A more accurate analogy would be if they ushered the child into a backroom where a stranger was seated across from them with a glass divider between them and then they left the room. This is the whole point of Omeagle, to facilitate these interactions. Would it unsettle anyone if Walmart were doing that, and would they be legally responsible for whatever happens in there?
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.
It ought to be illegal. Ideally I could choose to shop somewhere that didn’t do that, but like your boss said, they all do it. It makes shopping with small children hellish.
Walmart does do this with physical goods. They treat customers like criminals when they're exiting the store with their paid for property and expect to be able to inspect your belongings.
I have refused such a check at Walmart and the result was an employee trying to physically obstruct my exit from the store, accusing me of stealing, and calling me rude names. I left anyway. No cops. No attempt to ban me from the store.
Imagined or not, there is/was a notion that greeting people helps for loss-prevention purposes. (i.e. if you say hello and make eye contact with someone as they enter your establishment, they are less inclined to steal from you.)
If Walmart is removing those positions, they may have found it to be a misconception. [edit: it seems like Walmart is not removing greeters, just making it harder for disabled/elderly people to hold those positions and expanding their responsibilities.]
So children are not allowed in the store? What's stopping someone from just stuffing their kid full of high end goods and asking them to wait in the car?
I worked at Walmart years ago. During one Black Friday, 2 someones walked into laywawy dept (in the back of the store), and proceeded to unhook the register! Security footage shows it but they were wearing hats, so no faces.
So, they unhook it, and load it into a cart. Then they, during the Black Friday bedlam, just push it right out of the store. Off they went.
On first impression this struck me as, totally insane. The department transitions felt like I was living in the Wal-Mart matrix. After the omnipresent cyber-greeter mentioned the oil change, it felt like it made even less sense.
I started thinking, how could this ever make sense. I could see a setup where there are booths or something with VR headsets at the front of the store, and the rest of the building is a warehouse. This would eliminate the whole public store, except for the area with the headsets. Still not sure how much sense this makes. Or how much I'd want to put on a public use VR headset in a Wal-Mart. But it makes a little more sense then doing this at home.
*edit: I was really hoping they'd throw the milk across the store.
How is this different than a large store like a supermarket where you buy food? The only difference I see is one of geographical barriers, and I don't see how that should fundamentally change the dynamics of how to appropriately deal with inappropriate or disruptive behavior.
What if 90% of Walmart aisles were consistently blocked by aisle-blocking cardboard boxes and Walmart decides the solution is to use social engineering to encourage more customers more often to take 5 seconds to move the boxes?
> am Walton wanted his stores to have a more 'neighborhood' feel, so he employed greeters to stand at the front of the store to say hello to shoppers as they entered.
The reality is, alas, not quite as wholesome:
The idea of having dedicated greeters at the front door of a store may have come from an employee of the company, Lois Richard. She was working in the early 1980s as an invoice clerk at the Walmart store in Crowley, Louisiana. The Walmart store in Crowley, which had opened in 1980, was experiencing shoplifting and had a significant "inventory shrinkage" after two years. The initial idea was to have an employee standing at the door in order to try to decrease shoplifting. After a shoplifting sting conducted by the local police showed that piles of merchandise could have been taken away, Lois Richard pitched the idea the next day to her manager and it was accepted.
Having someone who visibly sees each patron when they enter and is physically present at the exit likely reduces shoplifting more than enough to pay for the position. They're basically security guards.
That was what I was going to say. All the stores need to do is warn potential customers that by entering the stores premises the potential customer agrees to x technology being used for the purpose of y. It's the potential customers choice then, leave or enter.
They're allowed in a legal sense, but the store often orders security not to physically intervene because of the potential legal liability if either party is injured.
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