How?

[jowensphoto]

It's called a "Loss Leader." They take a loss on it to make a profit elsewhere.

The employee are trained in high pressure sales, not photography in any way. I have a student that I've been working with over about a year now who was a walmart photog. She thought "hey, this is easy!" and off on her own she went. When she got her camera she thought it was broken. Literally.
They cannot change anything in the studio. It's set up for them and they press the button. The only adjustment they can do to the camera is up and down and turning it a bit. That's it. Lighting is set up and they can move it a little, but that's it.
They're taught a bit about posing-the Wal Mart way and told to SELL the other things!!!

I will concur with the parrot - I have relative working in this capacity same co. Said relative knows absolutely nothing about photography and has no outside interest in photography but tells people she is a photographer. Paid very low, always at battle with manager about schedule (lack there of). Store uses a Canon 40D, not sure what lens. No adjustments allowed to exposure, - lighting never changes. They have a card that has mandatory settings to be checked before each session.

This is exactly the experience I had! Although, we did change the lighting via clicking a mouse... they had cute names for the setups like "Profile" and "American Flag". I thought those were the actual names of lighting schemes until I got out of that place and started working with a high end private studio.

I do remember working at the other retail place and we did learn a little about lighting, but even that was minimal.