Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walmart greeter

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. J04n(talk page) 15:30, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Walmart greeter

Walmart greeter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I see no reason to have an article specifically about Walmart greeters, as nothing distinguishes them from greeters in general, whether at Home Depot, at Costco, at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or at the local stores we patronized in my town in the 1970s (demonstrating that Walmart doesn't even have the distinction of having introduced the concept). Largoplazo (talk) 19:06, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 19:07, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment If this article gets deleted, we should still probably cover the subject of greeters at any business at a new article that doesn't currently exist, because Greeter is about people who welcome tourists. Everymorning (talk) 19:10, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quite right, I saw that article and was thinking as well that it would also make sense to have a generic one about greeters at businesses. Largoplazo (talk) 19:14, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep BUT PROVIDED as per above rename and generalise. For example: KMart in Australia has greeters. Bunnings in Australia has them. Aoziwe (talk) 14:18, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to greeting per WP:PAGEDECIDE. If someone feels ambitious enough to create an article about greeters, go right ahead, but until then we should make a sub-section at greeting about professional "greeters." -- Notecardforfree (talk) 23:05, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Walmart greeter, unlike generic greeters in Home Depot or whatever, is a big meme in America and a big cultural stereotype. It's not a coincidence that Forbes or the Wall Street Journal announce the come back of the iconic greeters in Wal-Mart, when there's no any similar article about greeters in Home Depot or Costco. I did create this article precisely because of a piece of comedy on TV (it was maybe Bill Maher, not sure) related to Walmart greeter that my wife had to explain to me because I was unaware of the thing. I think it would have been interesting to know this on Wikipedia ; In fact, even on Wikipedia, there was several occurence of Walmart greeter in several article (often related to comedy). --Deansfa (talk) 13:47, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing what's iconic about Walmart greeters in particular. If retailer X happened to have instituted some policy change regarding, say, its checkout clerks, and then changed things back to the way they were, and this happened to be reported in the press, that wouldn't mean that checkout clerks of X have any particular notability. In either case, what articles are about isn't the staff, it's about the policy change, and I would apply WP:NEVENT as well as WP:NOTNEWS to that. Largoplazo (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The problem is, it's neither you nor I who decide they're iconic or not, but reliable secondary sources, like for example this article of the National Post titled "Wal-Mart Stores Inc brings back its ICONIC greeters". There's lots of articles of major newspapers over the years about these greeters: Huffington Post 2012, Bloomberg 2012, Wall Street Journal 2015, Forbes 2016, meaning we meet the duration of coverage and diversity of sources criteria of WP:NEVENT or NOTNEWS. --Deansfa (talk) 23:14, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• "There's lots of articles of major newspapers over the years": Yet all the links you provided here are about the same inextricably associated pair of events. As for "iconic": If a newspaper article reports that a person about whom Wikipedia has an article is "irrepressible", does Wikipedia also report that the person is "irrepressible"? Let's not confuse a writer's casual, abstract characterization conveying his own subjective impression with objective, concrete information obtained by the source through careful research. Largoplazo (talk) 13:35, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Between you who explains that you have greeters in your local store, and a financial prominent newspaper that characterized Wal-Mart greeters as iconic, I prefer believing the reliable source over your local life. It's how we write article on Wikipedia. Letterman didn't label John McCain as a local store greeter during his presidential campaign in 2008, he labelled him as a Wal-Mart greeter. What I'm trying to explain is that beyond the position itself, "Wal-Mart greeter" is used as a stereotype in America, is a subject of memes, and a topic used in several pieces of comedy (like for example this piece of comedy by Jeff Dunham about becoming a Wal-Mart greeter). --Deansfa (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You continue to confuse information in which one has confidence when it comes from a reliable source, with a casual, non-informative, subjective epithet like "iconic" tossed out there by the person writing the text, reflecting no more than a personal impression.

A number of sources returned from a Google Books search on store greeters] restricted to books published before 1980 confirm my recollection that Walmart didn't originate the concept. These include a 1957 work mentioning the position at Hechinger home improvement stores and a 1960 work explaining the role of greeters at Selfridge's. So any source that claims that Walmart did create the position has undermined its own reliability.

If you want to write about the Walmart greeter as a meme, then you'll need to find reliable sources discussing that meme or else you are engaging in original research/synthesis. Largoplazo (talk) 17:32, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• It's an article about Wal-Mart greeter here, not about the concept of greeters. I never pretended that Wal-Mart invented the concept, which you implied that I did. Also I provided diversity of sources, duration of coverage as asked in the WP recommendation you provided. I never based my opinion on my local bodega having a greeter when I was young. I even went further and showed that "Wal-Mart greeter" was a stereotype or an archetype used in several pieces of comedy in America, citing Bill Maher and also sharing a link to a Jeff Dunham piece about Wal-Mart greeters. You never stopped talking about your personal experience as rationale for why this article should be deleted. I prefer diversity of sources and duration of coverage.--Deansfa (talk) 17:49, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I mentioned my personal experience exactly one time, but, sure go ahead and say that I "never stopped talking about [my] personal experiences". If you happen to have found a number of places where people mentioned Walmart greeters, and you're concluding from that that Walmart greeters in particular are a meme, a stereotype, an archetype, that's your own synthesis. In the second sentence of the article you implied that Walmart created the role when you wrote that "The role was created by Sam Walton in the 1980s." "Greeter" is a role; it isn't as though being a Walmart greeter is a different role from being a greeter, any more than being a Walmart cashier is a different role from being a cashier. So your wording implies that Walton created the greeter concept. If you mean to say that "Sam Walton introduced the greeter role to his stories in 1980" that would be clearer if that's what you meant. Largoplazo (talk) 18:34, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• To expand on my point about synthesis: Mention in comedy pieces by David Letterman and Jeff Dunham doesn't qualify as substantial coverage in reliable sources. If you are drawing conclusions about the prominence of the Walmart greeter concept from those, that's your synthesis from your individual observations. Largoplazo (talk) 18:51, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• How would you feel about the argument that because the "Attention, Kmart shoppers" announcement has become a well-known meme, it follows that Kmart shoppers are genuinely notable beyond the trivial intersection of the respective notabilities of "shoppers" and "Kmart", and a Kmart shopper article is sustainable? There's even plenty of coverage of Kmart shoppers in reliable sources.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Largoplazo (talk) 18:53, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• There's no bibliographical source about Kmart shopper or Costco greeters. No article in major newspaper around the world. For Wal-Mart greeters, there is. There's an entire chapter about the history of Wal-Mart greeters in the book The Wal-Mart Way by Don Soderquist, there's dozens of articles in the Wall Street Journal, the HuffPo. It's called duration of coverage (2005-2016), diversity of sources (books, articles of several major newspaper around the world), reliability of published sources. We can even extend the topic and write about its usage in popular culture and comedy. I respect and understand your point of view, but I really believe that this one topic is eligible to have its own article. Have a nice Memorial Day. --Deansfa (talk) 19:11, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• What is a bibliographical source, as opposed to, say, the five sources I gave you (one of which was from a book, if that's what you intended by the use of "bibliographical")? (You say no major newspaper has written about them. Really? Did you look?) If a book about Walmart talks about Walmart greeters—well, what other greeters is a book about Walmart going to discuss? It certainly doesn't lead to the conclusion that Walmart greeters have any notability independent of the notability of Walmart. There is also duration of coverage, diversity of sources, etc., with respect to Kmart shoppers. "Attention, Kmart shoppers" became a meme in popular culture and comedy. Here's a book (yes, yet another book) all about Kmart with an entire chapter on Kmart's failure to focus properly on its shoppers. I'm not seeing anything that distinguishes the status of Kmart shoppers from the status of Walmart greeters for purposes of assessing individual notability.

In that Soderquist book I do not see a chapter that's all about greeters, and I see only half a dozen pages or so that even have the word "greeter" on them. On the other hand, it does have a chapter all about Walmart supplier relationships. Do Walmart suppliers therefore have their own notability as a class meriting treatment in a freestanding article?

Oh, it just came to my attention: Soderquist was the vice chairman and COO of Walmart. Not exactly an independent source. Largoplazo (talk) 19:29, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you think you can write an article about Kmart shoppers, good for you! I'm absolutely not interested by this topic. By the way, I did read the articles you shared and they're not centered about Kmart shoppers: To make people believe that Wall Street Journal/Forbes/Bloomberg articles centered on Wall Mart greeter are the same than local radio station reports about the closing of a Kmart store in Florida is a good try. --Deansfa (talk) 19:45, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You missed a trick. Several sources such as Ortega 1999, p. 202 credit the Crowley origin tale to "company folklore". Others trace it to a 1990s biography of Walton, some even quoting it directly. In the meantime, McClurg 2014, pp. 145–146 tells a quite different origin, at length. Dunnett & Arnold 2006 is yet more detailed coverage of the subject as a whole, incidentally, cited as primary source material by a few secondary sources such as Scharoun 2012, pp. 125–126.

  Uncle G (talk) 12:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ortega, Bob (1999). In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and how Wal-Mart is Devouring the World. Kogan Page Publishers. ISBN 9780749431778.
  • McClurg, Bob (2014). The Tasca Ford Legacy: Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday!. CarTech Inc. ISBN 9781613251287.
  • Dunnett, Jane; Arnold, Stephen J. (2006). "Falling Prices, Happy Faces: Organizational Culture at Wal-Mart". In Brunn, Stanley D. (ed.). Wal-Mart World: the World's Biggest Corporation in the Global Economy. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781135929138.
  • Scharoun, Lisa (2012). "The Rise of the Big Box". America at the Mall: The Cultural Role of a Retail Utopia. McFarland. ISBN 9780786490509.

• Merge - to greeter. This has been an interesting discussion and it proves that there is a debated history of this position covered in the literature. I propose that a redirect be left standing and that the material be generalized and merged to the extant piece on greeter, with a redirect established for store greeter. Walmart does not seem to have invented the position, so attributing something special to that chain via a freestanding article seems inappropriate, but there is definitely GNG oompf to support a piece on the generalized position — in which article extensive study of the Walmart case would be fully appropriate. Carrite (talk) 15:56, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The greeter article is entirely about social tourism and volunteers who welcome tourists in their city or region. This article doesn't really fit in there, in my opinion, because the topics are vaguely similar in their general nature, but are not particularly related in nature. Apples and oranges. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:34, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep – The topic meets WP:GNG, thus qualifying for a standalone article. Source examples include, but are not limited to those listed below. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• That's better than before, since at least there's a diversity of topics rather than being focused on the one pair of events where Walmart dismissed its greeters, then reinstituted them (which is really about Walmart, not about its greeters). I'm still skeptical, because it looks like cherry-picking, not making it clear why Walmart greeters are notable independent of greeters in general. Walmart has a huge number of stores so, yes, many greeters are Walmart greeters, but I'm still not sure I see that they have special significance beyond that to this particular intersection of two categories, "Walmart" and "greeter".

I arbitrarily ran a web search on "united flight attendant". I found such diverse articles as these: [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. I'm not sure that on the strength of these that United Airlines flight attendants have notability distinct from that of every other airline's flight attendants who, among them, engage in labor disputes and, individually, get involved in all sorts of newsworthy occurrences. Largoplazo (talk) 10:54, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Per Deansfa. I would generally find myself leaning to merge here, but the greeters at Walmart specifically are clearly notable as they've been covered by numerous reliable sources, and are considered a meme in America, thus meeting the standards for WP:GNG and qualifying to have their own, independent article. Omni Flames ^{let's talk about it} 08:05, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.