Because temperatures at Walmart stores across the United States are controlled remotely by the retailer's centralised systems here, employees stock shelves and tend to customers under conditions that, by many accounts, tend to be on the chilly side from one city to another.
So, at an employees' rally held here on Wednesday ahead of the retail giant's annual shareholders meeting this week, company executives made one of several concessions by agreeing to raise average store temperatures by 1 degree for the majority of Walmart locations.
From adjusting the air-conditioning to relaxing the dress code and even jazzing up a store's music, the overtures - however small they seemed - are part of Walmart's effort to project an image of a more caring employer.
A day earlier, Walmart, the country's largest private sector employer, said that it would raise the starting hourly wage for more than 100,000 managers in the United States. That was the second wave of wage increases at Walmart this year, after it announced in February that it would raise the pay for a half-million entry-level store workers.
"I love to listen to you, I love hearing what's working, what isn't. I want to hear your ideas. I even like to hear your frustrations," Greg Foran, the head of Walmart's United States division, told about 3,000 store workers.
"Our job, my job, is to make your life easier," Foran said.
Long a target of protests over low wages and rigid work schedules, Walmart is appearing to appease employees in the face of rising competition to hire and retain workers as the job market rebounds. Other retail chains, like Ikea and Gap, have also started to offer higher wages for store employees.
Walmart is also trying to cast off an image as an exploitative employer with an army of minimum-wage workers, some of whom reportedly depend on food stamps or other government aid. Now, after the latest wage increases, all Walmart workers make above the minimum wage, the retailer says.
Walmart also is trying to improve customer service as it struggles with sluggish sales at its supercentres and neighbourhood markets.
Sales at stores open for a year or more grew by just 1.1 per cent from a year earlier in the first quarter, though its performance over the last few quarters has improved slightly after a period of sales declines.
Not all workers were impressed with the changes. And not all of them were in Bentonville at the company's invitation.
Cindy Murray was in town with the labour union affiliate, Our Walmart, to speak in support of a resolution the group will be presenting on behalf of an activist investor at Friday's meeting that calls for giving shareholders the right to nominate board candidates.
Murray, who said she earned $13.20 as a fitting room clerk at a Walmart store in Laurel, Maryland, and struggled to pay her medical bills, said the retailer was skirting its workers' most pressing concerns.
"Anything Walmart does to makes life better for workers is awesome. But these changes are also basic things we need to do our jobs better and sell more," she said. "Hire more workers and better pay - those are the biggest things. I think they should stop dancing round the boat."
Kristin Oliver, Walmart's executive vice-president in charge of human resources, acknowledged that workers harboured remaining concerns, and said Walmart was working on more flexible scheduling.
She also said the company hoped that the combination of higher wages and friendlier policies would make its work force less transitory, and more likely to build careers with the retailer.
"What we've seen in the last few years is people jumping for small wage increases. People will move from one retailer to another for 25 cents an hour," Oliver said. "What we hope is going to happen with the investments we've made is to slow that down."
To entice workers to stay, Walmart on Wednesday announced a number of other changes to its employee policies.
The retailer will ease a much-criticised dress code that had required store workers, even those in physically intensive jobs, to wear shirts, vests and khakis. Now, stockers and other back-of-store workers will be allowed to wear jeans and T-shirts. Service-oriented workers will also be able to expand their choice of pants to black or khaki-coloured denim.
On special occasions, like days with sporting events or seasonal holidays, workers will be invited to wear team jerseys, ugly Christmas sweaters or pink shirts to support breast cancer awareness, said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman.
The retailer also said it was bringing back an in-store broadcasting service called Walmart Radio, with a DJ who broadcasts music to stores, to address numerous complaints from workers about having to listen to the same Justin Bieber and Celine Dion albums all day.
And 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.)
To acknowledge employees' complaints, executives at the rally used an imaginary Walmart worker, a puppet they called Willy Sellmore, who offered a surprisingly frank take on the retailer's policies. When an executive explained that the temperature changes had been discussed for a year, Willy appeared understandably baffled.
"A year? A year? How long does it take to adjust a thermostat?" he said. "This shouldn't be so hard."
© 2015 The New York Times News Service