A few years ago, Walmart tried an experiment with their staff greeters who stood at the doorway of every store: they moved them away from the front door. Sure, they would still greet people who they encountered, but their jobs also involved directing customers to an open register, or performing tasks inside the store at a time when Walmarts were catastrophically short-staffed. Now Walmart is testing the idea of maybe reversing that decision.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in a few hundred stores, the retailer is experimenting with moving greeters back to the door. They’re also experimenting with a new job title that serves as a loss-prevention buddy to the greeter, if there is one. The asset protection customer specialists, or APCS, will wear yellow vests so they stand out from other employees, and will have the task of pre-scanning merchandise for returns before customers can proceed to the customer service desk.

While it may have seemed wasteful to post someone to stand at the door while stores were understocked and short-handed, the greeter position may have been a better theft deterrent than upper management thought.

“[P]eople started walking out the door with cartloads of stuff” after greeters were removed from their postings at the doors, one overnight stocker told the Wall Street Journal.

Wal-Mart Ushers ‘Greeters’ Back to the Front [Wall Street Journal]

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