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Jewish World Review
Feb 23, 2012/ 30 Shevat, 5772
She'll miss Walmart's 'aggressive hospitality'
By
Celia Rivenbark
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
When I learned that Walmart had decided to do away with its trademark "people greeters" after 32 years of "providing a cart and a smile," I have to say I was shocked.
As a Baby Boomer who fully expects Social Security to run out along about the same week I retire, I'd always pictured myself joining the senior team at Walmart, taking up the proud blue vestments ("May I !@#$ing help you?") and becoming the well-lined face of the company, shepherding lost sheep to health & beauty or (more fun) busting shoplifters while screaming "Citizen's Arrest! Citizen's Arrest! a la Gomer Pyle. Punks. Get off my lawn.
Alas, I shall never get the chance.
Sam Walton came up with the idea of the greeters and there's no doubt that he was a true visionary. Walton understood that, sometimes in this life, you don't want to run all over town to do your shopping. You just want to go to one store where you can buy a pound of ground beef, a dog collar, some lawn fertilizer, Pantene and three boxes of butter cookies. And you want to do it in your pajamas.
Yes, Walton successfully tapped into the psyche of the shopper like nobody else. It was he who coined the rather odd term "aggressive hospitality." Stationing greeters at every entrance to Walmart was designed to make you feel as though you'd come home to a sort of fluorescent Promised Land where prices are low, suns have smiley faces on them and the clothes smell like burned popcorn.
Walmart's always been a little quirky. Kmart, for instance, doesn't welcome RVs to park overnight in their lot for free and I can't remember the last time somebody had a baby in Target. There is no "People of Big Lots!" website, although maybe there should be since there's no place better to buy a king mattress AND some nearly out of date ketchup. Bound to be a few odd ducks wearing mankinis in there somewhere.
Since the phasing out of the Walmart greeters, we customers are on our own, left to wander, hollow-eyed and helpless, through the store after having wrestled our own grocery cart from the cavernous corral. And then a few more until we finally found one without a wobbly wheel. I feel dead inside.
So, where have all the greeters gone? For now, many of them have been reassigned to work the floor, offering help in "high traffic" areas.
Others, I suspect, will just fade away through attrition. Jobs won't be refilled and, ultimately, there will be fewer vests in the aisles talking amongst themselves while we wait patiently for them to finish their conversation.
Some experts believe this is a bad move because greeters were shoplifting deterrents. After all, you can't walk by Grandpa with that stolen ham between your legs without feeling a little guilty. Y'all know I'm right.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Celia Rivenbark is an award-winning news reporter and freelance columnist for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Comment by clicking here.
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© 2007, The Sun News Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
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