Wal-Mart to Pull Greeters From Store Lobbies to Assist Customers
February 08, 2012, 9:25 AM ESTBy David Welch
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will begin moving greeters into its stores from its lobbies to help with customer-service tasks as the world’s largest retailer works to cut costs and keep merchandise prices low.
The greeters will be moved by the registers to direct shoppers to products or shorter checkout lines, David Tovar, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company, said today in an interview.
Wal-Mart has had greeters since 1980, when founder Sam Walton decided they would make his low-price stores friendly and welcoming. The move shows that Wal-Mart is rethinking many long- standing practices as it tries to boost margins and same-store sales.
During the past six months, Wal-Mart reassigned greeters at its 3,000 U.S. supercenters from the third shift, which runs from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Greeters at different stores have been told for the past two days that they will be reassigned, said Janna Pea, a campaign specialist with the United Food and Commerical Workers Union, which assists a group of employees called the Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart.
--With assistance from Matthew Boyle in New York. Editors: Kevin Orland, Robin Ajello
To contact the reporter on this story: David Welch in Detroit at dwelch12@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net
