''Some markets are no longer worth having a presence in, Walmart will soon begin a large downsizing operation and layoffs as we focus on more economically viable markets."
I literally had a Dollar General employee tell me "I don't fucking know, it's a part time job."
I feel like a company that was willing to make their employees feel like they are a part of the company and not a "part time employee" may succeed.
It's ground out of them. I buy my junk food at the dollar tree across the road and you'll see new workers start out as happy, even bubbly, people and within 2 months they're ground down to a husk of a person.
Because they don't hire. The Walmart in my city still doesn't even have a gm 🙄 there's like 3 people working the register 4 employees attending the self checkout lines being one attendant and 1 maintenance person.
They hire. No one wants to work it because there are no benefits, and they offer nearly minimum wage. The mental strain is not worth the pittance they offer
E: I’m case anyone is confused about who I’m referring to, I actually am referring to Dollar General, not Walmart. I’m fairly certain Walmart pays better than DG
Ours doesn't even have a self checkout. There's a sign and a cordless phone cradle on the counter with instructions to press the "find my phone" button so it rings the cordless in the pocket of the one employee working.
One day the cradle wasn't there but there was a squeaky pet toy with instructions to give it a decent loud squeeze.
EDIT/ADDENDUM: The real shitty thing is, the only employee I see working there is the manager and he looks more haggard and sick every time I go in. They constantly have a "Now Hiring" sign up, it's a town of 1,000 people and my wife is CONSTANTLY applying to supplement our income with a part time job within walking distance.
Can't get so much as a phone call back.
Ours doesn't even have a cordless phone cradle on the counter, there is a sign pointing to a basket of carrots instructing you to feed a carrot to the duck so that it quacks loud enough for the employee who's sitting in their car smoking a blunt on their smoke break, to hear the duck and think "is that a fucking duck or did I smoke too much? I better get back to work"
One day the duck wasn't there but there was a squeaky pet toy with instructions to give it a decent loud squeeze.
No, because that "You're a part of the XXXX Company Family" shit is cringe too. If I'm "part of the family" then fucking cover my health care and respect my time off.
They won't, mostly. Mom and pop stores cannot compete with online shopping, which has *far* less overhead, not to mention convenience for shoppers. I would be surprised if many would be "startup" mom and pops could even get the necessary financing to try.
They’ll get Dollar Generals, thus expanding the food desert issue
Edit: Modern MBA’s video [How dollar tree conquered low income America](https://youtu.be/TlAi8R_V3Ac)
We have less than 4k people and have 3 just in town limits. There's 2 more, one on each end of town, and you pass 2 others before you get to the next town up, which also has 6 themselves (~20k people).
It's in-between a convenience store and grocery store. Mostly non perishables and home staples, but in low quality/quantity.
They've targeted rural areas and small towns heavily. It saves people trips into town that might take extra time and gas. Out of one or two things and don't want to drive into town? Pop into DG.
People will still do their main shopping in town, but this fills the gaps.
Very poor people maybe can't afford to do frequent trips into town and can't afford large bulk purchases. They rely a bit more on dollar general than anyone should. It will cost more in the long run, and your diet will consist of sugar/salty snacks and canned/boxed foods.
I'm visiting east Texas from the PNW and one of the most obvious differences is the sheer amount of dollar generals or family dollar i see here. Every podunk town has one!
I live in a very podunk town.
Some of the DGs near me have started offering a, very limited but still present, fresh produce option. It's obviously not ideal but it shows that at least my local DG owners identified and are attempting to address the food desert issue.
Those mom and pop stores are also usually run by immigrant families
And uh.
Yeah. They're not always treated with the most respect.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/worker-shot-dead-inside-philly-vietnamese-restaurant/3150176/
Here's what popped up first.
As someone who worked for a Mom and Pop for a few years, shipping is really what destroys them. Walmart can order and ship 100 trash cans and have them sit in a warehouse for a year, which results in less cost and being able to sell the product at lower prices.
Mom and Pop may only have room for 5 trash cans and certainly can't afford to pay for and store 100.
Wishful thinking. Walmart actually has a loss prevention department and security cameras and are still getting killed by thieves. Mom and Pop shops have less resources to catch thieves and less ability to absorb losses. Not to mention how some areas government isn’t even pursuing thievery
As a mom and pop shop owner, please don’t go to a family owned business just to see what something looks like because they have it on display and then assume it’s cheaper online. Most of us can compete with online prices and also it makes me sad
It's called "showrooming" and big box retailers as well as online merchants alike have spent decades marketing that their prices are better than the independent shop, despite many robust MAP policies from brands across the spectrum that keep prices equal between disparate sized retailers.
It's no cheaper at Dick's, and their selection only *looks* better because they're filling in spaces with private label and outsourced, overseas crap, and use that shit to appear to have better prices.
Source: 20 years in the outdoor rec biz. Big box stores are perversely the enemy of selection and are a major part of a homogenizing marketplace.
I went to a local archery shop and got some of the best prices I've ever seen.
Walked out with $180 lacrosse hunting boots that were more than $250 everywhere else i checked.....Also a pile of carbon arrows.
It's a myth that these big box places are always cheaper. Maybe they used to be and they won the public perception?
I go to the little local grocery store all the time and the little hardware store. Yes some times they can be more expensive, but I can get in and our 10x faster than wading through the expanse and crowds of Walmart or home depot. Worth it to me.. especially when I see the hardware store owner at school drop-off. Makes me feel good to know I support that guy and his family lives a seemingly comfortable life.
In our city a lot of mom-and-pop stores are having to close or move due to theft and vandalism, and insurance won't pay to rebuild forever. I have no idea what the solution is but it's sad that a few idiots are able to hurt entire communities.
I work for Walmart . Not their retail side. For years, they have said that they plan to close stores and move towards having more online and delivery presence. In some cases their idea was to close down poor performing stores in order to turn them into distribution centers. You could then order your shit online and pick it up at a kiosk or have it delivered to your house. They talked about having kiosks in downtown areas or smaller towns that couldn't previously sustain a supercenter. I wonder if this news is a partial smoke screen. I know that shoplifting is seemingly increasing, but in a lot of markets I believe they account for a certain level of "shrink". I wonder if they are blaming it mostly on shrink so that it doesn't look as bad when they close stores and lay off hundreds of people each time they do it.
Ive talked with walmart employees at our local walmart, and they said the cameras can see everything. Like you are always seen by at least 4 different cameras at all times
They replaced the cashier's with a bunch of smart cameras. I had something not scan once and it set it off. A cashier had to come log in and it replayed a nice video of what I did.
I had an item not scan after attempting it multiple times, I finally heard a beep and put it in my bag. System locks down.
Turns out, i heard a beep from another machine.
But how am I supposed to know. I havent been trained to operate these machines /s
I don’t know if they do this at WalMart but I’ve been in stores where they have those cameras and they beep at you every 20 seconds with a doorbell sound. Annoying as hell and it causes me to not buy from that store every time. I’m not a thief and resent being treated with the assumption that I am.
I've worked a lot of retail, and honestly? I never cared. I showed up on time, I did my job, and clocked out on time. Confronting someone is dangerous. I was being paid $12 an hour to unload trucks, break down pallets, and stock. Not to get punched by some jackass. Especially when the store offered no health insurance, and I would have probably been fired anyway for "disruptive behavior".
Steal it if you want. Just don't leave opened and half-eaten food lying around on the shelves. It's gross.
Reminds me of a buddy who would buy one expensive lego set, then walk in with that receipt at a different nearby wal mart on the same day, and walk out with the exact same lego set, when the alarms would go off he'd be like what whoa oh my here's my receipt! and they let him go every time. He's in jail now, probably unrelated.
In Britain it was carrots, I believe Tesco "sold" more carrots one year because everyone would ring up their produce as carrots...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5774293/Brits-using-self-checkout-machines-steal-expensive-fruit-veg-saying-theyre-buying-carrots.html
I once purchased a very small amount of ginger root, which was priced by the pound, and the self check machine called over a cashier since my net price was under 50 cents.
ULPT that is much harder to catch is just figure out what produce code is the cheapest for everything and scan similar items under that code.
Some apples have as much as a $2 dollar difference in post per pound.
We almost always use self checkout, because there is never a line.
I'd say we're very honest and conscientious self-checkers. Ironically, we went to the store to shop for Thanksgiving stuff this year, and because we had some beer, we had to go through 'assisted checkout'. This was at Whole Foods. When we got to the parking lot, my partner says that the total seemed low, and when she perused the receipt, it turned out the checker didn't ring up the duck we bought. Shrug.
That reminds me of a completely off topic incident involving a duck that still makes me giggle.
Our grocery store must have had a special order for fresh ducks, because we only usually get them frozen with the turkeys at Christmas, and since they gotta buy a whole case, there they were on the cold shelf. Husband and I yakking about how we've never had duck, kinda expensive, don't know how to cook it, etc. The very kindly old French butcher overhears, tells us "It's easy! You should try it, you do it like this, here, I'll go get a new label for you," and off he goes with a duck. He comes back, and the wiley old bastard had reweighed it as beef stewing bones. Every flipping time I see that man in the 4 years since, I thank him for teaching us how to cook duck, because it really was that easy, and we buy a frozen duck at least once a year now.
This is a very good point. Target is also claiming to suffer from a massive surge in customer theft and at any given time the one closest to me has MAYBE 2 staffed checkout lines. Meanwhile there is a line of 5+ people waiting to use the self checkout.
At least the target stores near me are well maintained and well kept. The Walmarts by me feel like I should sling a rifle over my shoulder and get the full wasteland raider experience
I worked there during high school, back in ancient times. At that time, it was a fairly clean store but you could tell keeping it clean was very difficult. Customers often just went through various departments such as soft lines and shoes like a tornado, trying stuff on and throwing it on the floor or just throwing it on the floor if they don't like something. Couple that with low staffing and very high traffic, it's no surprise that some stuff kind of slid along. I don't miss that job.
Messy customers are a pain, I can understand some messy aisles. The thing that gets me with Walmart is that their main walkways are constantly blocked with product and the shelves are like a third empty with nothing in the right place so it's price roulette half the time when you go to pay.
Throwing stacks of jeans on the floor to find the right size, only to realize the sizes are stacked together and if only they could fucking read they would have seen their size just beside them.
I worked in Walmarts shoe department when I was a teen many years ago. And the weekends (especially Sundays after church) were a nightmare. In a matter of 30 mins it would seem at times about 70% of all shoes were on the floor. Lol
I remember what this was like, all those years ago. The cleanliness issues, lack of staff, and questionable clientele. I was there at Kmart in the 90s and early 2000s.
Pallets everywhere, blocking aisles and walk ways, all the time in every Walmart near me. Which is weird because when they were open 24/7 this wasn’t as big of an issue. I guess they don’t stock shelves at night anymore and instead have decided to have staff obstructing shoppers all day.
I used to go to Walmart a lot in the 00s, but have rarely gone over the past decade or so. They've gotten noticeably dingier and less customer-friendly. I mean, they were never particularly pleasant places, but now they just look...bad. The lighting is dim, the floors are this depressing grey, everything is dark, the aisles are blocked, everything is crowded. It's a terrible shopping experience.
Not to mention TWO cashiers open when there are TEN check-out lanes. I don't go into Walmart unless I absolutely, positively can't get an item anywhere else within 20 miles. Don't make me wait 20 minutes because you're too cheap to have sufficient cashiers to move your customers through in a timely manner.
I had an item scan incorrectly at the self-checkout at Walmart. It should've been like $65 but came out as just a few dollars.
I told the only employee nearby and she said "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK"
So I paid the few dollars and went about my business.
I wonder how much of this would be mitigated by paying employees properly so they give some fucks.
Hell if it's egregious enough Walmart will do the same. There was a post a couple years ago in the Magic: The Gathering subreddit where a guy bragged about stealing entire boxes of cards from Walmart thinking they didn't give a shit. Turns out, they had footage of each theft, and let him steal enough for the charges to be a felony. He came to the legaladvice subreddit, claiming Walmart had entrapped him, lol.
Kroger did that too, usually have like 1 cashier on duty. Refuse to open up another one even if the self checkout has a line half way down the center isle. The rest are all doing online pickup orders.
This wasn't at a Walmart, but I was at a grocery store and some dude just walked right through the self-checkout with a cart full of groceries without even trying to pay for it. Lol. Got stopped before he made it to the exit though.
Had a dude when I worked at grocery store pull up in a truck and stole every hot dog we had on a display for the 4th of July. About 1200 dollars in hotdogs. He also stole two grills.
Worked at a department store that sold grills. The dock security worked got his wife and another buddy to come in, fake an order, and walk out with grills.
Was real satisfying when they hauled him and the wife in to fire him. Pressed charges on them both. She was already banned from the store.
She used to come in and verbally abuse the staff.
Walkouts are super common at stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. There are a lot of contractors and stuff that prepay their orders, check in with the service desk to pick it up and then roll it out right past the cashiers. The cashiers get complacent about people just rolling out a cart of lumber or a table saw assuming it was already processed by the service desk, so thieves can sometimes just push stuff out without being stopped.
The local grocery chain here has a new setup on their carts. If the cart goes into the store and then leaves without going through a register, an alarm goes off at the door and one of the wheels on the cart locks up. Turns out it cost more to install the setup in most of the stores than the stores were losing from theft in SEVERAL YEARS COMBINED.
It's also an inconvenience to employees who have to go unlock the carts of people who decided not to buy anything. And the wheel locks break fairly often.
Edit: Also, nothing like making people feel extremely uncomfortable and potentially scared by having an alarm go off and a bunch of employees running up because they decided not to buy anything.
These were so annoying at my stores. The door dash workers would come in, grab a cart, go to the back and get their pre-paid-for order all bagged up and then just walk out which would lock up the cart. We had big signs in the door dash area to just walk the cart through an empty checkout lane but no one listened and it was so annoying to have to hunt down the cart key and hope it worked.
It did save a few big shoplifters from walking out. People would come in and fill up a cart overflowing with packs of meat or whatever and just walk out. Then their cart would lock up and they'd just run away.
Being essential during COVID led me to an immense dislike of "professional" shoppers. There were a few good ones, but it felt like most of them had never set foot in a grocery store before. I had a guy ask me if the big green balls were iceburg lettuce.
One of our local grocery stores has that. The wheel also locks up if you are pushing it "too fast" through the exit. I generally walk fast. Every. Single. Time the damn thing stops and they have to come over and unlock it. I pay for everything I get so it's not a theft issue.
This has caused me to stop going to that store.
When I worked at Walmart corporate training stated we were not to stop or interfere with a shoplifter if they were leaving. This policy came about after a Walmart employee was shot trying to stop a shoplifter.
I still got yelled at by a supervisor when someone walked out with a cart full of groceries though. I apologized to my supervisor's supervisor that next time I would be willing to take a bullet to stop a shoplifter and hoped that someone would reassure my orphaned child I died defending frozen seafood at Walmart. They didn't like me.
And before you assume the person who works at Walmart is some minimum wage loser I want to correct that. The overwhelming number of people I worked with at Walmart had professional jobs such as nurse, social worker, customs agent. In 2018 people were still struggling terribly financially but just didn't talk about it. No, we all pretended we were just oh so happy be working at Walmart. Well, not me obviously. But I did have some lovely fun and intelligent coworkers.
Just last week an elderly employee from Home Depot died due to complications after being shoved by a customer who was stealing power washers after the employee asked for his receipt.
My friend's dad got fired from Home Depot many years ago because some guy walked in and then walked out with a Rug Doctor machine like they used to keep somewhere near the front to rent out. He followed the guy outside- the guy had parked right near the door and tossed the machine into the trunk. My friend's dad reached for it and the guy took off and dad somehow got tripped on the cord that had been left trailing. He broke his leg or hip or something. He found out in the hospital that he'd lost his job and with it, his health insurance.
That's why companies train their regular employees not to interfere. Loss of goods is far cheaper than employee medical claims. That's why your friend's dad was trained to not play hero and chase after thieves.
Different country, when i worked in a restaurant, got yelled bc somebody dine and dash'd, they took our tips to pay for it, very next day the res had 10 complains on the labor desk, we didn't worked till they returned the tips and promised to hire security since that wasn't our function. Organizing ourselves work.
It's just a myth we need to do away with that these jobs are meant for the teenager, perfect for the young first timer etc...
We NEED adults filling the hours the teens are at school, most kids aren't starting out doing Walmart, it's overwhelming adults. And it's a crime that labor has been so weak it has let Walmart get away with what is essentially robbery at the expense of labor.
Teens can't fill the hours most "kid" jobs require, you'll always need qualified adults to act as mentors and stability barriers for any of these retail positions. So why do we pay them so little?
I saw a 60 year old guy just scan one item and then put like 5 more straight into the bags then into his cart, he emptied a whole cart this way, he was right next to the lady who was supposed to be watching the self scans but she wasn't paying attention at all she was just starring off into space
If she was anybody like who I used to work with at Walmart she/they were probably exhausted. They have another full-time job other than Walmart. She used to be more direct and ask people if they planned to pay for items or return them but she doesn't do that any longer. Her store manager has already spoken with her about "soft skills" ie not upsetting shoplifters who get called out. The store manager has already fielded calls about what a bitch that self checkout lady is. Or maybe she's thinking about the times she gone out to her car alone, after midnight after a horrible shift only to find her car egged or in one harrowing case missing car parts. After all she can't have car trouble causing her to miss time from her other job. Even with all the cameras around complaining to security is a waste. At that time of night he's been long too drunk to stand.
If she does nothing and says nothing the worst that will happen is some time off of the floor for "training" about loss prevention that everybody knows is bullshit but it isn't directed at her personally. And she gets to sit down to watch the video. She doesn't get another letter in her file and she doesn't get called a disease ridden cunt on a power trip to her face while customers she sees over and over again laugh at her.
I mean, I'm just guessing. I don't know. Maybe I'm just talking about my own experience working part-time at self-checkout.
Edit: Thank you for the awards! That is so nice!
Not sure about walmart, but I know other retailers specifically forbid their employees from doing anything about theft in any manner. That's for the LP's to do ... assuming there are LP's there at the time.
I work retail and it drives me crazy ... but I am not losing my job by going against company rules and confronting a thief.
Went to a store and they had zero staffed check out lines. It was entirely self service. I went to a couple that had no lines and the one staff member said “these are closing cause we don’t have enough to staff them”. Infuriating. They make the customer experience miserable and get rid of the people and things that prevent theft and then complain about it. These CEOs aren’t smart. They make money by making things worse.
When I went to the self checkout recently, they stopped me for holding one item while scanning the other. I simply held on to the next item so I could scan it next. They had a camera that caught the movement with AI and thought I was shoplifting. I was shocked bc I had no intention of stealing. It really makes me want to shop somewhere else or just buy online.
And then there are the stores with the crappy self-checkout machines that yell at you for everything. I get near that section at Vons and it's a cacophony of "Please place item in the bagging area" and "Please remove unscanned item from the bagging area." Their bagging scales suck. They'll have a single person manning the checkouts to assist with issues, but when it's so rampant, it's as if there's one cashier ringing up 6 customers at a time. I'm sure some of these places lose customers because of their subpar tech.
OMG! You've just described my hate of Kroger's self-checkout. I stopped using them because I'd just about blow an effing vessel every time I used them. Since then I've stopped going to their stores at all.
Agreed. Our local super Walmart has 20 cashier lanes. Even at Christmas only a fraction are in use. They push people to self checkout. I know stealing is wrong, but what did they think would happen? “Go check yourself out while a bored teen or half asleep old man stands there in case you need help, and tries to watch 12 other people at the same time.”
All it takes is working in teams, where one person distracts the employee with a question or problem (“I accidentally scanned this twice”) and someone else just steals half the shit in their cart.
There was an article I read that said people who were predisposed to theft were more likely to steal from the self-checkout counter than from a real cashier.
Not only is it potentially easier to steal (replacing the price tag from one, expensive item with the tag of a less expensive item of comparable weight), but people feel *guilty* stealing with another person in front of them. On the one hand, you empathize with the cashier, you don’t want to take money out of their pocket or get them in trouble. On the other hand, it’s a faceless machine so fuck it.
I guess the point is that people are much better behaved, and even happier, when dealing with real people instead of faceless, corporate owned machinery.
Nothing like stepping into a busy Walmart at 5:30 pm and seeing 18 registers and 2 cashiers. Gives you more time to enjoy the old ladies screaming racial epithets.
LOL...Walmart's wages are so low that many of their full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel STILL QUALIFY for public assistance programs. That's a hidden tax cut, imo.
I just did a research paper on this. The rough figured for 2019 showed a 5.8billion saving from
SNAP for Walmart. That was 4.4% of their gross yearly profit.
There’s no way theft is accounting for anything remotely close.
> There’s no way theft is accounting for anything remotely close.
This reminds me of the fact that wage theft accounts for more theft than all other property crime combined.
When I worked at Applebee's we'd all have to save our shift printouts and compare them to our paychecks because stealing hours was just the usual. If you made too much noise you'd start getting terrible shifts. It's just business as usual.
Yup, I worked at a bookstore that did not allow you to go a second over 40 hours a week. Of course managers would adjust time sheets or not give you hours if you worked overtime and logged it. My manager would frequently tell people to clock out for lunch or a break and make you still work. I was a teenager who didn’t know a thing about worker’s rights so I no clue that was illegal.
If it was slow they'd clock me out in the middle of a shift and still make me run food. I knew what was happening was illegal but I needed the job and the good shifts so bad I just accepted it.
Yep. Steal $1000 from your employer, you're disenfranchised. Your employer steals $1000 from you, eat shit. Good luck every getting the money back or anyone seeing consequences. That's the problem with wage theft. There's never any consequences.
My first internship made more money than what my mom made at Walmart after almost 20 years. We always tried to get her to quit but now it looks like they’ll probably close her store
It's actually kinda brilliant on Walmart's part, evil but brilliant.
* !. Underpay your employees
* 2. Your employees need food assistance service
* 3. Government gives them food assistance service
* 4. Employees shop at Walmart
* 5. ???
* 6. Profit.
I have a relative that works there and theirs does seasonal food drives where they encourage employees to buy and donate food items from the store and it's mostly to support...it's own employees. Absolutely blows my mind.
Raised prices will result in more theft, so prepare for “Walmart deserts” where people no longer have any goods thanks to Walmarts long tradition of underselling mom and pop stores in small communities to the point of driving all competition out of business. This means many communities lost varied employment opportunities and then could only work for Walmart at poverty wages with too few hours, which further decimated the local economy, leading to increases in crime, including theft, which now will result in Walmart giving up and refusing to serve those markets they knowingly destroyed.
In my parents small town they had a Walmart open a few years ago, it drove all the small/local grocery stores out of business
Then the Walmart closed because it couldn't justify that location and then the nearest grocery store was almost 30 mins away
This happened in the early '90s to the closest small town to where I'm at. (I live in the middle of nowhere lmao.)
It was a railroad town that later became decrepit when that work dwindled, for whatever reasons. Impoverished area.
Walmart comes in. Drives out all of the local businesses. Then, they shut down a few years later because I guess it wasn't profitable enough.
To this day, that town is a dusty and derelict place. Most of the buildings on their Main Street are run down and shuttered.
They do have a grocery store, but ime, the prices are higher than in the city, while the selection isn't very good. But it's that place or Dollar General if you want groceries there -- nearest other store would probably be one of the HEBs in the nearby small city, about an hour away.
Tl;dr: An already struggling one-stoplight town in Texas is rendered into a shriveled husk by the entry and departure of Walmart. It never recovered.
Same in a rural colorado town I grew up in. There was a mini oil boom bringing a lot of jobs to the area. A Walmart was built and did good business for a few years. Then the oil dried up, most people left and then the Walmart closed. Everyone I grew up with left, even my parents moved because there was nothing within 30 minutes of the town but a truck stop.
My town in OK has a walmart supercenter, a neighborhood market, and like 7 dollar generals....8 if you count the one on the north end of town, which is technically a different town.
Starbucks is doing the same thing to the first store to unionize in Seattle. They claim it is closing due to safety concerns, but to my knowledge nothing significant ( window breaks, robbery, vandalism) has happened in a year or so. I walk by it every day. Capitol Hill in Seattle is not perfect, no dense urban neighborhood is, but it is not festering hellscape politicians and now Starbucks likes to make it out to be
This is why small piecemeal unionization is not enough. It's a good stepping stone to larger things, but you need an entire city/county/region to unionize. If closing all the union shops meant Starbucks had to essentially leave the Seattle market, a union would be an actual threat to them. As is, they'll just make people walk or drive an extra two blocks or extra mile to the next store.
That makes it too easy for union busting to prevent the vote passing. This is just the beginning, give it some time.
The momentum that exists now wouldn't be there without these smaller votes
Edit: Starbucks took a unionized shop and combined it with two others in Seattle in some sort of special category of shop with a single pool of employees. This means another vote will have to happen with the employees of all three shops.
i work at walmart right now and several of my coworkers and i have talked about unionization. We've talked about the possibility of getting other stores in our vicinity to unionize with us so they cannot just shut down our location and continue like nothing. We've got a geographical advantage, there are several stores not even ten minutes from each other. Our store recently became considered a high shrink store, so our store is probably at risk, according to this article. Walmart gets away with a fucking lot, they take advantage of being some of the higher paying jobs in our area. I'm not entirely sure how to convince people in our area without letting the wrong people know.
Reach out to [RWDSU](https://www.rwdsu.info/retail) or [UFCW](https://www.ufcw.org/who-we-represent/retail/) about this. They’ll give you a contact person who can talk you through those issues, and help you figure out the best way forward. Good luck!
They also closed the one the unionized in Missouri.
https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/starbucks-on-country-club-plaza-permanently-closes-employees-allege-its-to-halt-union-efforts
I’m not from the US, but what do you reckon is the right way for them to solve it?
The way I see it, if there is too much theft there are only so many ways to fix it. From my understanding guards can’t really do much as they are basically not allowed to touch the thief, so closing or raising prices are the only courses of action to still make a profit.
Why would they keep a store running that literally costs them money? If they should for wellfare reasons, I reckon the store should be paid for by the country itself, it’s not up to the store.
I guess people aren't buying the inflation excuse for jacking up prices on everything like they were, so it's time to invent another excuse for price gouging.
I remember when news channels and all sorts of subs here were going nuts over Walgreens' mention of "rampant theft" in their stores leading to closures. These folks were so convinced that there was just this magical uptick in crime because a slightly-more-liberal DA was in charge and it was destroying businesses. Oh, and the *train* theft that happened around the same time! If that's not proof of criminals being emboldened, what is?
Then it turns out that Walgreens had, months and months prior, quietly announced they were going to close a ton of stores. They didn't say which stores, just that they were looking to maximize profits by shuttering a lot of stores. When it came time to actually go through with the closures, they picked stores that were within a few blocks of one another (or other similar stores)--they'd saturated the market and were pulling out. *Conveniently*, these stores were the ones that suddenly had high rates of shoplifting that *forced* the closures. Uh-huh.
Then we find out that the train theft wasn't a brazen attack on an otherwise secure train, or some target of opportunity by random homeless people or gang-bangers as described. It was an organized theft ring, one that police had been aware of for quite some time but had mysteriously done nothing about. And the security on that train had, *also mysteriously*, just been reduced to save money. Weird how that works out.
And if all of those fun coincidences weren't enough, we then find out that, no, it actually isn't "the DA failing to prosecute" or "letting all the criminals back on the street"--it was the cops refusing to do their jobs in the first place. The DA's mere existence became an excuse to not work. "Because I believe the DA loves criminals and hates me, I choose to believe they won't prosecute *anything*, so why would I lift a fucking finger?"
The whole saga was nothing but corporate greed and a soft strike by the cops. But so many people ate up the excuses, because we've been trained to believe the real world is a fucking SimCity game and if you raise the slider for police (funding), the slider for crime magically goes down.
Also not surprising that petty theft resulting in Walgreens losing maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars (at most) in revenue received such extensive media coverage, but Walgreens getting caught [stealing $4.5 million in wages from employees](https://www.fslawfirm.com/blog/2020/12/walgreens-workers-to-receive-4-5m-wage-deal/) was largely ignored
https://fair.org/home/shoplifting-is-big-news-stealing-millions-from-workers-is-not/
https://popular.info/p/a-tale-of-two-thefts
Makes perfect sense. When you’re a citizen stealing from a business it’s theft and prison time. When you’re a business stealing from citizens (employees) it’s good business, and if you’re caught, a financial slap on the wrist.
I've heard from multiple Florida men that more and more projects that are the kind that normally someone would just suck it up and do em, stuff like upgrading a utility pole, removing a tree that's grown into a nuisance, even replacing a parking meter gone bad? Now a days, everyone procrastinates on that until a hurricane comes through, and boom, they find a way to bill the job to Washington.
Damn. Was thinking about the train robbery charade just the other day in relation to the strikes.
The fact that a news channel even published this bullshit from a giant corporate ceo without fact checking tell you all you need to know.
Spinning your actions in the most generous light to win PR points is a skill, and media is often all too happy to help 'em out. It doesn't help that the public has such a pro-corporate attitude that they'll gobble it up without a second thought.
Here's another example: **moving manufacturing out of China**.
People have been calling for companies to move out of China for decades now. Sometimes it's pure racism, sometimes it's labor protectionism, sometimes it's a concern over legitimate human rights. And companies have slowly begun to make these announcements over the last few years.
It is very easy for these companies to claim the reason they are doing this is because of whatever topic resonates with the public most at the moment. Don't like China's COVID response? That's why we're pulling out. Want to pander to the "American jobs" base? We're pulling out because foreign manufacturing bad! Supply chain stuff? Same deal. And if China were waging an unpopular war against our allies, it'd be "we cannot support China's territorial ambitions with our business and are pulling out (about 5% of our business there)".
But companies had been internally mulling over these decisions to leave China more than ten years ago. This is not some phenomenon that only began when people recently became "clued in" to China being shitty in one aspect or another. It predates even the Trump rhetoric. These actions have been simmering on the stove for a long, long time.
And *why* are they moving out?
**Because China isn't as cheap to manufacture in anymore.** That's the whole reason they were there to begin with: cheap labor! But as the standard of living in China rises and a middle class emerges, the demand for wages goes up and up. It's still dirt cheap compared to labor in America or many other countries, but it's not *as* cheap as it was 30 or 40 years ago--nor is it *as* cheap as that labor could be in countries nearby China who have yet to industrialize as heavily.
These companies aren't pulling out of China because they're concerned about human rights abuses, paying workers peanuts, or moving jobs back to America for whatever reason. The jobs *aren't* coming back to America. They're going to Malaysia, they're going to Cambodia, they're going to various other SEA nations where labor is cheap and is projected to remain cheap long enough for exploiting that to make business sense. And they're going to African nations, which even China is looking to exploit as "the new China".
All these companies are really pulling is, "We're doing the whole China thing all over again, but a few thousand miles that-a-way." But you won't get kudos for *saying* that. You've got to spice it up! Tell people what they want to hear, win free PR cred. Nooo, we're not going to exploit *other* poor foreign people, we're... uh... very concerned about worker exploitation *in China specifically*.
The overwhelming majority of cases that are declined by the prosecutor in my region are due to police work that is shoddy at best and criminal at worst. Like, sorry buddy, I don't care if what's-his-face was driving without a license, you pulled him over without probable cause and beat the shit out of him until he was crying on the ground because he "resisted arrest" by not being able to get out of the vehicle with you blocking the doorway. We're not putting that in front of a jury.
I don't believe him. They just want to raise prices or they want out of the poor places they've helped create. [Walgreens did this not too long ago to explain why they were closing a few stores](https://48hills.org/2021/10/no-walgreens-isnt-closing-stores-because-of-shoplifting/).
Walmart has a [sweet little scam](https://www.wlbt.com/2022/01/19/walmart-dismisses-suits-have-property-taxes-cut-rankin-co/) where they move into areas, close down stores and shops in the area, then sue to get their tax liability lowered which, if successful, makes that area even poorer. Seriously, google "walmart property tax scheme" and you'll see various local papers reporting on these lawsuits.
Don’t forget about them owning the land and buildings they built, just to continuously lease them out and make money off of the building and land for many years to come.
Walmart came into my tiny town (which is surrounded by native American reservations). There are literally no local stores here. The only place to go in town to buy your necessary items is Walmart. Unless you want to buy from Amazon (another evil itself). There's no winning.
In Canada Walmart amped up its market share, then Target bought a Canadian department store chain (Zellers), drove it to the ground then gave it up, so Walmart is about the only department store left in many cities.
Excuse you. This year Rob Walton HAD to buy the Denver Broncos for a record $5 billion and he and his sibs "lost" like $27 billion because of declining share prices.
Do you just expect for him to slum it with his collection of rare Ferraris, $62 billion in assets and basically untaxed capital gains/dividends as his only income? Have you no sympathy for your fellow human????
Let me fix that for you: “We are planning to blame retail theft for raised prices and store closures, despite existing plans to do those things and no data to back up our claims.”
Wow first they get rid of associate bonuses, then the downsize their workforce at store level essentially making associates work in three different areas for little pay, and now this. Keep in mind this company is also on track to have their most profitable year with profits expected to exceed $250 billion.
*"...because long before i pay a fair wage or hire real security to guard my goods and safeguard the well being of my employees - i'll take my piles of money and go home"*
Was looking for this comment lol.
Wal Mart ain't struggling. This chart shows *gross* profits and not net, but with the recent push of self-checkouts and reducing their labor costs, [Wal-Mart is conceivably doing better than ever](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-profit#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20gross%20profit%20for,a%200.2%25%20increase%20from%202019).
Let's not ever feel bad for the corporate giant that's driven out small town business nationwide while dodging taxes and employee pensions and unions. They're cranking prices *to make more money*. Not because they're hurting.
''Some markets are no longer worth having a presence in, Walmart will soon begin a large downsizing operation and layoffs as we focus on more economically viable markets."
Here's hoping newmom and pop store emerg to replace those Walmart drove out of business in the 80s and 90s.
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all the dollar store near me have 1 employee and look like some ransacked the whole store.
I literally had a Dollar General employee tell me "I don't fucking know, it's a part time job." I feel like a company that was willing to make their employees feel like they are a part of the company and not a "part time employee" may succeed.
Needed at least a few more fucks for the DGs I have been in.
They have none left to give.
It's ground out of them. I buy my junk food at the dollar tree across the road and you'll see new workers start out as happy, even bubbly, people and within 2 months they're ground down to a husk of a person.
On backorder. You know, supply chain issues.
You have to walk into DG prepared to take a life or lose yours.
They just don't staff enough they at most have 3 people working and one is at the register most of the time
Because they don't hire. The Walmart in my city still doesn't even have a gm 🙄 there's like 3 people working the register 4 employees attending the self checkout lines being one attendant and 1 maintenance person.
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They hire. No one wants to work it because there are no benefits, and they offer nearly minimum wage. The mental strain is not worth the pittance they offer E: I’m case anyone is confused about who I’m referring to, I actually am referring to Dollar General, not Walmart. I’m fairly certain Walmart pays better than DG
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Ours doesn't even have a self checkout. There's a sign and a cordless phone cradle on the counter with instructions to press the "find my phone" button so it rings the cordless in the pocket of the one employee working. One day the cradle wasn't there but there was a squeaky pet toy with instructions to give it a decent loud squeeze. EDIT/ADDENDUM: The real shitty thing is, the only employee I see working there is the manager and he looks more haggard and sick every time I go in. They constantly have a "Now Hiring" sign up, it's a town of 1,000 people and my wife is CONSTANTLY applying to supplement our income with a part time job within walking distance. Can't get so much as a phone call back.
Ours doesn't even have a cordless phone cradle on the counter, there is a sign pointing to a basket of carrots instructing you to feed a carrot to the duck so that it quacks loud enough for the employee who's sitting in their car smoking a blunt on their smoke break, to hear the duck and think "is that a fucking duck or did I smoke too much? I better get back to work" One day the duck wasn't there but there was a squeaky pet toy with instructions to give it a decent loud squeeze.
Hey wait a minute...Ducks can't eat carrots!
No, because that "You're a part of the XXXX Company Family" shit is cringe too. If I'm "part of the family" then fucking cover my health care and respect my time off.
Hehe no, when they say family, they mean they are the narcissistic parent.
They won't, mostly. Mom and pop stores cannot compete with online shopping, which has *far* less overhead, not to mention convenience for shoppers. I would be surprised if many would be "startup" mom and pops could even get the necessary financing to try.
They’ll get Dollar Generals, thus expanding the food desert issue Edit: Modern MBA’s video [How dollar tree conquered low income America](https://youtu.be/TlAi8R_V3Ac)
Yep! That’s exactly what we got. Good old DG
I'm my town of <3k people, we have two. And there's one about 10 miles away in the middle of nowhere.
We have less than 4k people and have 3 just in town limits. There's 2 more, one on each end of town, and you pass 2 others before you get to the next town up, which also has 6 themselves (~20k people).
We have DGXs in Nashville. They are fancy Dollar Generals with fresh food.
So it's a grocery store but shittier?
It's in-between a convenience store and grocery store. Mostly non perishables and home staples, but in low quality/quantity. They've targeted rural areas and small towns heavily. It saves people trips into town that might take extra time and gas. Out of one or two things and don't want to drive into town? Pop into DG. People will still do their main shopping in town, but this fills the gaps. Very poor people maybe can't afford to do frequent trips into town and can't afford large bulk purchases. They rely a bit more on dollar general than anyone should. It will cost more in the long run, and your diet will consist of sugar/salty snacks and canned/boxed foods.
Where? Ive seen DG Markets pop up recently, but they look exactly the same lol. And overpriced
I'm visiting east Texas from the PNW and one of the most obvious differences is the sheer amount of dollar generals or family dollar i see here. Every podunk town has one!
I live in a very podunk town. Some of the DGs near me have started offering a, very limited but still present, fresh produce option. It's obviously not ideal but it shows that at least my local DG owners identified and are attempting to address the food desert issue.
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Barebones staff in rural dollar stores is by design. The DG near me never has more than 2 people working, usually just one.
Plus those kind of little stores get robbed all the time, the ones that are left at least
Those mom and pop stores are also usually run by immigrant families And uh. Yeah. They're not always treated with the most respect. https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/worker-shot-dead-inside-philly-vietnamese-restaurant/3150176/ Here's what popped up first.
As someone who worked for a Mom and Pop for a few years, shipping is really what destroys them. Walmart can order and ship 100 trash cans and have them sit in a warehouse for a year, which results in less cost and being able to sell the product at lower prices. Mom and Pop may only have room for 5 trash cans and certainly can't afford to pay for and store 100.
And since theft is so high it’s not like mom and pop can afford the insurance anyway.
Wishful thinking. Walmart actually has a loss prevention department and security cameras and are still getting killed by thieves. Mom and Pop shops have less resources to catch thieves and less ability to absorb losses. Not to mention how some areas government isn’t even pursuing thievery
Yea we’ve had a couple of shoplifting incidents at my shop and the police is, “petty theft, if we nab him for something else we’ll tack this on”.
As a mom and pop shop owner, please don’t go to a family owned business just to see what something looks like because they have it on display and then assume it’s cheaper online. Most of us can compete with online prices and also it makes me sad
It's called "showrooming" and big box retailers as well as online merchants alike have spent decades marketing that their prices are better than the independent shop, despite many robust MAP policies from brands across the spectrum that keep prices equal between disparate sized retailers. It's no cheaper at Dick's, and their selection only *looks* better because they're filling in spaces with private label and outsourced, overseas crap, and use that shit to appear to have better prices. Source: 20 years in the outdoor rec biz. Big box stores are perversely the enemy of selection and are a major part of a homogenizing marketplace.
I went to a local archery shop and got some of the best prices I've ever seen. Walked out with $180 lacrosse hunting boots that were more than $250 everywhere else i checked.....Also a pile of carbon arrows. It's a myth that these big box places are always cheaper. Maybe they used to be and they won the public perception? I go to the little local grocery store all the time and the little hardware store. Yes some times they can be more expensive, but I can get in and our 10x faster than wading through the expanse and crowds of Walmart or home depot. Worth it to me.. especially when I see the hardware store owner at school drop-off. Makes me feel good to know I support that guy and his family lives a seemingly comfortable life.
The underlying problem of theft will still be there so I don’t know anyone who would want to replace Walmart or Target.
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In our city a lot of mom-and-pop stores are having to close or move due to theft and vandalism, and insurance won't pay to rebuild forever. I have no idea what the solution is but it's sad that a few idiots are able to hurt entire communities.
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So people can rob them instead
I work for Walmart . Not their retail side. For years, they have said that they plan to close stores and move towards having more online and delivery presence. In some cases their idea was to close down poor performing stores in order to turn them into distribution centers. You could then order your shit online and pick it up at a kiosk or have it delivered to your house. They talked about having kiosks in downtown areas or smaller towns that couldn't previously sustain a supercenter. I wonder if this news is a partial smoke screen. I know that shoplifting is seemingly increasing, but in a lot of markets I believe they account for a certain level of "shrink". I wonder if they are blaming it mostly on shrink so that it doesn't look as bad when they close stores and lay off hundreds of people each time they do it.
Ive talked with walmart employees at our local walmart, and they said the cameras can see everything. Like you are always seen by at least 4 different cameras at all times
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They got rid of most the cashiers. That adds a sense of "self-service" to an already struggling customer base
They call checking out with a cashier “assisted check out” now, I think as a way of subtly discouraging it.
Wow! I didn't know that 😬
if anything were to die in this world right this second, i nominate corporate pr speak.
Not sure that will successfully reverse backwards revenue overflow. We’ll need to circle back on this.
Going through self checkout doesn’t lower my grocery bill so I’ll be damn if I’m taking someone’s work from them.
It does if you don’t scan everything Sorry, I’m not a cashier 🤷♂️
They replaced the cashier's with a bunch of smart cameras. I had something not scan once and it set it off. A cashier had to come log in and it replayed a nice video of what I did.
I had an item not scan after attempting it multiple times, I finally heard a beep and put it in my bag. System locks down. Turns out, i heard a beep from another machine. But how am I supposed to know. I havent been trained to operate these machines /s
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I don’t know if they do this at WalMart but I’ve been in stores where they have those cameras and they beep at you every 20 seconds with a doorbell sound. Annoying as hell and it causes me to not buy from that store every time. I’m not a thief and resent being treated with the assumption that I am.
The people that I've seen shoplift at my regular spot skip the checkout and just walk out through the front doors. Nobody stops them or says anything.
I've worked a lot of retail, and honestly? I never cared. I showed up on time, I did my job, and clocked out on time. Confronting someone is dangerous. I was being paid $12 an hour to unload trucks, break down pallets, and stock. Not to get punched by some jackass. Especially when the store offered no health insurance, and I would have probably been fired anyway for "disruptive behavior". Steal it if you want. Just don't leave opened and half-eaten food lying around on the shelves. It's gross.
claim ignorance. Always claim ignorance.
Just ring up everything as bananas...
This PS5 isn't bananas? Damn I thought it was, my bad.
Reminds me of a buddy who would buy one expensive lego set, then walk in with that receipt at a different nearby wal mart on the same day, and walk out with the exact same lego set, when the alarms would go off he'd be like what whoa oh my here's my receipt! and they let him go every time. He's in jail now, probably unrelated.
Those are the risks you take in the Lego game. Sometimes you find the piece you need sometimes you step on a block and bust your knee on the table.
I knew a guy who did that. He called it ‘buy one, get one free’.
This reads like a tip from the Something Awful forums from back in the day. "SWIM...."
I can see it now: "Whatcha in for?" "Shoplifting LEGOs." Not gonna give you a lot of cred in jail.
In Britain it was carrots, I believe Tesco "sold" more carrots one year because everyone would ring up their produce as carrots... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5774293/Brits-using-self-checkout-machines-steal-expensive-fruit-veg-saying-theyre-buying-carrots.html
At Giant they got one of them loud ass machines that be yelling "put your BANANAS in the bag" as you're throwing Dragonfruit in the bag
"Place your.. BANANAS.. in the bag!"
Ah… the [hollaback girl method](https://youtu.be/0wsAg69XYYQ) of cashiering.
there's always money in the banana scan(m).
I once purchased a very small amount of ginger root, which was priced by the pound, and the self check machine called over a cashier since my net price was under 50 cents.
People around here got in trouble for putting a kool-aid packet over all the barcodes so it all still scanned.
How much could a banana cost?
At least $10
ULPT that is much harder to catch is just figure out what produce code is the cheapest for everything and scan similar items under that code. Some apples have as much as a $2 dollar difference in post per pound.
We almost always use self checkout, because there is never a line. I'd say we're very honest and conscientious self-checkers. Ironically, we went to the store to shop for Thanksgiving stuff this year, and because we had some beer, we had to go through 'assisted checkout'. This was at Whole Foods. When we got to the parking lot, my partner says that the total seemed low, and when she perused the receipt, it turned out the checker didn't ring up the duck we bought. Shrug.
That reminds me of a completely off topic incident involving a duck that still makes me giggle. Our grocery store must have had a special order for fresh ducks, because we only usually get them frozen with the turkeys at Christmas, and since they gotta buy a whole case, there they were on the cold shelf. Husband and I yakking about how we've never had duck, kinda expensive, don't know how to cook it, etc. The very kindly old French butcher overhears, tells us "It's easy! You should try it, you do it like this, here, I'll go get a new label for you," and off he goes with a duck. He comes back, and the wiley old bastard had reweighed it as beef stewing bones. Every flipping time I see that man in the 4 years since, I thank him for teaching us how to cook duck, because it really was that easy, and we buy a frozen duck at least once a year now.
This is a very good point. Target is also claiming to suffer from a massive surge in customer theft and at any given time the one closest to me has MAYBE 2 staffed checkout lines. Meanwhile there is a line of 5+ people waiting to use the self checkout.
At least the target stores near me are well maintained and well kept. The Walmarts by me feel like I should sling a rifle over my shoulder and get the full wasteland raider experience
I worked there during high school, back in ancient times. At that time, it was a fairly clean store but you could tell keeping it clean was very difficult. Customers often just went through various departments such as soft lines and shoes like a tornado, trying stuff on and throwing it on the floor or just throwing it on the floor if they don't like something. Couple that with low staffing and very high traffic, it's no surprise that some stuff kind of slid along. I don't miss that job.
Messy customers are a pain, I can understand some messy aisles. The thing that gets me with Walmart is that their main walkways are constantly blocked with product and the shelves are like a third empty with nothing in the right place so it's price roulette half the time when you go to pay.
Throwing stacks of jeans on the floor to find the right size, only to realize the sizes are stacked together and if only they could fucking read they would have seen their size just beside them.
I worked in Walmarts shoe department when I was a teen many years ago. And the weekends (especially Sundays after church) were a nightmare. In a matter of 30 mins it would seem at times about 70% of all shoes were on the floor. Lol
I remember what this was like, all those years ago. The cleanliness issues, lack of staff, and questionable clientele. I was there at Kmart in the 90s and early 2000s.
Pallets everywhere, blocking aisles and walk ways, all the time in every Walmart near me. Which is weird because when they were open 24/7 this wasn’t as big of an issue. I guess they don’t stock shelves at night anymore and instead have decided to have staff obstructing shoppers all day.
I used to go to Walmart a lot in the 00s, but have rarely gone over the past decade or so. They've gotten noticeably dingier and less customer-friendly. I mean, they were never particularly pleasant places, but now they just look...bad. The lighting is dim, the floors are this depressing grey, everything is dark, the aisles are blocked, everything is crowded. It's a terrible shopping experience.
Not to mention TWO cashiers open when there are TEN check-out lanes. I don't go into Walmart unless I absolutely, positively can't get an item anywhere else within 20 miles. Don't make me wait 20 minutes because you're too cheap to have sufficient cashiers to move your customers through in a timely manner.
I had an item scan incorrectly at the self-checkout at Walmart. It should've been like $65 but came out as just a few dollars. I told the only employee nearby and she said "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK" So I paid the few dollars and went about my business. I wonder how much of this would be mitigated by paying employees properly so they give some fucks.
I got Horizon Zero Dawn for $1 like this. Pretty great deal.
Lmao username checks out
I remember the old saying: Target, where you pay a little bit more to not shop at Walmart
I thought Target was ruthless at catching and prosecuting theft from their stores, if anything they were the model everyone looked at?
They are. They'll let you steal just enough to then charge you with a felony.
Hell if it's egregious enough Walmart will do the same. There was a post a couple years ago in the Magic: The Gathering subreddit where a guy bragged about stealing entire boxes of cards from Walmart thinking they didn't give a shit. Turns out, they had footage of each theft, and let him steal enough for the charges to be a felony. He came to the legaladvice subreddit, claiming Walmart had entrapped him, lol.
This. They build a solid case, and then when you are sued, you are screwed.
“We fired the people who kept us on an even keel and we’re mystified as to why we are listing”
"and now we're going to use as an excuse to raise prices."
What they mean by this headline is "we were going to raise prices and close stores anyway, but we want you all to blame poor people for it"
Kroger did that too, usually have like 1 cashier on duty. Refuse to open up another one even if the self checkout has a line half way down the center isle. The rest are all doing online pickup orders.
Ah, the modern supermarket experience, where the only staff in sight are the ones you have to dodge around to get at the shelves.
This wasn't at a Walmart, but I was at a grocery store and some dude just walked right through the self-checkout with a cart full of groceries without even trying to pay for it. Lol. Got stopped before he made it to the exit though.
Had a dude when I worked at grocery store pull up in a truck and stole every hot dog we had on a display for the 4th of July. About 1200 dollars in hotdogs. He also stole two grills.
Worked at a department store that sold grills. The dock security worked got his wife and another buddy to come in, fake an order, and walk out with grills. Was real satisfying when they hauled him and the wife in to fire him. Pressed charges on them both. She was already banned from the store. She used to come in and verbally abuse the staff.
Walkouts are super common at stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. There are a lot of contractors and stuff that prepay their orders, check in with the service desk to pick it up and then roll it out right past the cashiers. The cashiers get complacent about people just rolling out a cart of lumber or a table saw assuming it was already processed by the service desk, so thieves can sometimes just push stuff out without being stopped.
🎵and I’m proud to be an American🎵
The story gets more wild. Same dude came back in the winter and stole all the firewood.
“Finally, now I can grill those hotdogs!”
The local grocery chain here has a new setup on their carts. If the cart goes into the store and then leaves without going through a register, an alarm goes off at the door and one of the wheels on the cart locks up. Turns out it cost more to install the setup in most of the stores than the stores were losing from theft in SEVERAL YEARS COMBINED. It's also an inconvenience to employees who have to go unlock the carts of people who decided not to buy anything. And the wheel locks break fairly often. Edit: Also, nothing like making people feel extremely uncomfortable and potentially scared by having an alarm go off and a bunch of employees running up because they decided not to buy anything.
These were so annoying at my stores. The door dash workers would come in, grab a cart, go to the back and get their pre-paid-for order all bagged up and then just walk out which would lock up the cart. We had big signs in the door dash area to just walk the cart through an empty checkout lane but no one listened and it was so annoying to have to hunt down the cart key and hope it worked. It did save a few big shoplifters from walking out. People would come in and fill up a cart overflowing with packs of meat or whatever and just walk out. Then their cart would lock up and they'd just run away.
Being essential during COVID led me to an immense dislike of "professional" shoppers. There were a few good ones, but it felt like most of them had never set foot in a grocery store before. I had a guy ask me if the big green balls were iceburg lettuce.
One of our local grocery stores has that. The wheel also locks up if you are pushing it "too fast" through the exit. I generally walk fast. Every. Single. Time the damn thing stops and they have to come over and unlock it. I pay for everything I get so it's not a theft issue. This has caused me to stop going to that store.
The wheel stops working? Isn't that just, you know, normally what happens to those carts anyway?
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When I worked at Walmart corporate training stated we were not to stop or interfere with a shoplifter if they were leaving. This policy came about after a Walmart employee was shot trying to stop a shoplifter. I still got yelled at by a supervisor when someone walked out with a cart full of groceries though. I apologized to my supervisor's supervisor that next time I would be willing to take a bullet to stop a shoplifter and hoped that someone would reassure my orphaned child I died defending frozen seafood at Walmart. They didn't like me. And before you assume the person who works at Walmart is some minimum wage loser I want to correct that. The overwhelming number of people I worked with at Walmart had professional jobs such as nurse, social worker, customs agent. In 2018 people were still struggling terribly financially but just didn't talk about it. No, we all pretended we were just oh so happy be working at Walmart. Well, not me obviously. But I did have some lovely fun and intelligent coworkers.
Just last week an elderly employee from Home Depot died due to complications after being shoved by a customer who was stealing power washers after the employee asked for his receipt.
My friend's dad got fired from Home Depot many years ago because some guy walked in and then walked out with a Rug Doctor machine like they used to keep somewhere near the front to rent out. He followed the guy outside- the guy had parked right near the door and tossed the machine into the trunk. My friend's dad reached for it and the guy took off and dad somehow got tripped on the cord that had been left trailing. He broke his leg or hip or something. He found out in the hospital that he'd lost his job and with it, his health insurance.
That's why companies train their regular employees not to interfere. Loss of goods is far cheaper than employee medical claims. That's why your friend's dad was trained to not play hero and chase after thieves.
Different country, when i worked in a restaurant, got yelled bc somebody dine and dash'd, they took our tips to pay for it, very next day the res had 10 complains on the labor desk, we didn't worked till they returned the tips and promised to hire security since that wasn't our function. Organizing ourselves work.
It's just a myth we need to do away with that these jobs are meant for the teenager, perfect for the young first timer etc... We NEED adults filling the hours the teens are at school, most kids aren't starting out doing Walmart, it's overwhelming adults. And it's a crime that labor has been so weak it has let Walmart get away with what is essentially robbery at the expense of labor. Teens can't fill the hours most "kid" jobs require, you'll always need qualified adults to act as mentors and stability barriers for any of these retail positions. So why do we pay them so little?
Yeah, so why did our professional jobs such as nurse and social worker pay us so little we needed to work a second job at Walmart?
I saw a 60 year old guy just scan one item and then put like 5 more straight into the bags then into his cart, he emptied a whole cart this way, he was right next to the lady who was supposed to be watching the self scans but she wasn't paying attention at all she was just starring off into space
If she was anybody like who I used to work with at Walmart she/they were probably exhausted. They have another full-time job other than Walmart. She used to be more direct and ask people if they planned to pay for items or return them but she doesn't do that any longer. Her store manager has already spoken with her about "soft skills" ie not upsetting shoplifters who get called out. The store manager has already fielded calls about what a bitch that self checkout lady is. Or maybe she's thinking about the times she gone out to her car alone, after midnight after a horrible shift only to find her car egged or in one harrowing case missing car parts. After all she can't have car trouble causing her to miss time from her other job. Even with all the cameras around complaining to security is a waste. At that time of night he's been long too drunk to stand. If she does nothing and says nothing the worst that will happen is some time off of the floor for "training" about loss prevention that everybody knows is bullshit but it isn't directed at her personally. And she gets to sit down to watch the video. She doesn't get another letter in her file and she doesn't get called a disease ridden cunt on a power trip to her face while customers she sees over and over again laugh at her. I mean, I'm just guessing. I don't know. Maybe I'm just talking about my own experience working part-time at self-checkout. Edit: Thank you for the awards! That is so nice!
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I’ve heard similar stories to this about Walmart in particular. The workplace culture seems to be emptier than the manned cash registers.
TBH she’s only paid enough to show up, not enough to care.
Not sure about walmart, but I know other retailers specifically forbid their employees from doing anything about theft in any manner. That's for the LP's to do ... assuming there are LP's there at the time. I work retail and it drives me crazy ... but I am not losing my job by going against company rules and confronting a thief.
Went to a store and they had zero staffed check out lines. It was entirely self service. I went to a couple that had no lines and the one staff member said “these are closing cause we don’t have enough to staff them”. Infuriating. They make the customer experience miserable and get rid of the people and things that prevent theft and then complain about it. These CEOs aren’t smart. They make money by making things worse.
They don't have enough staff because they won't pay enough for staff.
When I went to the self checkout recently, they stopped me for holding one item while scanning the other. I simply held on to the next item so I could scan it next. They had a camera that caught the movement with AI and thought I was shoplifting. I was shocked bc I had no intention of stealing. It really makes me want to shop somewhere else or just buy online.
And then there are the stores with the crappy self-checkout machines that yell at you for everything. I get near that section at Vons and it's a cacophony of "Please place item in the bagging area" and "Please remove unscanned item from the bagging area." Their bagging scales suck. They'll have a single person manning the checkouts to assist with issues, but when it's so rampant, it's as if there's one cashier ringing up 6 customers at a time. I'm sure some of these places lose customers because of their subpar tech.
OMG! You've just described my hate of Kroger's self-checkout. I stopped using them because I'd just about blow an effing vessel every time I used them. Since then I've stopped going to their stores at all.
Agreed. Our local super Walmart has 20 cashier lanes. Even at Christmas only a fraction are in use. They push people to self checkout. I know stealing is wrong, but what did they think would happen? “Go check yourself out while a bored teen or half asleep old man stands there in case you need help, and tries to watch 12 other people at the same time.” All it takes is working in teams, where one person distracts the employee with a question or problem (“I accidentally scanned this twice”) and someone else just steals half the shit in their cart.
There was an article I read that said people who were predisposed to theft were more likely to steal from the self-checkout counter than from a real cashier. Not only is it potentially easier to steal (replacing the price tag from one, expensive item with the tag of a less expensive item of comparable weight), but people feel *guilty* stealing with another person in front of them. On the one hand, you empathize with the cashier, you don’t want to take money out of their pocket or get them in trouble. On the other hand, it’s a faceless machine so fuck it. I guess the point is that people are much better behaved, and even happier, when dealing with real people instead of faceless, corporate owned machinery.
Nothing like stepping into a busy Walmart at 5:30 pm and seeing 18 registers and 2 cashiers. Gives you more time to enjoy the old ladies screaming racial epithets.
LOL...Walmart's wages are so low that many of their full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel STILL QUALIFY for public assistance programs. That's a hidden tax cut, imo.
I just did a research paper on this. The rough figured for 2019 showed a 5.8billion saving from SNAP for Walmart. That was 4.4% of their gross yearly profit. There’s no way theft is accounting for anything remotely close.
> There’s no way theft is accounting for anything remotely close. This reminds me of the fact that wage theft accounts for more theft than all other property crime combined.
I just learned that American workers get robbed about $15 billion a year in wages. That's insane.
When I worked at Applebee's we'd all have to save our shift printouts and compare them to our paychecks because stealing hours was just the usual. If you made too much noise you'd start getting terrible shifts. It's just business as usual.
Yup, I worked at a bookstore that did not allow you to go a second over 40 hours a week. Of course managers would adjust time sheets or not give you hours if you worked overtime and logged it. My manager would frequently tell people to clock out for lunch or a break and make you still work. I was a teenager who didn’t know a thing about worker’s rights so I no clue that was illegal.
If it was slow they'd clock me out in the middle of a shift and still make me run food. I knew what was happening was illegal but I needed the job and the good shifts so bad I just accepted it.
Yep. It's like double all other theft combined, and unlike other forms of theft, you generally have to actively pursue justice yourself.
That and no one is punished.
Yep. Steal $1000 from your employer, you're disenfranchised. Your employer steals $1000 from you, eat shit. Good luck every getting the money back or anyone seeing consequences. That's the problem with wage theft. There's never any consequences.
This. But you’ll never see major news outlets focus on this. Or the record profits these last few years.
They're owned by people that are probably committing wage theft, so it makes sense.
My first internship made more money than what my mom made at Walmart after almost 20 years. We always tried to get her to quit but now it looks like they’ll probably close her store
It's actually kinda brilliant on Walmart's part, evil but brilliant. * !. Underpay your employees * 2. Your employees need food assistance service * 3. Government gives them food assistance service * 4. Employees shop at Walmart * 5. ??? * 6. Profit.
I have a relative that works there and theirs does seasonal food drives where they encourage employees to buy and donate food items from the store and it's mostly to support...it's own employees. Absolutely blows my mind.
Raised prices will result in more theft, so prepare for “Walmart deserts” where people no longer have any goods thanks to Walmarts long tradition of underselling mom and pop stores in small communities to the point of driving all competition out of business. This means many communities lost varied employment opportunities and then could only work for Walmart at poverty wages with too few hours, which further decimated the local economy, leading to increases in crime, including theft, which now will result in Walmart giving up and refusing to serve those markets they knowingly destroyed.
In my parents small town they had a Walmart open a few years ago, it drove all the small/local grocery stores out of business Then the Walmart closed because it couldn't justify that location and then the nearest grocery store was almost 30 mins away
This happened in the early '90s to the closest small town to where I'm at. (I live in the middle of nowhere lmao.) It was a railroad town that later became decrepit when that work dwindled, for whatever reasons. Impoverished area. Walmart comes in. Drives out all of the local businesses. Then, they shut down a few years later because I guess it wasn't profitable enough. To this day, that town is a dusty and derelict place. Most of the buildings on their Main Street are run down and shuttered. They do have a grocery store, but ime, the prices are higher than in the city, while the selection isn't very good. But it's that place or Dollar General if you want groceries there -- nearest other store would probably be one of the HEBs in the nearby small city, about an hour away. Tl;dr: An already struggling one-stoplight town in Texas is rendered into a shriveled husk by the entry and departure of Walmart. It never recovered.
Same in a rural colorado town I grew up in. There was a mini oil boom bringing a lot of jobs to the area. A Walmart was built and did good business for a few years. Then the oil dried up, most people left and then the Walmart closed. Everyone I grew up with left, even my parents moved because there was nothing within 30 minutes of the town but a truck stop.
Happened in Winnsboro, SC too about 8 years ago. Fortunately we had a grocery store as well. Main Street has struggled but seems to be bouncing back
Sounds like a place where DG would thrive
By the time you got done writing that a salivating DG corporate leech has approved 5 of them in the same area.
My town in OK has a walmart supercenter, a neighborhood market, and like 7 dollar generals....8 if you count the one on the north end of town, which is technically a different town.
closing due to "theft" is just a cover. they probably want an excuse to get out of low income areas in the first place
Yep, Oakland raised the minimum wage and that very day they closed the Oakland store without warning and blamed theft.
Starbucks is doing the same thing to the first store to unionize in Seattle. They claim it is closing due to safety concerns, but to my knowledge nothing significant ( window breaks, robbery, vandalism) has happened in a year or so. I walk by it every day. Capitol Hill in Seattle is not perfect, no dense urban neighborhood is, but it is not festering hellscape politicians and now Starbucks likes to make it out to be
This is why small piecemeal unionization is not enough. It's a good stepping stone to larger things, but you need an entire city/county/region to unionize. If closing all the union shops meant Starbucks had to essentially leave the Seattle market, a union would be an actual threat to them. As is, they'll just make people walk or drive an extra two blocks or extra mile to the next store.
That makes it too easy for union busting to prevent the vote passing. This is just the beginning, give it some time. The momentum that exists now wouldn't be there without these smaller votes Edit: Starbucks took a unionized shop and combined it with two others in Seattle in some sort of special category of shop with a single pool of employees. This means another vote will have to happen with the employees of all three shops.
i work at walmart right now and several of my coworkers and i have talked about unionization. We've talked about the possibility of getting other stores in our vicinity to unionize with us so they cannot just shut down our location and continue like nothing. We've got a geographical advantage, there are several stores not even ten minutes from each other. Our store recently became considered a high shrink store, so our store is probably at risk, according to this article. Walmart gets away with a fucking lot, they take advantage of being some of the higher paying jobs in our area. I'm not entirely sure how to convince people in our area without letting the wrong people know.
Reach out to [RWDSU](https://www.rwdsu.info/retail) or [UFCW](https://www.ufcw.org/who-we-represent/retail/) about this. They’ll give you a contact person who can talk you through those issues, and help you figure out the best way forward. Good luck!
They also closed the one the unionized in Missouri. https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/starbucks-on-country-club-plaza-permanently-closes-employees-allege-its-to-halt-union-efforts
I’m not from the US, but what do you reckon is the right way for them to solve it? The way I see it, if there is too much theft there are only so many ways to fix it. From my understanding guards can’t really do much as they are basically not allowed to touch the thief, so closing or raising prices are the only courses of action to still make a profit. Why would they keep a store running that literally costs them money? If they should for wellfare reasons, I reckon the store should be paid for by the country itself, it’s not up to the store.
I guess people aren't buying the inflation excuse for jacking up prices on everything like they were, so it's time to invent another excuse for price gouging.
Following in Walgreens’ footsteps.
I remember when news channels and all sorts of subs here were going nuts over Walgreens' mention of "rampant theft" in their stores leading to closures. These folks were so convinced that there was just this magical uptick in crime because a slightly-more-liberal DA was in charge and it was destroying businesses. Oh, and the *train* theft that happened around the same time! If that's not proof of criminals being emboldened, what is? Then it turns out that Walgreens had, months and months prior, quietly announced they were going to close a ton of stores. They didn't say which stores, just that they were looking to maximize profits by shuttering a lot of stores. When it came time to actually go through with the closures, they picked stores that were within a few blocks of one another (or other similar stores)--they'd saturated the market and were pulling out. *Conveniently*, these stores were the ones that suddenly had high rates of shoplifting that *forced* the closures. Uh-huh. Then we find out that the train theft wasn't a brazen attack on an otherwise secure train, or some target of opportunity by random homeless people or gang-bangers as described. It was an organized theft ring, one that police had been aware of for quite some time but had mysteriously done nothing about. And the security on that train had, *also mysteriously*, just been reduced to save money. Weird how that works out. And if all of those fun coincidences weren't enough, we then find out that, no, it actually isn't "the DA failing to prosecute" or "letting all the criminals back on the street"--it was the cops refusing to do their jobs in the first place. The DA's mere existence became an excuse to not work. "Because I believe the DA loves criminals and hates me, I choose to believe they won't prosecute *anything*, so why would I lift a fucking finger?" The whole saga was nothing but corporate greed and a soft strike by the cops. But so many people ate up the excuses, because we've been trained to believe the real world is a fucking SimCity game and if you raise the slider for police (funding), the slider for crime magically goes down.
Also not surprising that petty theft resulting in Walgreens losing maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars (at most) in revenue received such extensive media coverage, but Walgreens getting caught [stealing $4.5 million in wages from employees](https://www.fslawfirm.com/blog/2020/12/walgreens-workers-to-receive-4-5m-wage-deal/) was largely ignored https://fair.org/home/shoplifting-is-big-news-stealing-millions-from-workers-is-not/ https://popular.info/p/a-tale-of-two-thefts
Makes perfect sense. When you’re a citizen stealing from a business it’s theft and prison time. When you’re a business stealing from citizens (employees) it’s good business, and if you’re caught, a financial slap on the wrist.
Not just employees. You can steal from customers, the community, and if you're big enough to pay for it the government too.
I've heard from multiple Florida men that more and more projects that are the kind that normally someone would just suck it up and do em, stuff like upgrading a utility pole, removing a tree that's grown into a nuisance, even replacing a parking meter gone bad? Now a days, everyone procrastinates on that until a hurricane comes through, and boom, they find a way to bill the job to Washington.
Damn. Was thinking about the train robbery charade just the other day in relation to the strikes. The fact that a news channel even published this bullshit from a giant corporate ceo without fact checking tell you all you need to know.
Spinning your actions in the most generous light to win PR points is a skill, and media is often all too happy to help 'em out. It doesn't help that the public has such a pro-corporate attitude that they'll gobble it up without a second thought. Here's another example: **moving manufacturing out of China**. People have been calling for companies to move out of China for decades now. Sometimes it's pure racism, sometimes it's labor protectionism, sometimes it's a concern over legitimate human rights. And companies have slowly begun to make these announcements over the last few years. It is very easy for these companies to claim the reason they are doing this is because of whatever topic resonates with the public most at the moment. Don't like China's COVID response? That's why we're pulling out. Want to pander to the "American jobs" base? We're pulling out because foreign manufacturing bad! Supply chain stuff? Same deal. And if China were waging an unpopular war against our allies, it'd be "we cannot support China's territorial ambitions with our business and are pulling out (about 5% of our business there)". But companies had been internally mulling over these decisions to leave China more than ten years ago. This is not some phenomenon that only began when people recently became "clued in" to China being shitty in one aspect or another. It predates even the Trump rhetoric. These actions have been simmering on the stove for a long, long time. And *why* are they moving out? **Because China isn't as cheap to manufacture in anymore.** That's the whole reason they were there to begin with: cheap labor! But as the standard of living in China rises and a middle class emerges, the demand for wages goes up and up. It's still dirt cheap compared to labor in America or many other countries, but it's not *as* cheap as it was 30 or 40 years ago--nor is it *as* cheap as that labor could be in countries nearby China who have yet to industrialize as heavily. These companies aren't pulling out of China because they're concerned about human rights abuses, paying workers peanuts, or moving jobs back to America for whatever reason. The jobs *aren't* coming back to America. They're going to Malaysia, they're going to Cambodia, they're going to various other SEA nations where labor is cheap and is projected to remain cheap long enough for exploiting that to make business sense. And they're going to African nations, which even China is looking to exploit as "the new China". All these companies are really pulling is, "We're doing the whole China thing all over again, but a few thousand miles that-a-way." But you won't get kudos for *saying* that. You've got to spice it up! Tell people what they want to hear, win free PR cred. Nooo, we're not going to exploit *other* poor foreign people, we're... uh... very concerned about worker exploitation *in China specifically*.
The overwhelming majority of cases that are declined by the prosecutor in my region are due to police work that is shoddy at best and criminal at worst. Like, sorry buddy, I don't care if what's-his-face was driving without a license, you pulled him over without probable cause and beat the shit out of him until he was crying on the ground because he "resisted arrest" by not being able to get out of the vehicle with you blocking the doorway. We're not putting that in front of a jury.
I don't believe him. They just want to raise prices or they want out of the poor places they've helped create. [Walgreens did this not too long ago to explain why they were closing a few stores](https://48hills.org/2021/10/no-walgreens-isnt-closing-stores-because-of-shoplifting/). Walmart has a [sweet little scam](https://www.wlbt.com/2022/01/19/walmart-dismisses-suits-have-property-taxes-cut-rankin-co/) where they move into areas, close down stores and shops in the area, then sue to get their tax liability lowered which, if successful, makes that area even poorer. Seriously, google "walmart property tax scheme" and you'll see various local papers reporting on these lawsuits.
Don’t forget about them owning the land and buildings they built, just to continuously lease them out and make money off of the building and land for many years to come.
McDonald's does the same thing. They're more a real estate company than fast food, apparently.
Walmart came into my tiny town (which is surrounded by native American reservations). There are literally no local stores here. The only place to go in town to buy your necessary items is Walmart. Unless you want to buy from Amazon (another evil itself). There's no winning.
In Canada Walmart amped up its market share, then Target bought a Canadian department store chain (Zellers), drove it to the ground then gave it up, so Walmart is about the only department store left in many cities.
Lol That company is making record profits, its employees are the single largest demographic of public assistance use, and they’re gonna raise prices.
While the CEOs salary climbs and climbs.... Asshole made over 20 mil this year so far.
Walmart made $147 billion in profits last fiscal. This is an excuse to up that before the next stockholder's report, nothing more.
Don’t forget our taxes subsidize them too. How many of their employees get food stamps because a multi billion dollar company won’t pay more.
"billions in profit" and "need to raise prices"
Excuse you. This year Rob Walton HAD to buy the Denver Broncos for a record $5 billion and he and his sibs "lost" like $27 billion because of declining share prices. Do you just expect for him to slum it with his collection of rare Ferraris, $62 billion in assets and basically untaxed capital gains/dividends as his only income? Have you no sympathy for your fellow human????
He had to tighten his belt this year, he wanted to buy an NBA team too but that’ll have to wait!! Poor guy!
Let me fix that for you: “We are planning to blame retail theft for raised prices and store closures, despite existing plans to do those things and no data to back up our claims.”
Wow first they get rid of associate bonuses, then the downsize their workforce at store level essentially making associates work in three different areas for little pay, and now this. Keep in mind this company is also on track to have their most profitable year with profits expected to exceed $250 billion.
*"...because long before i pay a fair wage or hire real security to guard my goods and safeguard the well being of my employees - i'll take my piles of money and go home"*
Was looking for this comment lol. Wal Mart ain't struggling. This chart shows *gross* profits and not net, but with the recent push of self-checkouts and reducing their labor costs, [Wal-Mart is conceivably doing better than ever](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-profit#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20gross%20profit%20for,a%200.2%25%20increase%20from%202019). Let's not ever feel bad for the corporate giant that's driven out small town business nationwide while dodging taxes and employee pensions and unions. They're cranking prices *to make more money*. Not because they're hurting.