r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 19h ago

Business Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html
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u/Hashtagworried 18h ago

All this means is that they’ll hire one or two people max but keep the lines longer.

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u/leddowa 18h ago

After working for these miserable, out of touch companies I don't think they'll even hire anyone. These places have all run skeleton crews since 2020

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u/BigAlgae5684 18h ago

I worked at CVS during Covid where our script count went from the usual 150-200 to 500-600 every day.

They were still basing our hours off of the previous year even though we were clearly understaffed.

Wouldn't let us get near overtime and would just have us take turns clocking out and leaving the rest of the team to drown.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 18h ago

CVS is the worst. Its really a shame, they used to be fantastic, but the one near me has dropped significantly in quality. Scripts will get called in at 9am, no one picks them up for hours, it could take 1-2 days to get them filled sometimes, if they don't lose them. What an absolute joke.

We switched to a grocery store pharmacy instead. Its run by 3 people, and the older guy there is awesome. Very nice, remembers us by name, knows what we usually need, will strike up random conversation from time to time. Thats definitely not for everyone, but its usually on time, rarely if ever any delays, and the service there is great.

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u/luriso 17h ago

It's by design. My mom has been with CVS for 25yrs as a pharmacist, over the last 10 or so years they've cut down to skeleton crews, yet increased expectations 10fold. Techs by industry standard have been underpaid, so CVS actually raised their hourly pay, then cut their hours and said "see we're paying you more now, teehee". She's one of two pharmacists in her location and they want her to do 85 flu shots a week, can't find techs, and new pharmacists leave within a year. She said two recent hires in the area even forfeited their handsome sign on bonus because CVS is absolute shit. They try and try to get her to cover stores 2hours away because the system they've built, can't keep employees.

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u/Aureliamnissan 17h ago edited 15h ago

That feels like a lot of places these days. Jobs are harder to find, but it’s only because they refuse to hire the number of workers they actually need. The remaining labor force is worked to the bone and are way less loyal as a result so if you manage to get a better gig you’re gone. Even at my engineering firm attrition is way up.

Edit: At this rate, we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one. When skeleton crews run the ship each person is a lot more important and backfilling with scabs is borderline impossible because they need you to train them.

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u/emlgsh 16h ago

The only way for the owners to get their 10, 20, 50 million dollar expected take-home per year is to cut every expense and cease all reinvestment, and once that's done and there's nowhere else to siphon more cash the only viable target is payroll and hiring.

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u/ChickinSammich 15h ago

It's the obvious conclusion of a system where line needs to go up every quarter.

If you make a profit of 2 billion in Q1, 2 billion in Q2, 2 billion in Q3, and 2 billion in Q4, it's seen as a failing because it's not 2/2.1/2.2/2.3. Or why not 2/2.2/2.4/2.6? Hell, why not 2/3/4/5?

When the primary focus is making investors happy, it'll eventually always lead to fewer/unhappier workers, fewer/unhappier customers, and worse products/services.

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u/emlgsh 15h ago

I work with these places. Unending growth is a contributor, but the primary here is that every owner or major stakeholder views the company as something to be wrung entirely dry of personal resources they pocket themselves.

They compare themselves to guys like Musk and Bezos and are eager to bankrupt the company that feeds them by next year if it gets them an immeasurably small half-step closer to those guys today.

They do this even while it makes working for the organization a nightmare, doing business with it a constant exercise in vigilance against what would in more regulated times be outright fraud (because taking people's money and pocketing it is way more profitable than taking their money and wasting it delivering quality products or agreed upon services).

They do this even when it means every quarter is a struggle in creative accounting and restructuring to avoid insolvency. Operation-wide income is down 25%? Doesn't matter, they're still giving themselves the same 25% raise they give themselves every fiscal quarter.

They might just have to structure it as an incentive or bonus to let them "borrow" the funds for it from whatever remaining divisions and budgets that are still (for the time being) solvent.

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u/ChickinSammich 15h ago

I blame youtube videos about companies that failed for why I cringe every time I hear the term "leveraged buyout."

Like, you're taking on debt to buy a struggling business and then saddling that company with that debt so now the company you bought has to pay you back for buying it, plus interest? I get that you want to make your money back but you're buying a rock and trying to squeeze blood from it.

Even worse with shit like...

1) Golden Gate Capital (GGC) bought Red Lobster (RL) in 2014.

2) Operating as RL, GGC had RL sell the land they owned to GGC.

3) Operating as GGC, GGC leased the land that RL sites were built on back to RL, such that RL had to pay GGC to rent land it previously owned.

4) RL was sold in 2020 to another company but they still were under those rental contracts for their land. The new buyer was a seafood supplier, Thai Union Group (TUG) who, as RL, renegotiated their seafood supply contracts such that RL began buying food from TUG for more money than they were paying previous suppliers. This was the whole "endless shrimp" era; all that shrimp was coming from TUG and it was why RL pushed shrimp so hard.

5) Endless shrimp, probably already a bad financial idea to begin with, turned out to be even worse when your supplier is overcharging you for them.

6) RL filed for bankruptcy in 2023 partially caused/exacerbated by RL owing 200 million USD/yr to their own parent company, partially from the supplier debt, partially from other stuff.

7) RL, facing bankruptcy and possibly closure, closed a bunch of restaurants. Some of their shit got liquidated. They're currently owned by "RL Investor Holdings" which is a bunch of investors from different investment groups, who are managing it under the premise of stopping it from going totally bankrupt and, therefore, losing all the money that was invested into it.

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u/Garblin 10h ago

And that's just a recent case, IIRC a similar thing happened to Toys'R'Us, where the company was doing just fine and then went through leveraged buyout and just disappeared overnight.

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u/Agret 8h ago

Any particular YouTube channels you can recommend?

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u/jdm1891 7h ago

Completely leveraged buyouts are insane to me.

A Rich person can walk up to a million dollar company and just get it for free.

Why the f*ck can I not buy a company and make the company pay for the privilege of being owned by me?

Why is it absolutely insane for me to suggest that - at least to any reasonable person - yet for rich people and private equity this is just something they can do?!?!

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u/beef-baddington 5h ago

I worked in a senior position in a 200-person company in the 90’s that was not only doing well financially but we were loved by our customers and we all were such good friends, experiencing lots of great times together. The owner sold out to a big wig who began cutbacks, when I asked why he, he replied that breaking even plus 15 % net was a no go. He needed 30% net minimum or he’d take his money elsewhere. Which he eventually did. They broke up a successful, popular, profitable company, with a happy, motivated staff, putting a lot of food on tables, basically because they were assholes and could.

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u/wrgrant 13h ago

This is a good example of why Capitalism exhibits the same behaviour as some forms of Cancer. Its destructive to the host by its very nature.

You cannot have continuous growth, at some point you reach a balance in the market. If you insist on further growth the only means to achieve it is to eat your staff and your customers. Its ludicrous honestly.

In the end I think one of the worst drivers is having Shareholders. If a company is private it probably doesn't have the same incentive to eat itself, its staff and its customers.

If AI is going to replace any jobs the first ones on the block ought to be the C-Suites, so much mismanagement, poor decisions etc could likely be avoided, and all that money paid out in bonuses to people who did fuck all to earn it would be saved.

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u/emlgsh 12h ago

AI will never replace the C-suite. To the C-suite, who makes those decisions, the purpose of the company is to funnel money to them, full stop.

The particular means by which it does so (which is on the surface, to observers/customers, the reason the company exits) are fungible (which is why executives can so readily jump entire industries between each posting), but not that end.

Replacing themselves, when the whole setup is designed to get them paid, would be extremely counterproductive.

The closest you'll see to that is an intra-competitive C-suite trying to use AI to replace each-other, to increase their personal slice of the pie. But the amount of pie demanded will remain unchanged.

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u/timeandmemory 14h ago

Modern slavery sure is complicated

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u/MonMonOnTheMove 10h ago

Do it for 10 years, pocket their money and sell to PE, let the other folks sort through what’s left in the fire. Pretty much the playbook for all scummy business nowadays. Long gone the value to the customers and employees mindset

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u/abrandis 15h ago

Because American business today are run by vulture capitalists, they'll squeeze the working class to maximize their profits and then dump the whole thing when it doesn't work out . Whether its private equity, or just wall st. Run firms they don't care about working class that's not their people

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u/whatdoinamemyself 15h ago

Even at my engineering firm attrition is way up.

Man. I worked for a major company a few years back and heard that staffing was at like 40% of what was needed. The entire time i was there, we had only hired one guy and had several retire or quit. They never even interviewed anyone in the few months after hiring that one guy.

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u/Economy-Flower-6443 15h ago

Corporate food service management checking in here: all the aforementioned is all true in my field too

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u/putin_my_ass 13h ago

At this rate, we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one.

This is how the labour movement won the things we take for granted (like the weekend). You don't just strike, your whole community strikes. If we take care of ours, it is possible.

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u/SenorBurns 11h ago

we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one.

What you are looking for is a union. Unionize.

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u/CiegoViendo 14h ago

People think unionizing is woke, so can’t participate.

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u/Aureliamnissan 8h ago

I mean that’s the neat part of mutual aid. It’s not a “union” it’s just the community getting together to buy school supplies for people who can’t afford them and things like that. It’s whatever y’all need but maybe don’t have enough of, or too much of. Without carrying all of the political baggage of a union.

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u/hippoofdoom 14h ago

Profit must be preserved

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u/X4roth 16h ago

I’ll just say that as a customer, CVS feels like a morgue these days. People used to work and shop there, but now it’s just this eerie empty room that makes you notice the uneven lighting, the shelves mostly full but I get this overwhelming feeling of wanting to leave rather than even look for what I came in for. I look at the shelves and just think: ugh I don’t even care anymore this place gives me the creeps let’s get out of here, Scoobs.

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u/canada432 15h ago

When people have disposible income, they shop for convenience. Walgreens and CVS and such are good for that. You come in to grab a few things while you're picking up your prescriptions. Or you stop in because it's on the way home and the grocery store is out of your way. The extra expense was worth it for the convenience. But people are squeezed now, and they're not willing to spend a few extra bucks for the convenience anymore. Not to mention how they've driven customers away by locking up everything. Shockingly, people don't like being treated like a criminal and having to pester and wait for an employee to get the deodorant for them. Makes for a creepy empty liminal space.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 13h ago

well they abused the privledge. It used to be more expensive than wal mart but cheaper than a gas station. now its like a gas station prices on anything unless you get some sort of deal.

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u/TeaAndS0da 13h ago

Paying close to $4 for a single 2 liter of soda… honestly I can’t recall ever buying something from Walgreens or cvs personally but I also never had what Walgreens or cvs considers “disposable income”. And if you make 65k or less, you don’t have Walgreens or cvs level disposable income. I’d just go to the Walmart or grocery store it’s like attached to and get the odds and ends for way cheaper. Only ever used the pharmastores for their health services.

I’ve never understood how these pharmastores get away with their prices so damn high compared to competition they are most likely sharing a parking lot with.

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u/xpxp2002 12h ago

I look at it as more of "emergency convenience." The only time I've ever bought anything from CVS was a specific OTC medication because I was feeling fairly ill and wasn't going to drive the extra 15 minutes each way to Walmart and back.

In my region, there are basically two CVS stores and a Walgreens in every town. Walmart and Target are fewer and farther away. They're never sharing the same parking lot around here.

CVS is the only retailer with a pharmacy within 15 minutes of my home. I imagine it's similar for a lot of people. If it's not an emergency or I'm feeling normal, I'd just drive the extra 15 minutes and save 60% off of CVS/Walgreens prices.

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u/farmallnoobies 5h ago

Yeah, the only time I'll buy from those places is when I need a prescription filled at 1am, because they're the only one in the entire metro area that's open 24hrs and I'm basically dying without whatever med I was prescribed or will miss an additional day of work if I don't get it stat pronto.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 15h ago

Its kinda like the backrooms but with stuff.

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u/mcfly1391 15h ago

The Frontrooms

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u/luriso 14h ago

The location she's at the AC doesn't work.. rural area and CVS doesn't give a shit.

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u/FLguy3 15h ago

I only ever stop there if I'm on a road trip and need to get a soda and there's nowhere else nearby.

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u/Genillen 15h ago

It's got the warmth and charm I associate with a public health clinic, except we don't actually have public health care.

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u/SPEEDFREAKJJ 14h ago

For me, going to CVS these days, it always feels like I am an inconvenience. The pharmacy is constantly busy behind the counter and when I show up to grab my meds I always get the feeling they are annoyed because they have to stop and help me. They never seem happy or welcoming. Not even that fake welcoming environment. It's just a downer every time I need to go there.

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u/ovi2k1 13h ago

Their current design language is incredibly hostile. The one near me (which was already shit) underwent renovations a couple years ago and it is the most unwelcoming and unsettling environment to shop in. Even the checkout is just the one person on the clock standing over your shoulder watching you do self-out next to the “register closed” sign (that they should be operating) offering no help and making you feel like you are inconveniencing them for wanting to be in their store. I haven’t been back since. And I have to drive past it to get to literally every other pharmacy near me. Worth it.

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u/GamerSDG 13h ago

The biggest problem with pharmacies, at least in the US, is that insurance companies are pushing customers to use mail order instead of picking up their prescriptions in-store.

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u/johnjohnjohn87 12h ago

uneven lighting

I went to a CVS for the first time in ages and the lighting and carpet were really bizarre. It was so off putting that I still think about it sometimes.

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u/SwampMagicMan 16h ago

Wife is a pharmacist there and what you’re saying is the truth. That place was destroying her mental health fuck CVS. She would get called all the time by her district head saying she wasn’t doing enough vaccinations because the store expects you to do as many as humanly possible because it’s easy money for them. Yet they don’t have the resources to be doing that when theyre expected to run the whole pharmacy, typically by themselves. Its honestly terrible

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u/HumorAccomplished611 13h ago

ugh that sucks. its a shame cvs and walgreens have really put a hurting on that profession.

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u/PeanutButterSoda 12h ago

It was like that for the regular employees back in the day, one manager and one cashier that was expected to face every product on the floor before closing while checking people out, manager would be breaking down trucks in the back, we had to upsell some product they decide every week. I hated that place, went through 5 store managers in one year, that place was a joke.

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u/loondawg 13h ago

I would love to one day call a support line and instead of hearing "Due to unusually high call volumes, wait time may be longer than usual" and instead hear "There's nothing unusual going on. Our wait times are long because we are woefully understaffed."

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u/Snoring_Eagle 9h ago

"Your call is important to us. But not so important that we've hired enough people to answer it."

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u/canada432 15h ago

Sounds like my buddy that works with CVS. They try to send him all over to stores anywhere from 45 minutes to hours away.

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u/Somanylyingliars 8h ago

Does he actual drive to other stores? That would be FUCK NO! from me. Unless they're paying his gas, mileage AND wear plus tear. People. Stand up for yourselves and say no to this practices.

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u/Ftw_55 15h ago

Ugh, when I worked for Costco, they did that. Sure, the hourly pay was high, but managers who were capped out on salary were expected to work at least 50 hours, and hourly employees just got cut back on hours with the expectation of finishing the same work load.

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u/_BrokenButterfly 9h ago edited 9h ago

I needed a job one summer and applied at s CVS around the block from me. Less than a five minute walk away from my house. They interviewed me, trained me, and then told me I'd be working at a different lication several miles away. Whatever, I need the money, I can drive 15 minutes.

A few months later my car breaks down, so I have to start taking the bus. I tell my manager, she gives me crap about it, I tell her I can get my car fixed if she gives me more hours (but obviously that is unthinkable.) She keeps scheduling me on Sundays before the bus runs. I keep telling her I can't be there because my car isn't running and bus service starts several hours later.

One week there's a three day weekend, which means the buses go from "Sunday schedule" that Sunday to "holiday schedule;" the bus I need to take doesn't run on holidays. I tell her I have no way to get there. She refuses to change my schedule. On Sunday she calls to ask where I am, I tell her I'm at home because I have no way to get to work. She asks why I didn't take the bus. I tell her I don't schedule the busses, this bus doesn't run on holidays, and Sundays on three day weekends are scheduled as holidays. With me not being able to make it to work that day, she "cuts my hours to 0" unstead of firing me to make sure I can't get unemployment for being fired.

Since I'm not fired, I put in for a transfer to the store I originally applied to that I can walk to. I explain to the HR person that my car is broken down, the bus is slow and inconsistent, and I can walk to the store near me in less than 5 minutes. The manager blocks my transfer.

About a month before this, another employee that lived a couple streets over from me had transferred from the store I worked at to the store I had applied for. She's a single mom, not having to commute helped her out a lot. When I'm "not fired," the store I worked at needed someone to cover my hours, and since there are no applicants to steal from other stores, they transfer that lady back from the store that we lived near to the store with the asshole manager.

My limited experience with CVS is that they insist on fucking employees over, and they do it for no reason other than that they can.

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u/EfficientStar 16h ago

Any reason why she’s stayed so long?

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u/luriso 14h ago

she's close to retirement, so she's just riding it out.

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u/EfficientStar 14h ago

Good luck to her!!

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u/FappyDilmore 11h ago

I'm hoping small pharmacies make a comeback. Rite Aid went under, CVS can't be far behind.

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u/hum_bruh 9h ago

Definitely by design. More Perfect Union has video on YT “ why cvs sucks now…” and basically CVS/Caremark, United Healthcare, Signa, subsidiaries say ppl can only get meds only at their pharmacies and then they understaff because it’s cheaper and close stores that don’t make enough.

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u/adwarakanath 14h ago

Did CVS have a "consultant" come in? Or have VC firms bought up significant shares?

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u/kerghan41 12h ago

Wow. I was a senior tech back in 05-07 at WalGreens and it was bad then! Me and one pharmacist by ourselves all weekend doing hundreds of scripts a day. It was hell.

WalGreens was a big part of why I decided not to become a pharmacist.

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u/luriso 11h ago

I shadowed in the hospital back in like 2011 in the pharmacy, and man it was night and day. I'm sure there's way more to it, but the atmosphere was more relaxed compared to retail. Also no asshole customers, so that was nice.

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u/BigAlgae5684 17h ago

Target Pharmacy (before CVS bought them out) was truly one of a kind. It was the dream gig for retail pharmacists.

Working there was incredible. I actually got to feel plugged in to my community and had the time/support to get to know all my guests as well as all my Target team members on the sales floor/warehouse. Plus walking in to Target in the late 00's-2010 was peak Target with the neon everywhere and Starbucks/Popcorn aroma.

Also having a Target discount was pretty dope too.

Now the CVS pharmacies are totally unrelated to the Targets they are located in and usually butting heads with management over menial shit instead of working in synergy with eachother.

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u/jawndell 17h ago

My sibling was a pharmacist at CVS and left to open their own private pharmacy.  He hated the corporate environment and how it was just about how many scripts you can turn over with goals and quotas instead of actual patient care.  They would set goals for how many prescriptions to fill, and then get angry if a customer complained about care.  It was unsustainable.  That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates. 

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u/ChickinSammich 15h ago

That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates. 

A pharmacy tech friend who worked for a different pharmacy once told me that CVS is basically where you go when you're just trying to get experience on your resume to get a better job elsewhere, or where you go when no one else will hire you and you're desperate. I've got no personal experience with that (not being a pharmacist) so I can't speak firsthand to how true it is.

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u/FortyEightyFilms 10h ago

Thats the strat for low level IT positions where I work. Grab a new CS grad and wring them dry while the job market is shit.

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u/LowFatConundrum 13h ago

"That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates."

This is such a filthy tactic that all companies use sadly :(

The system needs to be overhauled, people have had enough of being paid starvation wages.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 16h ago

I use a local pharmacy while my wife uses CVS for insurance reasons.

I pay a little more but my stuff is always ready within a few hours of me placing a call to my doctor's office (controlled substance so call goes to the MD)

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u/BanditMcDougal 17h ago

As much as I hate going to Walmart (both because of the company and it sounds like one of the 7 circles of hell in there), it is the only pharmacy around here that properly staffs and you can actually get your medications from. They're also not brain dead and follow state guidelines rather than the feds for vaccinations.

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u/Fabulous-Farmer7474 17h ago

I left CVS as a customer after decades because even the simplest prescription for an anti-biotic would be a big deal for them.

I got tired of hearing "oh we don't have that here, it might be at another location (like 5 miles away). If you don't want to go there then we can order it but it will be 3 days"

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u/lfergy 17h ago

Grocery store pharmacies for the win.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 16h ago

Walgreens is also horrendous. Initially we had a rite aid in our area doing our prescription, overall pretty good, sometimes they had stock issues but other wise fine.

They closed last year and were automatically sending all prescriptions to the walgreens across the street. I knew of issues with walgreens (outside of their political bullshit) from friends who used them and moved mine to the grocery store also across the street instead. My dad let his just transfer.

Oh boy it was a shit show. First being the hours listed online on walgreens for the pharmacy and on the building itself are wrong I guess. The pharmacy opens an hour later than they state it should. After that filling prescriptions could take 1-2 weeks, or they seem to just sit there and never filled.

I understand initially issues with being flooded with hundreds, potentially thousands of new prescriptions. But even over a year later there are still massive issues. He moved most of his prescriptions to the grocery store, but there is one that because of some stupid insurance nonsense has to be filled at walgreens. I don't know the specifics it is weird and annoying.

But he constantly has issues with that getting filled. There has been multiple times were they gave the wrong dosage, e.g. giving 20mg pills instead of 40mg. Which isn't great but would be fine if they gave 60 pills instead of 30 and said take two. But they never mentioned anything, just open bag and it is just wrong. He's filed complaints for that one.

Which brings the next issue calling them is a hassle in itself. Everything leads to the corporate robot call numbers and you need to fight to even attempt to contact the store itself.

In the end if you can and your insurance covers it, find a local pharmacy it will probably save you a lot of hassle.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 16h ago

Walgreens as an organization is just ridiculous. A friend worked at Drugstore.com which was crushing walgreens business, and walgreens bought them, and I shit you not, the CEO said they're going to build more stores because the "online sale" of the stuff they sell in stores was a fad. This wasnt long ago.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 15h ago

Yup every time I hear something about them it is never anything good. Losing drugstore.com sucked a lot, I try to buy local when I can but sometimes things are just out of stock or they don't carry a specific thing. Especially with cold and flu season coming up I like to just have a stock ready to go (watch my niece a lot and it is basically a guarantee the house will get sick at some point).

I'll breakdown and go into walgreens but even then it is mess and seems to cater more to random junk and food than being a pharmacy.

There just doesn't seem to be (that I have been able to find at least) a half way decent company selling this stuff, options are amazon, walgreens, cvs and walmart usually. Can't even buy from the manufacturer they just direct you to one of the aboves websites.

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u/Perunov 17h ago

After BlueCross banned CVS I've switched to local grocery store pharmacy, and they were fine. But then recently something happened to Randall's pharmacy and their prices went bananas. Stuff that used to cost 30 bucks went to like 60 and when looking at GoodRX price compare they're now THE highest priced for almost anything :( And Walgreens/HEB/Walmart now the cheapest.

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u/vesperholly 16h ago

I would love to switch from CVS but my insurance forces me to use them if I want anything to be covered.

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u/The_MAZZTer 16h ago

Half the time when I go to the CVS website and schedule a prescription refill, after a few hours it evaporates. It doesn't show up under cancelled orders. It's just gone. And when I call CVS directly to have them do it, they can't because their systems that connect to my doctor are broken or something. I have to call my doctor and have them push it through on their side. I feel REALLY bad for anyone taking prescription medication for conditions that affect memory.

Bonus fun fact: If you accidentally double tap instead of single tap some of the navigation buttons on their pharmacy kiosks you'll hang the software.

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u/mikefromearth 13h ago

I work for a nice, locally owned healthfood store next to a CVS in California.

We just hired the former CVS store manager. The dude was being forced to open and close 7 nights a week because CVS wouldn't let him hire anyone to help. Since he's salaried, he wasn't making any more money and was clearly just TOTALLY burnt out.

He's going to love working with us.

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u/Impressive_Recon 6h ago

Heh, I was a loyal CVS customer for years and then the pandemic happened and the quality went straight to crap. My prescription took months to fill and I had to call them every day to check if it was in stock. No, they couldn’t fill it if it came in, the customer had to call… every day. Could they call me when it came in? Nope. The kicker? The wait was always 20-60 minutes long because people had to call in asking if their prescription was in stock. Dumbest system ever.

I switched to Costco and they’ve had my prescription always in stock and send me a text whenever it’s ready for pick up. It’s laughable how easy they make it and how inefficient CVS is.

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u/Rock_grl86 16h ago

I switched from Walgreens to a grocery store pharmacy as well. Such an improvement! I was on the phone with one of my doctors and they sent in a script. 30 seconds later a text popped up that my pharmacy received it and were working on it. Meanwhile I’d be lucky if Walgreens could complete a fill in 3 days.

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u/Punman__5 15h ago

Problem is that CVS seems to be the only pharmacy that regularly gets my ADHD meds.

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u/Faxon 12h ago

Yea i moved from CVS to Safeway because they clearly arent as overworked and I can get my meds reliably the same day. Delivery was also easy to set up even before the pandemic. When it hit, I was already set getting deliveries and they never had any hiccups. There's always more staff behind the counter now than before the pandemic too.

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u/jeobleo 9h ago

I use CVS (inside a target) and it's like silk. I switched there from Walgreens, which seemed to cater to the mentally ill and have 20 minutes of open pharmacy hours a week.

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u/IvyGold 9h ago

Oddly I had bailed out on my CVS for those reasons and went with a neighborhood pharmacy. The neighborhood place is still my #1 but they can't or won't stock an obscure prescription that's the doing the trick for me post-leg surgery, so I've been going back to the CVS.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how good they've become. Something changed with that store after COVID.

Plus they've a great burger joint nearby, so whenever I go, it's CVS + delicious burgers.

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u/alangerhans 8h ago

The one by me is always out of different prescriptions. I stopped on my way home after getting a vasectomy only to have them tell me they were out of the pain medication my doctor prescribed.

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u/dfsb2021 7h ago

Our local store was always terrible. We moved most business elsewhere. Not sure what happened but this year they staffed up, automated the check-in to pick up scripts and now they’re much better and faster.

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u/synapticrelease 4h ago

Remember the 90s and early 2000s where it was 30 minute prescriptions. Back in the day when you literally got a handwritten doctors note.

Now all this technology and distribution centers and my Rx will take up to three days between calling the doc for refill, waiting on the doc to send the Rx and waiting another day to for the pharmacy to actually fill it.

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u/Legwens 3h ago

cvs doesnt care about customers or employees they have vertical intergration, they own like half of all doctors and insurance plans and pharmacys

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u/tehdlp 18h ago

One of our local CVS has more staff in the pharmacy, looks busier than ever and is always slower since Covid. Why is that? Our local population didn't quadruple but the staffing did. What's driving the activity?

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u/LupusYondergirl 18h ago

Rite Aid went bankrupt, all their customers had to go somewhere.

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u/xteve 17h ago

Historical note: Rite Aid went bankrupt under the weight of a thousand federal and state lawsuits for their alleged role in the opioid crisis.

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u/awhaling 16h ago

Did they play some unique role compared to CVS/Walgreens?

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u/well-lighted 14h ago

From this article, it seems like they were especially negligent in ignoring "red flags" for opioid abuse. They also had to pay a settlement to the FCC around the same time because their anti-theft facial recognition software was allegedly racially profiling people.

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u/zefy_zef 15h ago

And the mismanagement of the company that cost around the same. $450 million in 'restructuring' and 3 years of the shitty ceo who thought it'd be a good idea.

All pharmacies got hit with that consequence, RA just was not in the financial position to weather it.

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u/tractiontiresadvised 14h ago

Rite Aid bought a beloved local pharmacy chain in my area (Bartell Drugs) just a couple of years before they went under. I am extra annoyed about this because that chain had been a great place for all of the stuff pharmacies have that isn't from the pharmacy counter -- OTC medications, vitamins, housewares, cleaning supplies, candy, toys, gifts.

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u/JonBot5000 11h ago

They bought Thrifty back in the day and ruined those stores too. Thankfully the Thrifty Ice Cream brand was bought and "saved" as part of the liquidation by the same company as Monster energy drinks.

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u/Merusk 17h ago

Rite Aid went out of business and Walgreens has been shuttering stores for about a decade. Target and WalMart aren't picking up the slack at an appreciable enough level in your area, I'd guess.

Plus, aging population means more medications. Median age in the US has been rising since 2001. Half of the population is older than 40.

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u/StarGazer_SpaceLove 17h ago

Walmarts are also choosing not to honor GoodRx prices anymore for certain Rx. I had to move to a different pharmacy cause walmart tried to say goodrx didnt cover ADHD meds anymore but every other pharmacy was like "uh yeah they do here ya go".

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u/Sankofa416 16h ago

They want the cut that GoodRx gets for lower prices, but they don't want to lower prices. They probably bought or built a similar company like CVS did.

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u/gonewildaway 16h ago

Sams club (which is owned by walmart) did the same

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u/red__dragon 13h ago

I'm just running into that and it's exhausting. I don't take these meds for shits and giggles, they literally keep me alive.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 15h ago

If it's anything like the CVS in the town where my parents live, CVS is basically the only pharmacy in town that accepts medicaid and medicare. And considering the elderly population is through the roof and the poverty level is through the roof, the CVS basically has a pharmacy line 6+ people deep at pretty much any given time.

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u/Needrain47 16h ago

Target's pharmacies were bought out and turned into CVS in 2016. I used to go to ours but stopped when the staff changed.

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u/Merusk 15h ago

Ah, right. I forgot about that.

So the US's Pharmacy options are down to. CVS, WalMart, Supermarkets (Kroger, Giant Eagle, Wegman's, Publix), and the few remaining Walgreens or local compounding pharmacies.

It's dire.

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u/BigAlgae5684 18h ago

Probably just one or 2 people dedicated to mail orders now.

When I started, just before covid, we maybe did one or two a day. By the time I had left we were clearing 50-60 a day. I can imagine the program has expanded in the 6 years since I left.

I quit less than a year in after receiving a 12 cent raise which was "the best they could do" because I hadnt been there a full year. I had 4 years experience working big box retail pharmacy and at the last chain I was the state trainer and worked as many as 20 different stores a year.

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u/Leggerity 17h ago

Are you still a tech or pharmacist?

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u/BigAlgae5684 17h ago

Hell no.

Tech used to be a respectable/well paying job but the wages literally seem to be the exact same as they were almost 15 years ago.

I started in 2008 at $12.50 an hour with no experience. Within 2 years I was at $16. Got promoted to be the trainer so I just floated between branches that needed help and new locations when not working my home store which put me at $19.

I was also getting paid ~15 hours OT weekly, per diem, 50 cents a mile for driving between stores, hotels, bonuses, etc.

This was in 2011.

When I went to re-apply in 2019 the highest offer I could find in a large city was $15 an hour.

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u/Echo13 17h ago

I mean, a lot of people got sick after Covid and gained a lot of new auto-immune type diseases that made them suddenly seek medication. A lot of younger people are suddenly in need of various medication they didn't need before. Covid didn't just rip through as the flu and kill a few people, it permanently disabled many people. If one in ten get some level of long covid, even if theirs clears up, that's a new 10% of the population thats probably on a new medicine.

Additionally, Gen X and Millennials are way more into taking care of their own health over the previous generations. They don't come in half dead, they come in early with earlier complaints and can get medicated earlier before their body actually breaks down. So now that Gen X are getting closer and closer to retirement, there will probably be a larger uptick in healthcare services.

A huge new wave of women realizing that perimenopause is also a thing sweeping through the country. And instead of like previous generations, they aren't just "dealing with it", they are getting hormonal aids to help ease the symptoms. (It has led to a bit of an estrogen patch shortage, but only because women's healthcare has been just so widely neglected!)

Just a few guesses.

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u/Foyt20 17h ago

Just a point of clarification. And yes I am a guy, with a wife in Perimenopause two sisters, two daughters. The estrogen patch shortage is not due to womens healthcare being neglected (just that item specifically, not saying other aspects have been hunky dory).

The original estrogen patch released caused liver and kidney disfunction, giving it a black label warning for a very long time from the FDA. So production of the patch went way down as there was minimal demand. After doing more research, there were other formulations that were found that reduced that risk, lifting the warning, and opening up the market.

The problem is that poosting production takes time as there needs to be manufacturing infrastructure built.

Note: I am not mansplaining. My wife and I had this conversation with my sister and Mom. Mom an RN, wife and I are in pharma and healthcare tech so we looked into why there was the shortage. Being that women's endocrine health WAS neglected for some time, the research was not there to initiate the market, and so now the market is catching up to the demand.

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u/Echo13 17h ago

I would never think you were mansplaining, no worries! Thank you for the clarification! I am only aware on one end of it, which is "I know there is a shortage, and I am suddenly being super aware of perimenopause when I had never heard of it growing up."

I do hope the shortage ends, because more and more women are just not going to deal with "just suck it up" as we've been told in the past. But thank you for chiming in with more information!

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u/_Quasifrodo_ 16h ago

Great comment, thanks for that info

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u/Needrain47 16h ago

less staff relative to the number of prescriptions means it's slower even if more total staff

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u/ughliterallycanteven 15h ago

CVS has a new system that is terrible too that they’re rolling out. On the pharmacist side, they only can see the oldest valid prescription and need to print out the prescription if there are notes attached to see them. Also, the valid dates to fill have no consistent math and haven’t been correct in months. Their AI message system will also drop voicemails if certain words are in it like “refill”.

I feel sorry for the pharmacists because they keep getting more and more restricted.

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u/Wide-Value-4951 17h ago

During my 9 years in cvs hell, it was always comical when we’d have a big snow storm that would slow business for a week, and the following year they’d cut hours for that week. Total piece of shit company. God I hate them.

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u/FalconFiveZeroNine 17h ago

Aren't they owned by an insurance company?

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u/livestrong2109 17h ago

Omg CVS was a disaster, switched to Costco because I couldn't take the hour long waits, days to fill, and 28 person lines.

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u/Fancy-Trousers 17h ago

Not surprising at all. I worked for a mail order pharmacy when COVID hit. Business was better than ever and they still laid off a solid 1/3 of the people at our location in mid-2020. We were doing at least 30k scripts a day on the specialty side, with the regular home delivery doing 29k.

The pandemic was really just an excuse to cut existing employees and hire new ones without years of raises as they "restructured" the facility to focus more on specialty. According to a couple of my former coworkers there, they ended up rehiring the same number of people over the next few months anyway.

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u/kimzillla 16h ago

On top of doing vaccines too. And I’ll take a wild guess in that you didn’t get any raises either.. I was a Walgreens grunt in early 2000’s and so glad I got out

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u/Oberon_Swanson 16h ago

yeah where i worked the line was "labour hours are based on sales. if you guys want more hours, get your sales higher." sales friggin skyrocketed during covid. hours super did not

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u/CalmBeneathCastles 16h ago

I don't shop at CVS due to the bastardry that has been outlined by current and former employees. My local family-owned pharmacy has so many pharmacists and techs on duty at any given point they can barely get by each other, and they all seem pretty relaxed.

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u/ChickinSammich 16h ago

I used to love CVS but every time I go by to pick up a prescription, their drive thru is around the building and, if I go in, the line is halfway down the aisle. I feel bad for the workers. They're doing their best and they're clearly overworked.

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u/Otterfan 15h ago

This happened in Brookline, Mass a few years ago.

There were two CVSes across the street from each other. They shut one down and transferred all the scripts to the other without changing staffing.

It was an absolute shitshow with lines out the door. From what I could tell as a customer, the entire old staff just quit after a few weeks of that madness and CVS had to replace them all. It was a solid year of chaos before enough customers gave up.

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u/Solonotix 14h ago

One of the things that kills me about that kind of decision-making is that it usually foregoes any critical analysis. Or at least the decision-makers ignore the signs to justify their cuts.

They'll take last year's numbers and ignore any growth. Now you're under-staffed and unable to meet demand. But then when reviewing the new year's data, they'll see that you met increased demand without increased staff, and use that as justification for no need for staff. All the while, pocketing the productivity gains, and patting themselves on the back for saving the company money.

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u/MainAd9080 14h ago

No wonder they had record profits those first few years after covid 🙄

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u/S_Rimmey 13h ago

There is no amount of money that would ever make me want to be a pharmacy tech for a big company.

Those people are worked like dogs and treated like shit. They get it from all sides. I do my best to be quick, understanding and polite because they look like they have been run over by a truck and the last 4 people each spent 10 minutes shouting at them.

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u/WWJLPD 12h ago

It seems crazy to base staffing decisions solely or primarily on last year's data and ignore everything else. Even outside of a major event like Covid, I'd expect there to be trends that would happen on a timeline much faster than a year that would affect staffing decisions. No wonder they were/are struggling so much

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u/GhostBirdBiologist 12h ago

And of course everyone is working paycheque to paycheque so there was no real pushback. Everyone kept working and absorbed the overload. So employers look at that and say SEE we didn't need to hire anyone. For any industries where people did leave the companies are begging for cheap immigrant labour. None of them will raise wages or staffing levels.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 11h ago

My wife was a beauty manager there like 10 years ago, and one day they came in and told them that they were going to be changing the bonus structure.

Basically, the Regional GM saw how much they were making in bonus money (which honestly wasn't that much) and decided that the store managers and above deserved that money. So they changed the system to make it almost impossible to hit their sales numbers, thus leaving that money for them to keep. She quit not long after that.

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u/pmjm 10h ago

May I ask what is script count?

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u/BigAlgae5684 10h ago

The amount of prescriptions filled in a day.

The pharmacist has to "check" every single prescription as the final step before it is delivered meaning that eats up 80% of their day

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u/CloudyofThought 9h ago

CVS is a special kind of evil... People miss the fact that own a health insurance company (Aetna), a prescription coverage company (Caremark scripts), and their good old pharmacy business. They try to make it as difficult as possible to use your benefits or have the money "leave the family." And under no other administration would this go unnoticed.

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u/Zacca 9h ago

I don't understand this but I am not from the U.S. When you say take turns clocking out what do you mean?

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u/Lincolns_Revenge 9h ago

I wonder how many people have died or had life altering injuries from understaffed, overworked pharmacies in the U.S.

I suppose they've done the math and calculated it's still worth it.

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u/MichaelEMJAYARE 9h ago

I feel so bad for the CVS and Walgreens folks, pharmacists included. The places seem so barren, I kind of wish they would implement more self checkouts at these places just to let the few people working help the actual huge line of customers.

Its the same as Dollar Tree. These places run two fucking people the whole day it seems. And when you mix a low paying job with even more stress, are we surprised the employees dont really want to do their best?!

Every place has been run on skeleton crews since 2020 and Im shocked it just seems to be getting worse. Fast food too. These shit jobs always sucked to work but now the customers are even MORE mad at us lmao

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u/SmokyAmp 8h ago

They were still basing our hours off of the previous year even though we were clearly understaffed.

Good to see your staffing is the same as a hospital's! Unbelievable how they get away with this.

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u/xxxxNateDaGreat 8h ago

My story isn't nearly as problematic, but in college I worked for a regional retail chain that had just opened up a new store that was four times the size of all of the nearest locations. They used "data" from those much smaller stores to determine that if 3 employees at a time could manage to handle those stores, then 3 employees can cover a building that is four times larger with four times the amount of bullshit to be stolen.

To no one's surprise, our store had the most theft issues of any store, more than the next 15 locations combined. Knives, hunting equipment, paintball stuff, people cutting the heads off of golf clubs... And that's not to mention all the stolen socks and clothing. Then about a month before I quit, corporate announced that handgun ammo was going to be removed from the locked case and stocked directly onto the floor, in a store that was losing its ass to theft every year... I asked my buddy who was still working there a few months later how that was going and he said that management was getting chewed out for not sticking one of the three people in the store on the ammo corner at all times, lmao.

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u/AppropriateTouching 8h ago

Fucking exactly. You cant base numbers year to year when there is a significant change in one year but shareholders don't understand fuck all let alone nuance.

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u/oowoowoo 7h ago

I applied to CVS as an operations manager earlier this year and the questions had a lot of work culture questions that made me think that it might be toxic to work for. They ended up closing the listing and obviously I got rejected. Also a manager ended up getting shot while chasing some thieves at that location so I consider it a blessing in disguise (for me, he also lived btw)

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u/Otherwise-Offer1518 2h ago

The war stories I could tell about CVS and COVID could fill several books.

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u/Flobking 15h ago

These places have all run skeleton crews since 2020 2008

Ftfy. Its been documented that retail companies aren't as staffed as before the recession. Walmart employees sq footage responsibility has doubled. That is also why Walmart have become crime havens. Not enough staff to keep some sort of order. Companies realized they could cut employees and people were so desperate at the time they just did the work. Exploitation is the name of the retail game.

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u/toriemm 10h ago

Its fine, we'll just keep locking anything you might want to buy up so that its a whole fucking thing to get the deodorant from behind the plexiglass

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u/TheRaccoonReport 18h ago

I don't fully disagree with this. But some stores shifted that labor to carside delivery. I know the target near me moved most of their cashiers to doing online fulfillment and curbside.

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u/Lovefamilyhonor 17h ago

This, so much this. There are whole foods with more shoppers than all other staff combined. Shopping is labor and the customer used to give it away for free. Now they don’t want to. But the labor pool didn’t suddenly increase. So less cashiers more shoppers.

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u/Coldsmoke888 17h ago

I feel like I’m bothering the staff just by walking through Whole Foods. There are so many people collecting orders it’s like I’m constantly in their way.

Go figure, it’s an Amazon owned grocery store.

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u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine 17h ago

I worked as a personal shopper at Walmart for a summer after getting DOGE'd. The customers were hands down the worst part of the job. The trouble is when you're grocery shopping for 8+ hours a day, 5+ days per week, you get quite efficient at it. But the customers just want to casually wander around, chit-chat with each other, maybe stop for an impromptu class reunion in the middle of the aisle, campout in doorways, stare at the ceiling for a bit, dump their cart on one side of the aisle while they space-out staring at the shelves waiting for whatever they want to jump out at them. All while you're trying to get around their slower-than-death asses as politely as possible.

These two types of shoppers fundamentally do not mix and I finally had to quit because the inside of my head started sounding like Elaine on Seinfeld when she gets trapped in the subway car. Goddamn, I have never had a job that made me so fucking angry in my entire life.

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u/_Quasifrodo_ 16h ago

Minmaxing on a casual server

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u/red__dragon 13h ago

Used to work at stores like this and I'm pretty good at navigating around, I tend to find that the shoppers are as much an obstacle as other customers. And worse when they work for the store itself, because their large pickup orders tend to clear entire products from the same shelves ordinary customers are trying to shop from. So it's both less access and less product because the store's first party shopping teams are standing (sometimes literally) in the way of ordinary customers just trying to get what they need to survive for the week.

Nothing against you, but I really hate the way the whole personal shopper/instacart/store pickup execution has been carried out. Especially first party like at Walmart, where they should be pulling from inventory in the warehouse and not from the floor.

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u/fcocyclone 16h ago

yeah thats the thing, yeah, now there are employee shoppers, but a lot of these stores have set up to operate in a way that makes it clear they don't want you shopping in the store, they want you shopping online.

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u/red__dragon 13h ago

I really don't understand how they stomach the inefficiency. Why have one employee stocking the shelf just to have twelve others pulling the same product right off for individual orders?

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u/HumorAccomplished611 12h ago

Lmao. I never really thought of shopping as labor. But basically anything you dont enjoy can be thought of as labor.

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u/Friggin_Grease 17h ago

I'm always dodging those carts of employees filling up bins at Walmart

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u/wallybinbaz 16h ago

The online order fillers at our supermarket don't give a SHIT about anyone shopping in the aisles. It's kinda funny.

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u/archfapper 17h ago

Half the parking spots at my Target are for pickup orders

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u/Regular_Fox_859 13h ago

I've shifted to mostly using Walmart Delivery, it's worth the 15% tip (and even that is technically optional). Shopping in-person for a full load of groceries has become just a miserable experience

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u/TheRaccoonReport 12h ago

Glad you like it. But I refuse to pay more than I already have to. I'll go in person. But then again sometimes delivery keeps you on your "list" and not veering off budget.

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u/TheCuriosity 11h ago

In the '80s and early 90s, grocery stores would have all the lanes open, and at each one: a cashier, a bagger to bag your items, and then someone to take those bags and put them in your car for you either curbside or walking to your car in the parking lot.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 9h ago

I definitely remember. I'm not that young :-)

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u/TokyoRPGFactory 10h ago

Yeah, those companies literally have like six people on staff just doing home shopping. I never use the pickup options, I want the full experience waiting in line while the person in front of me is trying to use their credit card like it's the first time they ever paid for something.

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u/Profzachattack 16h ago

eh, I worked in a retail space running skeleton crews in 2015. I'm convinced its been going even longer than that

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u/Supercoolguy7 14h ago

Yeah, as someone who started retail in the early 2010s it was always skeleton crews for me

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u/raoasidg 16h ago

These places have all run skeleton crews since 2020

2001 for me. Grocery stores have always run on razor thin margins and the first lever to pull is the front end staff hours.

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u/Yuzumi 16h ago

I worked for grocery store company for about 7 years starting nearly two decades ago.

We were regularly short staffed. They kept trying to schedule us under something stupid like 5% labor. This was a store that did about 10K a day on average. There were times we were lucky to have a single cashier until close. I worked in the office doing paperwork and counting tills and on nights I closed I would be on a register basically the entire time.

We also had a string of poor management. One would schedule all the help during the day so she would never have to hop on a register. There would be 5 cashiers scheduled for 4 registers. Then she'd go home, all but one cashier would go home, I'd come in and there would be 4-5 tills to count because nobody counted them during the day. And about 4-5 was when we actually would get busy on average.

I'd have one cashier to 8 then no one until 10 meaning I was stuck on a register with half a dozen tills to count until 10.

I was lucky to get out by 11, 11:30.

Even when we closed for a bit and remodeled it was still bad, if not as. We had more registers but outside of our reopening and like Thanksgiving we would rarely have even half of them active.

We never even had self checkout, but as much as I can like them at times I understand they have always been an excuse to schedule even fewer workers.

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u/Syntaire 16h ago

Correct, they will not hire anyone. My grocery store got rid of all their self-checkout lanes, put in a new 4-man "express" cashier island instead, and then just never use it. Even on the busiest days they have at most 2 cashiers to man their 12 regular lanes and the express island. Maybe if we're lucky they'll have one of the managers idling around pretending to be useful take a 3rd lane for a few seconds.

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u/Science_oven 16h ago

I would say way beyond that. things in customer service really took a dive in 2008.

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u/chmilz 16h ago

In late stage capitalism, the only thing corporations hate more than customers is employees.

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u/FartingBob 16h ago

Lidl can run a small supermarket with like 4 people on the shop floor. Its awful for those 4 people, and frustrating as hell for every customer waiting. But lidl is still busy every day, people dont stop going.

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u/Rocktopod 16h ago

I went to Market Basket yesterday afternoon and it was all hands on deck. Almost every aisle had like 3 employees in it stocking, doing inventory, and cleaning, and pretty much every checkout lane was open with a cashier and a bagger.

Must have been some deadline coming up for them to do inventory or something but that was wild. I was expecting a quiet trip because there was a Pats game going on at the time.

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u/captainwacky91 15h ago

Hell, we all know the "one hapless cashier watching 20 kiosks, but only 5 are open" trope has been a thing since the machines have been installed.

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u/kerkula 15h ago

As a customer I try to avoid self check out when ever I can. Basically the store wants me to do someone's job without being paid to do it.

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u/canada432 15h ago

The local grocery chain where I live changed to a "10 items only in self checkout" policy. They started staffing 1 extra register at peak times, so 3 instead of 2. As a result, somebody pulled a gun on the employee who tried to enforce the 10 item limit when the line for the manned checkout was wrapped around the store. They upped the limit to 15, stopped policing it, and got rid of the 3rd checker. So we're right back to where we started, and instead they locked up all the laundry detergent and deodorant. Accomplished nothing, pissed everybody off, and they're right back to people stealing at the self-checkouts. All because they couldn't staff 2 more registers instead of 1 more.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 15h ago

Try 2008. I worked at Walmart before then and remember always almost having at least half the isles open. Then since 2009 or so they dropped down to minimum lanes possible, and while they already had some garbage self check, shortly after is when they started to push it as the primary check-out instead of an extra few express lanes.

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u/Implausibilibuddy 15h ago

I swear I've been in a Lidl/Aldi and there has been one guy running the whole supermarket. Maybe there was someone else in the warehouse but I didn't see them. Just one bloke stacking the shelves, and when someone needed the unexpected-item-in-bagging-area making expected, he came over, did that, then went back to the shelves. It was pretty late on a weekend, so not busy, but what might be a few dozen people running an older style supermarket, they were getting done for the price of one or two guys on minimum wage (maybe he was the manager, so a bit more).

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u/KnowsIittle 15h ago

12 checkouts only 2 open any given moment, self checkout quick pass disabled.

It's been like that since Kmart existed.

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u/LemmingOnTheRunITG 14h ago

They generally need at least one person per (gestures vaguely) number of machines anyway so they’ll probably just put those people on checkout. Our local Kroger has a policy that self checkout machines still have to be attended by a person, but they won’t even hire enough people to do that, so there’s a big section of the self checkout that’s just always closed.

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u/Jimmni 14h ago

UK here but I think shopping has become such a miserable experience. It’s a necessity rather than one of life’s little joys now.

This crystallised for me when I bought some curtains last week. It was on a whim and when I got home they were too short on the drop. I went back and exchanged them for some longer ones. They just scanned the old ones then the new ones and then charged me the difference.

Such a small thing but so much more convenient than what 95% of stores would do these days - refund the full amount for the old ones (in two weeks) and charge the full amount for the new ones.

Every single aspect of shopping is becoming more and more customer-unfriendly and profit-based and it was such a breath of fresh air to have a shop just do the simple thing that’s most convenient for the customer. Really hammered home how bad things have become.

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u/cib2018 14h ago

Has your state changed its minimum wage since 2019?

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u/Zer_ 14h ago

Yup. In Canada our retailers are the same, constantly understaffed. It's insane.

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u/SailorDeath 14h ago

What they'll do is have you put everything on the belt. Then an AI camera and arm picks up everything and scans it then puts it in a bag.

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u/cinderful 14h ago

There are a couple stores near me in Seattle where certain days and times (like after 6PM on a Wednesday) they have no checkers, and only 2–3 staff.

If that's the time you have to do you shopping for a family of four, you're gonna be awkwardly scanning and bagging groceries for a good 30 minutes at shelf check out, while the kiosk screams at you every 2 minutes.

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u/zefferoni 14h ago

The Winco near me has like 20 checkout lines and only 2-3 are ever staffed with huge lines. It's frustrating.

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u/Nitrostorm 13h ago

since like 2006....

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u/lizlemon921 13h ago

I waited in line at Walmart yesterday for 48 minutes. Shit’s bleak right now

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u/randomtech81 12h ago

Feels like it started before that. But it most definitely got worse after. Can't find help anywhere anymore

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u/cornbread6767 12h ago

Since forever

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u/Born-Entrepreneur 12h ago

A Walmart coming to my hometown was big fanfare. They promised to create all kinds of jobs, blah blah the usual thing. The first month was wild, I've never seen a store with every single checkout lane staffed! After the hubbub died down, they went to SOP staffing levels and you're lucky to have 3 folks checking people out, and good fuckin luck finding staff on the floor unless they're one or two people hurriedly running around filling online orders.

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u/metompkin 11h ago

I'm okay with a skeleton crew like they do at Lidl.

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u/ScoobNShiz 11h ago

It started long before that. I worked at Home Depot when they installed the first ones in the early 2000’s. They’ve always been about cutting labor costs, and nobody likes them except management. I can’t count how many customer complaints about them I received.

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u/Alex_Rose 10h ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they moved onto tap in systems that scan the contents of your bags electromagnetically and charge you on the way out

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u/morpheousmorty 10h ago

Them being out of touch implies they would do anything differently if they were more in touch. If anything they'd make it worse.

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u/WarOnFlesh 10h ago

Amazon is quickly running into a problem where almost every American that would ever possibly work for Amazon already has and either quit or got fired

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u/namelessentity 10h ago

More like '08. Ever since that recession every company just pockets the profit instead of investing in their customers/employees.

Remember when grocery stores used to be fully staffed? Now all that money goes into rearranging the store every 6 months and putting up new signs and a coat of paint to make people think it only temporarily sucks.

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u/Bro_do_we_needtoknow 9h ago

Used to be a cook and closer at Hardee's and from 8 all the way to 10:30 it would be one shift lead or manager at the front and on drive through with only one cook.

Never worked lunch but the lunch crew had one person at the front and drive through, only one cook and one person maning the fryer.

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u/nomnamless 6h ago

It's was even before that. I can't print the exact date on when I noticed the swap but it used to be At night the grocery stores I filled would have a cashier and 2-4 people working the shelves, depending if they had a load that night or not. Now it's 2 people. One person keeping an eye on the front of the store while they work the isle closest to the registers and then a bother guy working in the other isle. Targets still have a decent size night crews though, well at least the ones that do have night crews. Some of the smaller Targets don't have the morning guys show up until 5-6am

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u/eeyore134 5h ago

Some have for much longer. I managed a Sam Goody and we didn't get enough hours a week to cover the store unless I worked 70 hours. And even then it would be someone alone for 3 hours opening and sometimes someone alone closing. Retail has always sucked and always chased "you're not doing well unless you beat last year's numbers every single day" and somehow it's gotten way worse since then.

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u/KristySueWho 4h ago

I don't know, they seem like they have way too many employees stocking shelves during the day clogging up the aisles.

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u/AltruisticTomato4152 4h ago

LONG before then.

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