Walmart Is Eliminating Greeters. Workers With Disabilities Feel Targeted | Hacker News Reader

Walmart Is Eliminating Greeters. Workers With Disabilities Feel Targeted

npr.org

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In a recent interview on CNBC, Buffett said that Walmart CEO Doug McMillon always carries with him a list of top 10 retailers of each of the past decades just to remind himself of the brutal history of retailing. Walmart took Sears to the cleaners and with status quo, there was a high chance Amazon and Costco will take Walmart to the cleaners. So far, they have done a pretty good job modernizing.

If you are racing to the bottom, isn't it just easier to throw yourself out of the window instead of taking the stairs?

Is this an analogy? Can you explain it in literal terms?

He means that why take small steps (such as eliminating greeters) and instead do every cost saving strategy possible much like Pepsi Co is doing now [1]

1: https://gizmodo.com/pepsico-is-relentless-automating-its-wor...

>racing to the bottom

It's easier to race to the top. Just increase price on all your items 10000000000000x. im sure you will be the first in line to buy.

Related: Walmart Labs[1] is supposedly doing some cool dev work and is hiring. (I'm unaffiliated but know people who've worked there)

[1]https://www.walmartlabs.com/

I turned down a job with them (mostly as I want to move back east and the job was only in sunnyvale, good location, just not for me at the moment). But the work they do is interesting, the compensation was competitive, and if you have a family some of their fringe benefits can be very valuable (employee discount at walmart, grocery delivery to the office could save lots of time...)

What is up with their website? Immediately prompted me to allow them to known my location but promptly froze my browser.

A great guy from my hometown who has cerebral palsy is one of those losing their jobs. He has worked at the Marion, NC Walmart for almost 17 years. Almost every time I've visited the store, I've heard his voice saying "hey y'all" with the biggest smile on his face.

https://www.wyff4.com/article/thousands-petition-for-walmart...

The town has stepped up with petitions, calls, etc. He's offered to work for Walmart for free. I read that the local Lowe's has offered him a position.

Just wanted to share his story.

If you love him so much you can pay for him. walmart doesn't think he's worth it and your personal story with this guy isn't going to be worth 20k a year.

Don't be too sure you're worth even close to what you are paid because truthfully most people aren't.

That title immediately makes me think this is a hit piece.

It looks designed to place Walmart in the worst possible light.

Good call. I will add the entire article to my training data. Just running it as is, wow, the headline came out to be 94.40655708312988 positive for clickbait! (I am using a modified keras/tensorflow model trained on clickbait headlines.)

"In 2005, Walmart faced outcry over a leaked internal memo that proposed cutting soaring health costs by, among other things, requiring that all jobs include some physical activity."

I wonder to what degree the high cost of healthcare effected their decision to replace greeters with "customer hosts". Is this Walmart reorganizing for a better customer experience, is this Walmart cutting costs to help fight Amazon, or is this Walmart cutting costs to boost executive bonuses?

According to interviews with workers and documents reviewed by NPR, to qualify for these new host positions, workers must be able to lift 25 pounds, clean up spills, collect carts and stand for long periods of time, among other things — tasks that can be impossible for people with disabilities.

Wait

1) Who employed at my local Wal-Mart does this now?

2) Why do these job duties need a new title?

Asked only slightly rhetorically, if that's fine.

I'm guessing they are trying to reduce the employee count by combining various responsibilities. You can barely find a cashier or floor staff these days.

I'm guessing they are trying to reduce the employee count by combining various responsibilities.

Goes to show what I know about the day to day in the life of a wal-mart employee, but I figured those duties were kind of already combined/shared responsibilities of the 'floor staff'-except for maybe the kids who spend most of their days fetching and herding carts (which my time in grocery retail was reserved for A) the newbies for "training" or B) the troublemakers/someone being 'disciplined' by a manager).

Interesting.

My impression is they are eliminating greeeters. Ie, Amazon doesn't pay for greeters, people don't seem to mind if they are not greated when going to amazon or other stores, so to compete with these highly automated competitors they are reducing headcount where they can. The positions available to greaters, called hosts, have to handle more tasks (presumably to save them money on things like janitorial services etc). So I'm not sure that this isn't somewhat explainable by reasons other than trying to get rid of disabled greeters. And the hosts may reduce costs in other areas (janitorial, restocking? etc).

Except my understanding is that the greeters at Walmart aren't there greet but to deter fraud and theft. They scan and place stickers on items being brought back into the store to be returned to prevent people from pulling items of the shelf and "returning" them with a found or previous receipt. They also periodically check receipts deterring folks just walking out with unpaid items, particularly those that go through the self checkouts.

1) Who employed at my local Wal-Mart does this now?

Most people are expected to be able to do those things at Walmart.

2) Why do these job duties need a new title?

The article suggests that the new job title is designed as legal protection against a lawsuit from fired employees.

A greeter who is also available for other tasks generates far more value for Walmart than one who can only greet. Unless they can pay a disabled greeter an equivalent fraction, probably around 1/3 as much value as an average worker in an unskilled capacity, they're going to do everything they can to spend their personnel dollars on workers who aren't disabled.

Good thing this is extensively illegal under federal law.

How? If I need a stocker who can unload trucks, put product on shelves, and spent the rest of their day greeting customers how could I be compelled to hire someone incapable of doing 2/3 of the job?

Things like this are always tough to see on the micro, because individuals that didn’t do anything wrong are losing their jobs. On the macro, it’s tough to blame the business for doing the right thing for themselves.

The market places immense pressure on incumbent businesses to innovate to cut costs, reduce inconsistency, and provide fresh experiences. These are the basics of capitalism and any individual agent is _required_ to adjust their personal work policy to maintain their position of employability. Employability is always transient. Any personal skill, specific job category, or asset has a limited period of time that it will be useful to the market.

Some obvious examples of this happening:

* Walmart has been piloting robots that can take inventory and clean [1]

* Short distance Autonomous food delivery robots [2] [3]

* Autonomous vehicle delivery of humans and goods [5]

* Haidilao (huge Chinese hotpot chain) has been piloting robots that deliver food to your table [4]

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/12/07/busi...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/starship-deploys-autonomou...

[3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...

[4] https://shanghai.ist/2018/10/29/haidilao-robots/

[5] https://www.frysfood.com/f/grocery-delivery-nuro-self-drivin...

>These are the basics of capitalism and any individual agent is _required_ to adjust their personal work policy to maintain their position of employability.

The same capitalism doesn't work when it comes to housing, healthcare, etc. That's why ordinary people get pissed off.

NPR has also learned of several complaints against Walmart with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as a lawsuit — all by greeters with disabilities who previously lost their jobs after demands changed.

The threat of court action or penalties is one of the few things that will cause giant corporations to rethink discriminatory policies such as this.

And it's not greeters that's Walmart's problem. It's Amazon. Walmart needs to be out-Amazoning Amazon in several key areas, and so far it's basically been a game of catch-up.

I can't recall someone ever saying "welcome to walmart" to me, anywhere in the US. Even so, I don't think someone saying that to me would be enough to humanize the face of one of the world's biggest megacorps. Maybe if they handed out coupons or free food I would be interested. I sympathize with these workers but I don't see myself going into the streets to protest this.

I haven't noticed in a while but I specifically recall greeters handing out smiley face stickers to kids at many Walmarts.

The free popcorn is one thing I love about Ace Hardware and, to a lesser extent, Home Depot. Walmart, on the other hand, feels way worse, yet they probably spend about the same on those greeters as Ace spends on the popcorn.

Now, Ace Hardware isn't the poster child of success like Walmart is, but it's famous for that popcorn, just like Walmart is famous for its creepy greeters. And losing the creepy greeters is actually kind of sad in an odd way.

I wish we could go back to the time when most people shopped at smaller stores where the registers were run by the owners and they cared about their customers enough to remember them. It's sad that Walmart will most likely be defeated by another large company with even less human interaction, but I guess that's the price of progress...

I mean, if you're OK with paying a thousand dollars for a 32 inch TV, sure we can do that.

The Greeter at my local Walmart has a nasty scowl and makes me feel really uncomfortable every time I walk in there. I for one welcome this move towards a more anti-social world.

On one side, I feel bad for those who will lose their jobs. But as a customer who goes to Walmart once in a while, I prefer not to see greeters at the door. I never understood this concept anyway - why do I need to be greeted when I am going shopping? Many business places don't do it, what is special about Walmart?

Agree, this is one of example of bullshit job.

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