Always low standards. Always.
Good news, Walmart employees: The head office has heard your complaints. No, not about being paid horribly (some employees got a boost in pay earlier this week, but it's still not what any rational person would consider
a living wage), or being forced to work sporadic and unpredictable hours, or having to bring your own
backroom supplies. But in response to the complaints over it being uncomfortably warm or cold in the stores, they will be overhauling
Big Thermostat.
According to the New York Times, temperatures at stores in the East and central regions will rise to 75 degrees from 74. (In stores in the West, average temperatures will fall from 76 to 75.)
Note that the temperatures of all Walmart stores are controlled from
Skynet the Walmart home office, because you don't want to leave that sort of the thing in the hands of mere managers. But the good news doesn't end there; in response to complaints about repetitive music being played on endless loops in some stores,
Skynet the home office will also be consolidating music choices.
Wal-Mart is also changing the music in its stores and will have a DJ based in its corporate marketing department that will pick the music piped to all the stores.
I suspect this is less about placating workers complaining about "Celine Dion's greatest hits on loop" and more about a realization that subjecting workers to 24/7 Celine Dion on loop when your store also sells guns and ammunition is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Also, there will be some poor sap in the world whose resume will soon read
DJ, Walmart corporate marketing. They will never, ever live that down.
Other changes: You will soon be able to wear black pants in a variety of materials, but you will continue to pay for them yourselves. Walmart isn't made of pants, you know.
All this comes right before Walmart's annual shareholder meeting. Degrading sales and store conditions have been catching up to Walmart, and those things impact the bottom line so they're the sort of things that get shareholders upset. These changes won't solve those problems, but it appears they're hoping to at least slow what has been inching perilously close to a full-scale worker revolt.