The End Of An Institution

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One of the family jokes in our household has always been that when my computer-geek husband finally retires, he wants to be a Wal-Mart greeter. There might be some problems with that in that he is a native New York City person, and I am not sure greeting is the first thing you think of when speaking of native New Yorkers. He is, however, a very friendly person and would do a very good job as a Wal-Mart greeter. Alas, his hopes for a second career have been dashed.

A website called Patch.com is reporting that the Wal-Mart greeters will no longer be at the front of the store greeting you.

The article reports:

This week, news is spreading throughout business circles about Wal-Mart’s greeters being phased out. Patch spoke Tuesday to a longtime greeter at the Walmart Supercenter in Eureka, who said the good news is that greeters will not lose their jobs. Instead they will be repositioned at other locations inside the store, he said.

I have no idea how that will work, but it is an interesting concept. It is also good to know that the greeters will not be losing their jobs.

I was intrigued by the closing paragraph of the article:

An article about this topic in Huffington Post on Wednesday stated Walton first stumbled onto a greeter at a small Walmart in Louisiana in 1980. The greeter explained to Walton he had a “dual purpose: to make people feel good about coming in, and to make sure people weren’t walking back out the entrance with merchandise they hadn’t paid for.”

And all this time we thought they just wanted to be friends!

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