Walmart has a 'swat team' to prevent the company from offending customers by Hayley Peterson on Oct 30, 2015, 12:32 PM Advertisement
 Walmart has a team of a dozen employees who are responsible for preventing the retailer from offending customers with controversial products. The "swat team" of workers scour Walmart's website daily in search of potentially offensive items, like distasteful Halloween costumes, Bloomberg reports. Sometimes offensive items slip under their radar, however, like the Israeli soldier costume for kids that made headlines this week. Walmart pulled the costume after customers expressed outrage over the ensemble, which featured a toy machine gun in ads. The Walmart team's work is sometimes dictated by the day's news, and they stay on top of headlines to make sure they aren't missing anything that has potential to offend, according to Bloomberg. For example, the team started pulling Confederate flag merchandise from the site after a gunman who displayed the flag on his social media profile shot and killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, SC earlier this year, Bloomberg reports. In the age of social media, it's important for retailers to appear politically and socially correct, and customers tend to see a company's products as an extension of the business itself and its beliefs. Some retailers found selling Confederate flag merchandise after the Charleston shooting, for instance, were branded as racist by critics on social media. But in the case of Walmart, it can be difficult to make sure every product is inoffensive. The retailer sells millions of items on its website and partners with many third-party sellers online, as well. A third-party vendor got Walmart in trouble last year around Halloween. The retailer had to pull a "Pashtun Papa" costume sold by the vendor after the costume was criticized as racist on social media. SEE ALSO: Walmart is under fire for selling an 'Israeli soldier' costume to kids
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