Woman creates Petco Rewards account in-store. Then she gets an uncomfortable message from a random number

When employees ask you to sign up for their store's rewards program, most people don't think twice. Worst case scenario is getting a potentially annoying number of emails, right?

Not necessarily. One Petco customer says her sign-up led to something much more unsettling.

‘I never gave him my number in the store'

Content creator Annika Chen (@annikanc) shared a story about buying a snake from Petco that had been waiting for a home for a year. Her video has since accumulated more than 39,000 views.

Chen said a sales associate helped her gather supplies and complete the purchase, and that their conversation throughout was ordinary. She mentioned she'd owned snakes before, and nothing about the exchange felt flirtatious. Before she left, the associate had her create a Petco Rewards account, which included her address, phone number, and other personal information.

But that night, Chen said she received a text from an unfamiliar number. It was the associate.

“I never gave him my number in the store,” she said. “There was no chat about getting my number or anything like that, so he obviously went through the system, looked me up, and found my number and texted me … Honestly it made me really uncomfortable because not only is my phone number in there, but my address and my information is in there as well.”

After debating whether to take action, Chen ultimately reported the incident to Petco's hotline, which opened a case. However, she said the representative taking her report asked whether she'd given the associate any impression she wanted to be contacted outside the store. Chen felt this was missing the point entirely.

“Let's say that we were in the store and I was chatting it up and getting flirtatious,” she said. “You still went through the system and looked up my number. That's so weird … It's got to be against policy.”

Chen said the associate framed his text as concern over whether she'd need help caring for the snake, despite her telling him in-store that she already had experience. Petco never told her what action, if any, was taken against the employee, only that the case had been closed. Several commenters urged her to contact the police “immediately” about the incident.

Is what the Petco employee did illegal?

Most retailers maintain internal confidentiality policies barring employees from using customer information for personal purposes. One consumer law Q&A addressed a similar case, in which an employer texted a customer using contact information pulled from store records. A lawyer described this as falling into “a gray area” legally, even where it clearly breached company policy.

Beyond policy violations, this kind of conduct can expose both the employee and the company to civil liability under a recognized privacy “tort” known as “intrusion upon seclusion.” According to an Oklahoma City law firm, this applies when someone with access to personal data, like a phone number, address or email, uses it to pursue an unwanted relationship. Courts can find liability “if a reasonable person would consider the intrusion highly offensive.”

TechnologyAdvice's guide to employee privacy laws notes that improperly released customer or employee information can leave someone vulnerable to stalking or harassment. This generally qualifies as a serious workplace and legal risk that employers need to prevent.

Buzz News has reached out to Chen via TikTok comment and Petco via email.