>Hank,
>
>>>A greeter with welcome in his heart and a genuine smile on his face for 8 hours a day is doing something most software developers, moi included, would be unable to replicate. Anyone who can do that has my admiration.
>
>Agreed. And it doesn't hurt to reflect that "there but for the grace of God go I". Especially in today's economic climate.

While I fail to see how religion would help (but to insert a false sense of self-confidence), I agree that most of the menial jobs aren't as simple as they look when someone else does them. While I haven't done them professionally (i.e. for money), I did a lot of those as an amateur (because I liked to) or for no good reason (i.e. because I had to, which is a reason, but not good). But then, while one has to admire the effort, one can't much admire the majority of employees at Walmart who just aren't there with their minds - and can't be, because of how they are treated by their management. Just the imitation of a Japanese company, with mandatory cheers in the morning (find it on Youtube, there's lots of it), would be reason enough to hate the job.

Next, I've been to maybe a dozen Walmarts, and they are never aired enough. All the evaporation from various chemicals emanating from anything plastic (shoes, cloth, cleaning stuff) and/or perfumed (candles, detergents, decoration (!)), plus whatever chemistry is used to clean the floors, just stays in there. And the acoustics is always such that there's the overwhelming hum of the futile fans, often accumulating where you stand into a throbbing pulse. That's what you feel as a customer, spending there as little time as you can - imagine the [strike]workers[/strike] [strike]employees[/strike] associates.

So while I wouldn't characterize them as "95% morons", my impression that about as many of them just don't care about the job, and simply go through the (minimal number of) the motions while they are there, and don't give much stool about it, and why should they. They aren't workers, paid to work. They are associates, paid to socialize there.