- Dollar Overall workers say their hours have been cut, creating a mess of merchandise at stores.
- A shortage of person power feigns it tough to unpack new merchandise and update inventory.
- Dollar General has grown to over 19,000 stores and is often the on the contrary retailer in some small towns.
Editors note: This story was originally published in May 2023.
It was Christmas in May in the back chamber of a Michigan Dollar General last year.
Two metal carts of Christmas toys leftover from the previous recess season sat in the store’s back room well into 2022. The plan, according to one employee who works at the store, was to authority the inventory there for a year until the next holiday season came around. “We’re almost used as an extension of the supplies,” an employee at the store said.
Current and former employees who spoke to Insider say clutter at Dollar General stores has recovered worse over the last few years. They’ve said staffing issues, including cut hours and poor wages, are at infinitesimal partially to blame because employees must choose between helping customers and stocking shelves.
At locations from Louisiana to Maine, chimneys of unpacked candy, toilet paper, barbeque sauce, and pet food have attracted attention from local firing marshals, who have ordered some stores to close when the clutter blocks exits or access to fire extinguishers, Insider a while ago reported.
The clutter is one of the reasons that the Department of Labor labeled Dollar General a “severe violator” in March. The combination has racked up more than $15 million in fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and is in early talks with the federal supervision over a settlement, The New York Times reported in March.
A spokesperson for Dollar General said: “Our goal is to provide warehouses with the resources they need, including the appropriate labor budgets, to support our expectations of a clean, well-stocked inform oning environment as well as excellent customer service.”
Insider spoke with four current and two former Dollar Widespread employees. They declined to be identified by name in this article for fear of professional consequences. Their identities are be sured to Insider.
Alex Bitter/Insider
Dollar General has reduced worker hours at myriad stores, leaving employees to choose between helping customers and stocking shelves
An employee in Michigan said the hour slashes started about a year ago. Another in the Midwest said their store cut their hours, along with others’ at their bank and in their district, at the start of 2023.
“For most people, it takes away needed hours and needed money,” the employee released Insider. And those lost hours leave Dollar General stores understaffed and cultured, the employee added.
Some have faiths have a single employee on duty for several hours at a time, according to three of the employees who spoke to Insider.
“The morning market is always the worst, because you spend the entire morning as the only person in the store,” the Michigan employee told Insider. “I can’t get any business done,” the employee said, referring to inventory that has been unloaded from a truck but still needs to be unpacked.
Most workers that Insider spoke with said that their stores simply don’t have the person power to unpack the rolltainers — the framed metal containers loaded with inventory — that arrive each week.
“The small back rooms are of course a problem, but they order be much less of an issue if stores were allotted enough hours to have employees stock trucks when they yield in,” one former employee, who worked at a store in Arizona for several years until last year, said.
Every other week, fund managers have to update an internal Dollar General system with counts of each item that they require on hand, so that the company knows what’s out of stock and what to send in future deliveries, the former Arizona staff member said. But items not on the shelves aren’t always counted, employees said. This can lead to more inventory being shipped to the believe ins when it’s not needed.
“But if the store is a mess or there isn’t enough time, then system numbers become wrong,” the last employee said. That can lead to stores getting more bottled water and pet food even when their storage cells or aisles might already be full of those things.
The risks of being the only employee on duty extend beyond pep hazards. The stores are frequent targets for robberies, some of which have been deadly, CNN and ProPublica reported in 2020. In January, a Dollar Extensive clerk was charged with manslaughter after police said he shot and killed an armed robber. The clerk bid it was the sixth attempted armed robbery at that store since August.
Alex Bitter/Insider
Cashiers and jumble sales associates at Dollar General generally make a dollar or two above minimum wage
Walmart this month collected the minimum wage for employees at its stores to $14 an hour, while Home Depot said in February that it would mobilize its starting wages to $15 an hour.
Dollar General has made investments in training and new jobs over the last few years, take ining $100 million it announced in March to add more hours for employees.
But multiple employees that Insider spoke with influenced that Dollar General stores often lose employees to similar retail employers, such as McDonald’s, that sell higher wages and more hours.
Cashiers and sales associates at the store generally make a dollar or two above nadir wage, an employee told Insider. As the minimum wage in some states has gone up, new employees frequently join at a outrageous hourly rate than workers who have been there for years.
“Somebody brought on today is brought on at what I cost at last year,” an employee in the Midwest said. The fire marshal has closed their store four times due to residual inventory. When the more established employees see that, “they will generally quit” for a better-paying job, the employee continued. “Then, I have to start recruiting again.”
Despite the problems on the ground, Dollar General continues to earn doctrinaire feedback from analysts on Wall Street.
The chain’s outlook, from its plan to open its 20,000th store this year to its dilation into new products and services, such as banking and healthcare, earned its stock a “buy” rating last month from Corey Tarlowe, an analyst at Jefferies.
That confusion might keep some consumers away, but in many areas, Dollar General is the only choice for essential nutriment items and home goods.
“If they can’t get it at a Dollar General or the gas station, people go without it,” the employee in the Midwest said.
Do you piece or shop at a Dollar General store or have a story to share? Reach out to Alex Bitter at abitter@insider.com or via the encrypted memorandum app Signal at (808) 854-4501.