Is silencing Celine Dion an employee perk? Wal-Mart seems to think so

You won’t believe the incredibly employee-friendly moves Wal-Mart announced this week (irony alert).  

Just listen to this — the retail giant said it’d not only adjust the temperature to make it more comfortable for employees in its stores across the U.S., it’s going to change store background music so workers don’t have to listen to so much Celine Dion, according to the New York Times and other Internet news outlets.

Just the reprieve from Celine Dion is a huge step forward, it seems to us.

A few words of explanation: First — this is amazing to us — the interior temperature of every Wal-Mart is controlled from the chain’s Bentonville, AR, headquarters. Bentonville’s temperatures are often different than other U.S. locations — which led to numerous complaints about other locations being too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

So in a stunning act of generosity, management agreed to adjust store temps by a whopping one degree.

That’s right: Stores in the eastern part of the country will go from 74 to 75 degrees; in the west, they’ll fall from 75 to 74.

Hope nobody gets sick because of that severe temperature swing.

‘Please, no more Celine’

Here’s the skinny on the music front: Each store has been allowed to choose its own music, which in some cases has amounted to a single CD, playing over and over. Apparently, Celine Dion and Justin Bieber were particular irritants to many employees.

Now the retailer will bring back an in-store broadcasting service called Walmart Radio, with a D.J. who broadcasts music to stores.

In other news, the retailer also eased the terms of its new dress code. Stockers and other back-of-store workers will be allowed to wear jeans and T-shirts. Service-oriented workers will be able to expand their choice of pants from khaki to black or khaki-colored denim.

Finally, Wal-Mart announced plans we can take a bit more seriously: The company said 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 Wal-Mart this year, after it announced in February that it would raise the pay for a half-million entry-level store workers.

Good timing

Perhaps it’s our suspicious nature, but the timing of these blockbuster changes seems significant. They were announced at a rally of Wal-Mart workers held two days before the retailer’s annual stockholder meetings.

Nah, we’re being too cynical.