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Target, Walmart Automate More Store Tasks
- abenedic 8y ago> chains seek to free staff to help shoppers. Of course that is what all the newly redundant staff will be doing. Because customer service is the top priority of a discount retailer.
- TheChaplain 8y agoYou can see this in SE Asia, many shops usually have one staff per aisle assisting shoppers. And shoppers here expect it and use the service. Does similar setups exist in the US market?
- fake-name 8y agoIf a store has 1 staff per acre of floor space, it's got a lot of people. For ultra-budget big-box stores, it can be hard to even find staff sometimes.
- alwillis 8y agoSome stores are so large, you can walk several aisles away before finding someone to get help from.
- lovich 8y agoThe best is when they have a large portion of the store dedicated to selling things that cannot be bought without an employee helping. At a walmart I worked at when I was younger there were two aisles of paint to be used in mixing but we never had anyone on the floor capable of running the machine since the store opened until I left two years later. There was also the electronics section which had everything under lock and key and had an employee with the key available maybe a third of the time. I also saw the deli open frequently with no one manning it. It wasn't closed, just had no one to run the machines
- patrickg_zill 8y agoNot at all. There might be 3 people on the floor, in a huge Super Target which is between 135k and 175k square feet. That is between 12 500 and 16 000 square meters.
- eddieroger 8y agoWhen the Fry's Electronics in Indiana opened years ago, they staffed one person per aisle, and even put a polaroid picture of them on the end of the aisle (in case you couldn't pick out the person in a white shirt and black pants). I don't think that staffing model lasted a year for them here, and having never been to a West Coast Fry's, I don't know if it was something they attempted here or the norm. But, in the case of other retailers (one of whom I work for), it is definitely not the norm in the US market, and is usually more like one or two per department, not aisle.
- sgslo 8y agoBack in the 90's and early 2000's this was a hugely successful model, its the period during which Fry's had its greatest expansion. On any given day of the week you could see a line of 30+ people waiting for a spot at one of 15+ registers. More recently many Fry's seem to have become ghost towns - even the banks of registers seemed to have thinned out, likely due to an expectation of never seeing that volume of customers again. The most probable explanation? Amazon. It's all the same cheap electronics.
- eddieroger 8y agoMy Fry's opened in the empty shell of a former Incredible Universe, and had 60 register bank on opening day (as Incredible Universe did). Even in the heyday, I don't remember all of the registers open, and also have seen them since thin down from 60 to maybe 30, and even then there are only 5 or 6 open at a time, even on the weekend. I agree Amazon is killing Fry's, and every time I go and try to support something non-Amazon, I'm filled with regret at the state of the store, and usually just place an Amazon order while frustratedly walking out empty handed.
- Avshalom 8y agoThat Target spokeswoman is going to get yelled at for calling them "shoppers" official corp-speak is "guests"
- frockington 8y agoThat takes me back to when I worked for Home Depot during the summers. So much "correct" terminology that it was easier for everyone just to ignore it. Unfortunately for the spokeswoman I don't think she'll get a pass like everyone else
- canada_dry 8y agoOr... could be that Ms. Nassauer didn't actually speak to Target spokesperson. Especially considering no name is attached. Given it's the WSJ you'd think they'd insist on getting attribution.
- yaleman 8y agoSo many paywalls ... :(
- xstartup 8y agoAlright, this is a personal observation of mine: 1. I go to a store where workers are paid bare minimum, they give me odd looks and make me feel as if I stole their bread or smth. 2. I go to premium stores, where I pay more but they treat me better. So, I go to premium stores even though I am aware I am losing more money, because in Maslow hierarchy of needs - I am at the top where I want to be treated better not save more money. Cost of negative interaction is much much greater for me. I randomly have flashbacks of negative experiences but I forget all positive or neutral experiences. Based on Exchange theory of Price, #2 price is justified. Now, if you remove the workers in option #2, the interaction goes from negative to neutral and I'll prefer #1.
- majewsky 8y agoFor me, it's sort of the opposite. I always wonder how employees at discount stores manage to maintain (the appearance of) job satisfaction. (Might be cultural difference though. I'm in Germany.)
- schreiaj 8y agoOddly, I've found somewhat the opposite - I usually shop at a grocery store in a lower income area, not because it was cheaper but because it was more convenient. That store closed recently and I've started going to a grocery store in a more affluent area. I've had no difference in how I've been treated by employees at the store (I always try to be polite to them, it costs me nothing to say please and thank you) But the people in the more affluent store? I DREAD going to the store because of them. My other half is a bit of a punk, she has bright blue hair, multiple piercings, and visible tattoos. We constantly get glares at, have had multiple "can I speak to your manager" types make disparaging comments at us, and constantly have problems with people just being, for want of a better term, colossal pricks. One even going so far as to hit my partner with their cart and call her a "fucking bitch" to her face... If they treat us like this I feel bad for the employees of the store. Multiple times we've debated going out of our way to go to a store where we don't have to deal with these type of people. Not to save money, just so we can be treated with some modicum of respect by other shoppers. I've never liked grocery shopping but the people in more affluent areas just make the entire experience something I dread.
- 8y ago
- aresant 8y agoMost businesses that rily on unskilled labor are tripling down on automation / systems engineering. The common explanation is cost savings, but I've observed another major driver : quality of service. Our current unemployment rate is virtually the lowest in 20yrs and it's hard to hire ANYBODY as a result. (1) And the low unemployment rate has had the interesting effect of upwards mobility for the traditional unskilled clerk / laborer / driver / server / etc. As a result the labor pool that is showing up is less professional / educated than they have been in the past which is creating major quality of service issues, training issues, etc. Automation in some of these jobs is a necessity, as the automation tech is a closer reality than availability of "professionalized" unskilled labor. (1) https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&hl=en&dl=en https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...
- mc32 8y agoThere are still lots of folks who are chronically unemployed[1], whose skills have atrophied. It's nothing new, U-6 has gone up and down over the years, but we really have not put a good dent in it. Many people forget about them altogether. They are not all un-retrainable. [1]http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/10/news/economy/95-million-out-of-workforce/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/10/news/economy/95-million-out-...
- csomar 8y agoI think the problem when you are on the lower end of the market, it doesn't make much financial sense to train you. Nobody is going to invest in these people. The only entity that can save them is the government (ie: social help).
- rtpg 8y agoIt's pretty amazing how the narrative around labor has generate an expectation from employers that employees should get their skills from anywhere but them. Skilled employees come from being trained and taught. They don't fall from the sky.
- 8y ago
- ggg9990 8y agoI'm not opposed to interacting with robots but I hate how these are all pushed out the door WAY before they are even at parity with a human. Self-checkout, robot delivery in hospitals, Alexa, etc. are absolute garbage
- tanilama 8y agoWhat is the issue with self-checkout, I found it is actually faster.
- r00fus 8y agoFruit & veggies are a disaster unless you like shrinkwrapped everything or you know all the codes. Any peculiarities on how you handle the goods - e.g. repositioning something that fell over in the "checkout area"- results in an escalation. The implementations out there are untrusting and non-optimized and take significantly longer than a real clerk. I've used a lot of these and it's always the same.
- mdorazio 8y agoMost of the fruit and vegetables I get at the store these days have tiny barcodes on them that make the self-checkout easy. And the occasional need for intervention from the one staff person handling 4-6 self checkouts is almost always far less than the time I would have spent waiting in line for someone who's still paying for groceries with a personal check in 2018. I almost always prefer a self-checkout.
- groupthinking 8y agoSelf-checkout. I got to the store, get my groceries, and see long lines of people standing waiting to checkout. There is only one clerk checking people out; everyone else has to go wait in the self-checkout line. We all stand and wait. One person has a problem finding a code for veggies. Another can't get their card to work. Another is wondering why their is a price discrepancy. And so on; each with a problem that could easily be solved by a clerk in no time at all, but now they have to stare at the machine, wait for the machine to tell them there is a problem try to figure it out themselves, they go to the clerk at the computer screen who can now come and take a look. That clerk, by the way, does not particularly enjoy dealing with customers and it shows, because they are all coming to her with stupid questions. Clerks in general now don't like interacting with customers because they see customers are looking at them as a kind-of self-checkout+. When I get to the self-checkout, finally, I feel ten people waiting behind me. I can't make a mistake! I have to hurry! I scan items quickly, I see them rolling down to the end of the conveyor belt, piling up. No mistakes! Then I have to run down and pack all of my groceries before the next person begins, but it's too late, they are sending down their peanut butter, milk, etc.
- eezurr 8y agoAfter I leave the store, I realize another piece of my humanity is chipped off. The cold mechanical sheen and faceless voice of the machine does nothing to warm my heart like a "how's your day?" from smiling lips of warm flesh. Food is now just another objective to tap onto the clipboard. A long passionless journey from farm to mouth, untouched by human hands. Tasteless mass production. /satire, almost
- loco5niner 8y agoThat is not my experience with self-checkout. I guess I'm lucky. I love self-checkout because I can get through so fast. Yes, I run into problems sometimes, but the attendant is usually right on top of it. I welcome this change.
- chrismcb 8y agoThe store doesn't pay me to work for them. So I refuse to use self check out. If there was a discount to use it, then I might consider it.