Gary Casner sent an e-mail about the Admiral who was a Wal-Mart Greeter. I’ve enjoyed the story a couple of times before and it always reminds me of my own “Greeter” story.

Four or five years ago, Gene Maness and I were drinking coffee at our favorite McDonalds’s in Keller, Texas. We were mouthing off at each other as we usually did and started talking about getting part-time jobs just to keep ourselves busy. We discussed several possibilities and discarded each of them for one reason or another. Finally, we got to Wal-Mart Greeter and things started looking up. A new Wal-Mart Super Center was just opening up a couple of blocks from where we lived. It looked perfect! There would be no commute to speak of and if your wife needed some groceries or something you could pick them up on the way home and save a trip.

As we continued to discuss the benefits of working at Wal-Mart I mentioned that we would get to hug the good-looking girls as they came in, just as they do in the Wal-Mart commercials. Maness, who was always a “the glass is half-empty” kind of guy, says “do we have to hug the ugly ones, too?’ Well, I had no idea but I remembered that we were going to attend a Homeowner’s Association meeting that would be held at a neighborhood school Thursday evening and that the Manager of the new Wal-Mart would be introduced to the community there. This would be a perfect time for us to ask some questions.

We arrived at the meeting a little early and quickly spotted a guy wearing a Wal-Mart ID badge. We went over and introduced ourselves and before I could blink an eye, Maness says” If we went to work as Wal-Mart Greeters we would hug all the good-looking girls that came through the door but we want to know if we would have to hug the ugly ones, too?” The manager who was pretty quick on the uptake (that’s why he was the manager) said “Yes, you would have to hug the ugly ones, too. We are an equal opportunity company and try to treat all our customers in the same way.” That killed the whole deal for us…it was time to go back to square one and think about other opportunities.

Dave Thomas
November 12, 2012