Quote:
Originally Posted by SolidSnake84
If anybody here on the site has a job in retail, i've got a question for you about something that really bugs me.
Why are the stores set up for like 50 register lanes, but at any given time, no more than 3 or 4 are opened?
I notice it in Walmart the most, especially the one around here. Even during the day on Saturday, there is no more than 5 open at a time. All of the lines are completley full, and nobody comes up from the back to open a new one. I'm talking about a line of at least 10 to 20 people per register.
Martins in Stephens City is the same way, but at least they have the self-checkouts. Whats the point of building the store with 50 lanes when they know that they will never, ever, have a person at all of them.
Could the economy have something to do with it? Meaning they dont have the money to pay more workers?? I saw yesterday that the 7-11 down here now has only 1 person working at a time....
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Labor percentages are low, especially in these times, and the need to replenish stock and do other floor work is very high. I've worked retail and there's ALWAYS something to do... if someone is taking downtime they're just avoiding doing something. The stores are built in order to accomodate max flow at busy times such as holidays and other seasonal times (back to school/college), etc.
It really depends how cheap the company as a whole is. They figure once you're in line you're going to buy something so they'd rather have the workers elsewhere doing what they deem is more productive. This is happening more and more. I worked for Bed Bath and Beyond for a few years and if checking out people in our line (if you worked as a cashier) would take longer than it took to get another worker up there, you called for backup. About a year and a half ago they changed the way that stores were graded on service and mystery shops and it was higher penalized to have less people on the floor than to have a line at the registers, so the backup calmed down a lot. Not to mention they were very cheap and typically only had 4-5 people there at a time in the evening so if you had 2 other people up there... you only had 1 other person in the store to do everything... in a 40k square foot store. Not to mention stores like that love to constantly move stuff around from spot to spot so you basically can have 1 or 2 people moving a large fixture's contents to another spot.. and what was in the new spot elsewhere, etc... so you've essentially wasted 20 mins to several hours to literally move things 15 feet by the time that you've done the project, done backup, helped customers, etc.
I don't mind lines... I HATE when workers aren't willing to help and don't know their products. I'll gladly spend more time in line if the store has knowledgeable and friendly people.. unfortunately you don't find that many places.
I've worked retail since I was 16 and have done management since I was 19, 26 now. It's a crazy business.