is gone. Look at this, it’s our deodorants, I think. This looks like it’s been looted, and I guess thieves just come in and take whatever’s expensive and just f—— walk out with it. This is crazy, this is unrecognizable.”
The video went hugely viral and gained over 10 million views, 24,000 likes, 5,700 re-posts, and 6,000 comments.
The clip appears to have been intended as satire, but many users were quick to correct him, pointing out that the store was likely empty due to the company filing for bankruptcy.
Others responded with jokes of their own.
Billy Baldwin, the brother of actor Alec Baldwin, wrote, “Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy. They told me it was gonna be several months before they could restock my toothpaste.”
The side of a Rite Aid store and pharmacy in Queens, New York photographed on October 16. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2023, and a video recently went viral where a man walking around Rite Aid attributed the barren shelves to theft, rather than bankruptcy.
Anthony Behar/Associated Press
A user named Jake wrote, “I just went to this same riteaid to see if its gotten worse and the looters have put out a ‘for sale’ sign. What country do we live in that violent people can just claim ownership of your store and sell it just like that? Crazy times man.”
Users also appeared tickled by his statement that when he moved to Los Angeles, “you’d come into Rite Aid, and you’d spend the afternoon looking around.”
One user wrote, “You used to be able to spend all day hanging out at rite aid.”
The drug store chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2023, reporting that it had sustained $750 million in losses and $24 billion in revenue for the fiscal year up to March 2023, Reuters reports.
Since filing for bankruptcy, it reportedly shut 160 stores in Michigan and 111 in Ohio, according to court documents filed from June to August.
It also appointed its former CFO Matt Schroeder as the new CEO and eliminated approximately $2 billion of total debt and received about $2.5 billion in exit financing, it said.
A stand-up comedian, podcaster, television host, and actor, Kreischer is most well-known for his feature in a Rolling Stone article where he was described as, “the top partyer at the Number One Party School in the country,” which later served as the inspiration for the movie National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002) starring Ryan Reynolds.
Newsweek reached out to Kreischer and Rite Aid for comment via email.
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