Customers at a Giant Food store in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania witnessed the moment when a robot to improve in-store efficiencies strolled off the job and into the parking lot.
A viral video published on Facebook shows "Marty," a robot with big googley-eyes, escaping. The robot eventually had to be pushed back inside by an employee.
"Marty escaped from the Hellertown Giant and almost made it to freedom before he was wrangled back to his grocery prison," the video's description said.
A spokesperson for Giant told Harrisburg-based WHTM that Marty "was just on a fresh air break."
The tall gray robot is equipped with multiple cameras and scanners, patrolling aisles for out-of-stock items. There was no explanation of why the robot 'glitched' and tried to escape.
The video was also posted on YouTube.
In the video's comment section, one person joked: "You know the work environment is horrible when even a robot that is designed to only work gets tired of it."
"Even Marty stressed out with society," someone else said.
Another said: "This sounds like a sad, dystopian-esque short story in which a machine gains sentience and tries to flee what it was built for, only to fail in the end."