Stores are full of customers, but there are virtually no cashiers to check them out. Is it that no one wants to work or that corporations are being “greedy?”
From November onward, retailers see their largest surge of in-person shoppers due to the holiday season. Those who aren’t out buying gifts are treating themselves to a sale item. Or they are just stocking up on groceries for the impending family gatherings.
This holiday season is expected to bring pre-COVID era fullness to brick-and-mortar stores. This is according to Forbes and the ICSC, the trade group representing the real estate side of the retail industry (like shopping centers and mall owners).
They found that 92% of consumers surveyed plan to shop in a physical store. That’s the highest the number has been since 2019.
Despite being on a post-pandemic bounce back, brick-and-mortar stores don’t seem to be hiring like they used to for the seasonal surge. And the employees they do have aren’t getting nearly as many hours as they could be. That’s at least according to this Target worker.
Why are stores understaffed?
In a trending video with more than 62,000 views, Target worker Kaitlin Sonday (@kaitlinsonday) shared her insight.
Sonday pointed out that a video of a Target customer who had a bad experience has gone viral. The person said they were in line to pay with about 50 other customers.
If the line was moving at a quick pace, that would be doable. However, the person said they were stuck in a slogging line because Target had nearly no registers staffed with cashiers.
Instead, the line was getting clogged up, and customers were becoming irritated (at the system, not the workers themselves).
“There has got to be people looking for jobs,” the TikToker pointed out.
That’s where Sonday put in her two cents on the matter.
“If I’m being completely honest, there is plenty of people, cashiers, to be scheduled. Target and, I feel like a lot of companies, try to schedule the least amount of people so they can, like, make more money,” Sonday said.
“I mean, that makes sense, I guess,” Sonday continued, adding that the result is a bad customer experience with the wrong ratio of customers to workers.
She pointed out that if you shopped in person at retailers just a few years ago, there used to be “so many people on the floor.”
Sonday remembers being scheduled for full shifts on the floor, and there was coverage for each department. Now, they only have part-time coverage for each department.
Ironically enough, Target is supposed to schedule more cashiers as they start closing or shooing people from the self-checkout area.
Other factors
On top of stores being under-staffed, despite workers asking for more hours (though the industry has suffered after pandemic-induced career changes), many say they’re overworked.
It used to be that a person was scheduled to be a cashier their entire shift. But now, one worker has to fulfill the role of many, checking out customers, stocking shelves, answering calls, and even cleaning carts, Business Insider reported.
And work—like unloading pallets of merchandise—will often pile up because there aren’t enough people to get everything done.
A recent survey found that more than half of store owners and managers expected to be understaffed at least once a week, and 78% of retailers planned to cross-train workers in multiple store roles.
Commenters react
“Former ETL HR here; I’ve been threatened by my DSD to cut payroll. Payroll will always be the bottom line. They need their bonus, nothing else matters to them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯,” a top comment read.
“Can we start boycotting Target ?? LETS STOP SHOPPING AT TARGET,” a person urged.
“In my store they schedule all the people for fulfillment backup, and in the front we were with huge lines even having 4 sco and 5 cashiers, it’s not like we want to have lines and not helping people,” a worker shared.
@kaitlinsonday My thoughtss✨ #targetstore #targetemployee #targetworker #greenscreen ♬ original sound – kaitlinsonday
“Our managers would cut back on as much as they could on coverage to be able to get bonus from Target saving money,” another wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Sodnay for comment via email and Instagram direct message and to Target via email.
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