Lower-income American households are running out of money at the end of every month, the discount retailer Dollar General said as it released dismal results that drove its shares down more than 30 per cent for their sharpest one-day drop on record.
When the American economy is too rough for Dollar General...
Dollar general contributes to this by only having like 3 jobs per store and they don't pay shit.
i think the future of most stores is just to close the inside, turn it into a mini-warehouse that you use an app to preorder or place an order at a window
no joke i work in a retail sector and a former co-worker asked a C-suite guy what the company's "vision" was for the future and he basically said that
so won't even be 3 jobs eventually. 1 maybe.
Honestly in store retail is a fucking nightmare of work that only exists because customers are careless and lazy. Customers will upend an entire table of folded clothes like pigs rooting through the brush for forage and SOMEONE has to fix it. It can take hours to fold and reorganize a section of clothing only for some shithead to come fuck it up again in 2 minutes.
I got fired from Walmart for looking too sad. Working in apparel was Sisyphean for this exact reason and I was expected to just be happy about it.
Working in apparel was Sisyphean
it really really is, thankfully I was mitigated from most of the clothing stuff (working in electronics, then housewares, etc, only having to fold sometimes) but it was still fucked. I hated every second of it. And doing the online order fulfillment, which was honestly the best work in retail because you're just going around looking for shit all day and not bothered by people, was still intensely frustrating because you'd have to literally check everywhere for things sometimes because people just put shit wherever. Every time I was given an order for an item that was in the back room, it was like, fuck yes because I wouldn't have to go digging for it
Being expected to pretend to be happy being an over-worked and grossly underpaid flesh-automaton is the most demoralizing part of the whole thing.
It's part of why I quit working and had a mental breakdown until I got on disability.
my first girlfriend was like that.. when we were first dating we used to go ShopKo because there was nowhere really to go and it was air conditioned, but she pulled clothes off the rack, held them up to herself, then threw them on the floor one after the other to my horror. I immediately picked all the clothes up and started putting them back on the rack, while she laughed at me. Then she saw how disgusted I was and she never did that again.
We should RETVRN to storefronts where you can see 1 (1) of every item so you know what is available and then you put in your order. Or you just put your order in in advance. The supermarket experience of poring over rows of identical packaging is a marketing hellscape that harms both customers and workers.
like literally just kiosk screens outside (or an air conditioned waiting place idk)
they can literally put cameras in the bins if they need to "see" the produce or whatever, if it's groceries, or just like idk fuck em what you get is what you get. it's less of an issue with household goods that are essentially identical
man, add to my complaints about wasted hours, the number of times I've had to painstakingly figure out how to put stuff back into a box, because some customer wanted to look inside, and if I don't put it back just right it'll be obvious it was tampered with and nobody will buy it
The whole point of the reail shop was to make the shoppers do the labor of walking the storehouse, finding the items, picking them, colating them, and transporting them. Converting every store into a mini warehouse will increase labor costs. It will require consolidation to achieve the vision you have put forth.
A store like Walmart has a back storage/staging area. Employees have to move product to the salesfloor anyways. They get interrupted by customers asking for stuff. They also have to worry about cleanups and security and organizing for customers rather than quick picking.
Dollar general takes that and scales it down. They remove the storage/staging. But it works the same way. The story is designed for customers and employees must support customers. Removing the customer presence eliminates a lot of friction from a systems standpoint.
Either way employees must walk the floor. You can't really offload the cost of that onto the customer. One employee picking 5 orders at once eliminates a lot of foot-traffic in the store.
I think if you did the analysis, you'd see exactly why retail stores exist and why Piggly Wiggly was an innovator in creating a massively profitable model - picking is a laborious, time consuming, human activity. If you can make your customers pick their own orders, you save massively on labor.
Piggly Wiggly didn't have pocket computers that make picking easier. Customers also couldn't send in orders digitally.
has this other guy heard of Amazon, like they seem to think warehouses don't work when i'm pretty sure Amazon isn't being bankrupted by the labor costs of not having customers making a mess of their stock through shopping
Have you seen what Amazon has to do to make their warehouses cost effective? It's a massive endeavor that requires incredible infrastructure. They aren't just converting random retail storefronts into fulfillment centers.
whatever you say hoss, I've worked retail and I can assure you that customers are morons who cause unimaginable amounts of busy work for people and I could have served a vastly greater quantity of goods to people if they were not physically present.
I can't tell you how many hours of my life have been wasted folding shit just so it looks nice only for it to be torn through again in a matter of moments. Or how many hours I've spent doing online order fulfillment looking for shit that, without the storefront, would simply be stored in a bin, but woops, no, I have to search literally an entire store because customers take shitc and put it in random places, because they're too fucking lazy and inconsiderate to even return the items to an employee if they don't want them.
Retail is a fucking hell of work that should not exist, and its workers are treated like dogshit servants
also doing online order fulfillment without the customers shopping is literally what this is about. I was ALREADY DOING IT. Just with the task made infinitely more difficult by people ALSO shopping. Idk what you're on where you think removing the customers presence from this is somehow untenable
Retail is a fucking hell of work that should not exist, and its workers are treated like dogshit servants
As are warehouse workers. I understand that retail workers suffer. I just don't think that you could convert every retail shop into a micro-fulfillment center. It just wouldn't be cost effective.
also doing online order fulfillment without the customers shopping is literally what this is about. I was ALREADY DOING IT.
I mean, this is just silly on the part of the company and won't last because, as you say, it won't actually be cost effective to do it. Retail shops are not meant for warehouse operations and cannot be converted effectively. They're not better off converting every retail location in a micro-warehouse, they're better off closing 75% of locations and consolidating into larger warehouses with actual fulfillment infrastructure.
But the people working them are going to be abused, over worked, and underpaid all the same. It'll be a different qualitatively, but trauma isn't comparable. Both jobs are terrible under capitalism.
I think the biggest problem with what you're saying is that stores are already doing it. What does happen, can happen. If having customers check out their own groceries and pick their own product is so profitable, and the other is not, then why are they doing pickups? On the one hand these retail giants are so smart they're using the Piggly Wiggly model because it's the most cost-effective thing but they're also throwing all that away on apps and online ordering?
Distribution chains already flow from larger warehouses to smaller stores. A store that is a last-mile micro fulfillment center works just fine in the distribution chain. In fact, when you order online they already ship stuff to their stores for your order. They're already taking things from the larger fulfillment center and moving it to a store. Then an employee gets it ready for you to pickup. They don't actually have stock of everything listed on their site. They even bounce inventory from store to store.
Walmarts are warehouses. Lowe's Hardware and Home Depot are warehouses. Sam's Club, Costco, BJs, etc. They're not distribution centers but they are warehouses.
It's a valid point. I would say there are two hypotheses - one is that running fulfillment out of those stores is cost effective. The other is that online ordering is a required customer experience to compete with Amazon despite it being less cost effective.
I think we're seeing the death of retail, not its transformation. Retail still hold all of this real estate, so they're trying to make a go of it, but drop shipping from centralized fulfillment centers with robotics and fit-to-purpose infrastructure and technology is going to beat Instacart and gig-economy serfs on a cost basis.
The only reason DG might try to turn a store into a mini-fulfillment center is to liquidate it's inventory as cheaply as possible and then shutter the place. They are reporting themselves that their customers are literally running out of money. More than likely, when their customers can't buy, they'll just shutter the store and pay a Big Lots to just liquidate all the inventory.
All these shops are sitting on dying commercial real estate. That whole market is falling apart. In the end, it's just gonna be bankruptcy proceedings and consolidations, because no one can make your local dollar general into a fulfillment center without a major capital investment and that's highly unlikely to turn a profit.
It would be nice if all these spaces could convert to housing. I want to tank home prices from the sheer amount of housing options available...
Oh don't worry. We can leave it up to the anarchists to turn derelict commercial space into housing.
AND FURTHERMORE, I would really like to stress AGAIN the HOURS OF MY LIFE wasted on cleaning up after customers like they're toddlers.
Multiply that by every person working retail. That is untold millions of labor hours spent fixing problems that should not exist.
You go off about efficiency or cost or whatever, but guess what you're not considering? The current model is only cost effective because the cost of these MILLIONS OF LABOR HOURS are artificially depressed by capitalist labor relations and low minimum wages. You think people want to be servants picking up after grown adults who act like children? Fuck no, but they have rent and groceries to pay for, or they'll DIE.
Like tell me more about what's cost effective when this is only "cost effective" or even POSSIBLE because of wage slavery
Uhhh, warehouses also have the exact same benefit of capital labor relations and low minimum wages and they still employ far more people than retail outfits do because, again, the customers do the picking. I don't know what to tell you. Go work at an Amazon fulfillment center?
you, a genius: so what if people working in stores are essentially servants reduced to base drudgery, literally in some cases cleaning up actual shit. This is the same as people doing actually productive labor, i'm very smart
I don't understand why you are so belligerent.
The thread started when someone said that the move is to turn every retail Dollar General into a fulfillment center. Now you're trying to establish that you are part the most oppressed class of workers - retail workers.
I'm done.
it is a wild thread, the introduction of economies of scale on the one hand vs I shouldn't have to do this on the other. I've got no idea how this played out like this
Pain, trauma, suffering, the need to be seen, the need to be heard, the anguish of alienation.
And yet what you do is more important than a huge amount of tech & office bazinga BS jobs. Society needs grocers. You are helping feed people!
But yeah, in an ideal world both warehouse and retail, whatever that looks like, is run by machines. Let robots move the goods from a bin to a car/bag/shipping box and let us focus on art, music, enriching ourselves.
ordering stuff for in store pick up is the best. Roll up, grab your shit, leave. No wasted time wandering the aisles
I had a couple of experiences with online grocery shopping, specially during the pandemic. One was in a fancy web store where I had to see every product to select what I needed, the other one a small minimarket where I sent my grocery list in a whatapp chat and was done, if there was something missing they just chat me back. From what brands, I just said wharever except Nestlé. When I moved to another part of the city that minimarket was a great loss from us.
Lmao returning to tradition of the old-timey grocers' then, but in a tech-broey way
My building have a mini market with no employees, you just take what you need and pay with the app. I guess they still have at least one employee supplying a couple of different buildings, but that makes its less that one employee for store.
Seems like there's some kind of crisis of production going on here.
all the grocery stores where I live are like almost 2x the price of when I was living in a bigger city. the demographics of the town are such that like half or more are on disability, SSI, foodstamps etc.
grocery stores are gouging food stamp customers because they know they have no choice.
grocery stores are gouging
food stampcustomers because they know they have no choiceI live in a similar place, so the lines at Dollar General and Tree are like 20-45min every time I walk in there since they hire like 1 person to do the work of 10 (all the stores declining in that report do that) reminding me of Kmart before its demise and at least 2/3 of the town shops there. Sometimes I have to make do without since I can't wait and will just have to spend more at the grocery when I can combine it with another trip to justify the gas.
you don't have to wait in line when you just steal shit and walk right out.
In the city absolutely, this rural not happening unless you look like the locals, they already eye me half the time like I'm stealing.
If the extraction class was looking for a canary in the coal mine, this is it. You’ve officially squeezed too hard and are in danger of being eaten.
You’ve officially squeezed too hard and are in danger of being eaten.
eh, at this point the average American is much more likely to support fascist shit-heels than spontaneously turn to socialism.
Remember, the coolzone will not happen without organising.
Americans will not spontaneously rise up. They will just get poorer, more miserable, more criminal, more fucked.
There are places everywhere all over the world that are more desperately poor. And without organising they too do not spontaneously rise up. They simply die.
The work needs doing.
i think ppl who say things like "once conditions are bad enough, we'll start party rockin'" is unaware of things like hierarchy of needs or how bad things used to be historically (in the us)
Dollar General is a big part of the reason why.. that shit is not cheap, or if it's cheap it will be ineffective and you'll have to keep buying it, but its ALWAYS nearby any poor neighborhood
Exactly, dollar general tends to be in poorer neighborhoods but is expensive as shit. At least around here, they only get business by being the only place to buy basic necessities.
There was one a block away from a homeless encampment a few of us were working with, and some of their basics were 50-100% more than the neighboring parts of town. There is a little public transport in this city, but definitely not adequate for most people to be able to use it for errands. Of course people in these neighborhoods are always running out of money, Dollar General is picking their pockets.
Unrelated, but the ice box outside was not only locked, it was just straight up off. This was during an extended heat wave. A worker mentioned that corporate stopped sending ice because it had been getting stolen. Just overall a shitty store to have to deal with.
Exactly. Their whole game plan is to swoop into poor neighborhoods where they can edge out any local grocery stores or markets, IF there are any to begin with, and overcharge the poorest people trying to subsist.
And it seems to be working because they're everywhere.
I recently drove about 6000 miles and I can't tell you how many Dollar General stores I saw on that trip, but I know in one town we saw 3 of them within a couple miles of each other in an area that was obviously struggling.
This and the big mac index aint pointing to anything favorable for the American worker at all
didn't expect a walmart vs amazon struggle session in these comments, but there it is! what a world.
if you're talking about me I'm not pro amazon or whatever, but I am pro "never have customers interacting with a store full of merchandise, even under communism" like I am sorry but unless you're going to gulag bad customers who don't do the work of picking up after themselves, it is dogshit slavery that needs to be abolished. No more of it. No more hours of peoples' lives wasted cleaning up after fellow adults just because they're fucking lazy. so I am pro "warehouse distribution model" if anything.
They can't shoplift if they can't go into the shop!man I used to shoplift tea tree essential oil and they just stopped carrying it. now if i want to buy it it's like 28 dollars online??? I need to find a different brand I guess idk
You gotta find the warehouse where the oil is stored and do the old hi-viz vest trick
Definitely depends on the area and a handful of variables, but I feel like there's an environmental argument to be had for frequent good deliveries to households.
It could be scheduled in a similar way as waste management and households just put in a recurring order that they could update every week with one off needs. Heck, it could even get fancy and offer to let you pick your produce at the door or van. It could be door-to-door or block-by-block with assistance for people that need it.
If this was a socially supported and accepted model for getting basic goods then a non-small amount of car trips would just not happen.
It would be really interesting if someone with a background in this and access to relevant numbers could see if something like that would be beneficial, or could think outside the box for other ways to make spread out metropolitan life slightly less environmentally shit (with the caveat that significant structural changes still need to happen obv).
If they had tried being Billion Dollar General and targeting the Pentagon as their primary customer they wouldn't be in this fix
Dollar stores should haven't been existed in the first place.
None of them are good but Dollar General specifically exists to exploit underserved markets. Dollar Tree still has cheap stuff of slightly dubious quality, but you can find good stuff there for cheap.
When I first moved into this neighborhood we had a Bottom Dollar, then Aldi bought them out and closed almost all of them getting rid of the closest grocery store that served a fair amount of the community. There was one like another 5 minutes away or another one 10 minutes away on arterial streets. Then the one that was 5 minutes away closed after it was sold and the only reason it's a grocery store today is because the previous owners insisted the buyer had to make it a grocery store, otherwise you'd just have a food desert for a lot of the immediate vicinity that had the poorest families in the city.
Dollar General moved into where that original Bottom Dollar grocery store was and was the only convenient place to get food for a few years if you didn't have a car. There's another Dollar General 10 minutes up the road where a Dollar Tree used to be. There's yet another probably another 7 minutes away from that second one, after that I couldn't tell you since they're fucking everywhere and there's probably 3 I'm not even aware of because I just don't turn right at a certain intersection.
counterview: every store should be, at most, a dollar store
I used to live in a community where the closest shelf stable food was about 2 miles of unwalkable highway to get to a "store" that just had cans of beans, frozen pizzas, cigarettes, soda and ketchup/mustard bottles. everything was at 200% markup over the Walmart 40 minutes away, over the ridge by way of a sketchy ass logging road.
a dollar general was under construction when I left that was just 3 miles down the road along a more normal, well maintained highway and honestly a lot of people were excited by the prospect. granted, almost every household gardened and canned so there were roadside stands and an active barter system for fresh produce, so it wasn't exactly a food desert but poverty and material insecurity was pervasive. with the coming of the Dollar General, now you could buy pet food and a phone charger without spending 2 hours on the road burning fuel or inviting death when the mountain roads were icy in winter.
people knew it would fuck them over as all big merchants in the area did, but it was a dire enough scenario that it was preferable to the status quo.
I remember when I found out I was unironically like, "damn, we are moving up in this world."
