'Target CEO claims customers are saying ‘a big thank you’ for locking up merchandise'

[storewanderer]

I'm going to disagree. When Target has problematic stores like Manhattan Beach mentioned above with silly stupid levels of drive up volume that force them to operate with a skeleton crew at the front end and 20+ self checkouts unsupervised, they are in fact adding tremendous friction for nearly all their customers while helping a very few. They don't have anyone to unlock glass cases, load TV sets unless they were purchased with drive up, and so forth plus the store recovery is always poor, floor filthy, and restrooms a biohazard zone. This is a excellent example of a store being broken by Drive Up, the conditions within are so revolting to the rich clientele now that they will only use drive up creating the death spiral of profitability I have described.

Target has "must by 2" sale prices all over the store, new glass cases, sales that require a mobile app account and scanning a code with said app, a forced Circle loyalty program for other discounts (no rhyme or reason why some are and aren't Circle), majority self checkout, stores the size of a Walgreens down the street from stores larger than a Costco, superstores with empty grocery departments and mothballed bakeries and delis. There is not anything as high friction as Target these days; Walmart is a much more frictionless experience.

I don't disagree with what you are saying about the friction at Target but Target sees itself as a frictionless shopping experience and the easiest possible shopping experience for the guest. Perception is not always reality with these retailers but I am just saying how the company sees itself.

In the case of stores like you describe with Manhattan Beach they need to realistically figure out how many Drive Ups they can process without breaking the rest of the operation and throttle/limit orders (oh, more friction). Like don't tell 50 orders placed Friday night after 10 PM they'll all be ready Saturday at 8 AM, and maybe that person who ordered at 11:30 PM Friday night won't have a ready time until Saturday afternoon. Another thing is I'd do something so the system prioritizes higher dollar orders over smaller value orders for fulfillment speed.

Wal Mart is a bit of a puzzle. To the average customer who walks in the store they make it easy. Not much friction for the 98% of their customers who shop that way, their core customer. For the "app user" that "new customer" they have attracted with Drive Up, etc. they are starting to add more friction. For example, to price check in store with the app you now need to "sign in." Some Wal Mart Stores also require you to "sign in" to access wi-fi in-store. The app is pretty hard selling Wal Mart+ with more pop ups than I'd like. There is also a new program called Wal Mart Cash (powered by Ibotta or something) where you can earn cents back for buying certain items but to get this you have to purchase with "Walmart Pay" then also redeem using "Walmart Pay" which provides no paper receipt so you get to have fun with the Wal Mart receipt checking employee at the door who argues everyone has to show a receipt upon exit even if all of their items are bagged "since it's the holidays" then doesn't even have a way to call a manager when you call them out on not following corporate policy and want to get store management involved (what the heck would they do if someone was trying to shoplift or there was some other safety issue- powerless and useless- no phone, no headset, no walkie talkie).

[veteran+]

It's all just utter nonsense!

[ClownLoach]

I can't seem to locate the thread about Target possibly closing self checkouts, but I did see on social media today a video showing similar pictures of the units disabled with the screens opened like a car hood from the Bronx store closest to Yankee Stadium. However, Target also had very large and obviously expensive and corporate made signage made that forms a barricade and they closed off the entrance and exit to the self checkout area. These giant signs that appear to be 7 feet tall and another 4 feet wide say "Self Checkout is Closed at this Time." Cosmetics was also barricaded with a separate checkout just like Walmart. There were also signs that did appear to be store made that unattended minors were not permitted to enter, and they had security guards doing receipt checks at the door (one appears to have intercepted a robotic vacuum with the spider wrap still attached). The impression from the video is that this Bronx area store is that they are acting much more aggressively than we are used to seeing from Target.

[ClownLoach]

I'm going to disagree. When Target has problematic stores like Manhattan Beach mentioned above with silly stupid levels of drive up volume that force them to operate with a skeleton crew at the front end and 20+ self checkouts unsupervised, they are in fact adding tremendous friction for nearly all their customers while helping a very few. They don't have anyone to unlock glass cases, load TV sets unless they were purchased with drive up, and so forth plus the store recovery is always poor, floor filthy, and restrooms a biohazard zone. This is a excellent example of a store being broken by Drive Up, the conditions within are so revolting to the rich clientele now that they will only use drive up creating the death spiral of profitability I have described.

Target has "must by 2" sale prices all over the store, new glass cases, sales that require a mobile app account and scanning a code with said app, a forced Circle loyalty program for other discounts (no rhyme or reason why some are and aren't Circle), majority self checkout, stores the size of a Walgreens down the street from stores larger than a Costco, superstores with empty grocery departments and mothballed bakeries and delis. There is not anything as high friction as Target these days; Walmart is a much more frictionless experience.

In the case of stores like you describe with Manhattan Beach they need to realistically figure out how many Drive Ups they can process without breaking the rest of the operation and throttle/limit orders (oh, more friction). Like don't tell 50 orders placed Friday night after 10 PM they'll all be ready Saturday at 8 AM, and maybe that person who ordered at 11:30 PM Friday night won't have a ready time until Saturday afternoon. Another thing is I'd do something so the system prioritizes higher dollar orders over smaller value orders for fulfillment speed.

The problem is that to reduce the labor cost you need to be pulling large and small orders at once. The software and custom sorting carts used by Target and Walmart merge all of the orders into one giant shopping list sorted by aisle number. The employee will be told to start at aisle A1 and pull an item. When they scan it the software will tell them to put it in bin #4 on their cart. Then an item in A2 and it says bin #1. Two items in A3 and one goes in bin #2 other in bin #4. And so forth. When they're done making one single trip around the entire store they've collected 20 or more orders. The large orders are already together, it will tell them bin #4 is order #12345 for customer Smith, and then it will tell them all the items in bin #1 are the one or two item orders and help them put them away. It's the only way to make the small orders profitable from a labor perspective.

The challenge remains that when too many orders are completed overall then the store needs so much labor for online pickup that either they need to add additional payroll to the store or cut back elsewhere. Stores like Manhattan Beach are forced to cut back elsewhere, which is why I've seen one lane open on a busy Saturday midday. Customers are so pissed off in this store when there is one checkout with twenty or more people in line that they'll take their entire cart of items to the weird front right hallway-corner building thing where Drive Up is located and demand to be rung up there since a dozen or more team members are over in that area at all times.

Of course, the worse the checkout experience is due to the payroll shifting to online orders, the more likely these customers are to make an online order and it turns into insanity. They're not gaining any business in my opinion, they're just moving it from low labor checkout to high labor drive up. The answer is that they must reduce the number of orders accepted with minimum order sizes as well as a daily order cap so that customers with time sensitivity or small orders must return to shopping in store. Then move the labor back. This isn't just a Target problem, it is happening all over the country at various retailers. And of course the solution is based in software, which the stores are buying as a service from a vendor, who will then demand massive fees and charges to modify the software to better meet the needs of the retailer. I've been in the meetings where simple issues were discussed and we were told the cost of making changes could be in the high hundreds of thousands per change or even in the millions. So basically when people think that the self checkouts are taking jobs away, the truth is that the online pickups and e-commerce are taking them away as retailers slash tens of thousands of labor hours to compensate for the outrageous charges from the software vendors that have them over a barrel.

[wyoretailman]

For me, I am not saying thank you. Rather than have someone unlock a case to buy some"BVDs" I will purchase them online for store pickup or delivery. This could hurt Target, as I might purchase from Amazon or some other online retailer. It becomes a case where going into a store becomes less convenient and instead becomes more of a hassle.

[Alpha8472]

If a store loses $2 million in theft a year, then maybe that money should have been spent on hiring employees to restock the shelves and stand in the aisles.

Just having an employee watch the aisles and ask customers, "How can I help you?" will discourage most shoplifters.

An employee costs about $17 an hour. If a shoplifter runs out with a shopping cart of $3,000 because there are no employees then it is not saving any money by cutting employees.

Instead of locking up merchandise, stores should just hire more employees to provide aggressive customer service.

If necessary, stores can install shopping carts that lock their wheels if they try to go through a fire exit. Many stores have this feature to stop shoplifters.

Stop punishing customers with locked merchandise and find other ways to deal with it. Get more employees to watch the door. Have more employees to cashier and open up more registers. Having more employees will cut down on shoplifting, improve customer service, and make customers come back more often.

[storewanderer]

If a store loses $2 million in theft a year, then maybe that money should have been spent on hiring employees to restock the shelves and stand in the aisles.

Just having an employee watch the aisles and ask customers, "How can I help you?" will discourage most shoplifters.

An employee cost about $17 an hour. If a shoplifter runs out with a shopping cart of $3,000 because there are no employees then it is not saving any money by cutting employees.

Instead of locking up merchandise, store should just hire more employees to provide aggressive customer service.

If necessary, stores can install shopping carts that lock their wheels if they try to go through a fire exit. Many stores have this feature to stop shoplifters.

Stop punishing customers with locked merchandise and find other ways to deal with it. Get more employees to watch the door. Have more employees to cashier and open up more registers. Having more employees will cut down on shoplifting, improve customer service, and make customers come back more often.

These are the same retailers who will literally write up a manager over an employee getting 15 minutes of overtime pay...

The concept of hiring more employees is lost on them. And in markets like mine, finding people who actually want to work in their stores is also difficult.

[veteran+]

If a store loses $2 million in theft a year, then maybe that money should have been spent on hiring employees to restock the shelves and stand in the aisles.

Just having an employee watch the aisles and ask customers, "How can I help you?" will discourage most shoplifters.

An employee costs about $17 an hour. If a shoplifter runs out with a shopping cart of $3,000 because there are no employees then it is not saving any money by cutting employees.

Instead of locking up merchandise, stores should just hire more employees to provide aggressive customer service.

If necessary, stores can install shopping carts that lock their wheels if they try to go through a fire exit. Many stores have this feature to stop shoplifters.

Stop punishing customers with locked merchandise and find other ways to deal with it. Get more employees to watch the door. Have more employees to cashier and open up more registers. Having more employees will cut down on shoplifting, improve customer service, and make customers come back more often.

Fine words of Wisdom!

Thank you!

[ClownLoach]

If a store loses $2 million in theft a year, then maybe that money should have been spent on hiring employees to restock the shelves and stand in the aisles.

Just having an employee watch the aisles and ask customers, "How can I help you?" will discourage most shoplifters.

An employee cost about $17 an hour. If a shoplifter runs out with a shopping cart of $3,000 because there are no employees then it is not saving any money by cutting employees.

Instead of locking up merchandise, store should just hire more employees to provide aggressive customer service.

If necessary, stores can install shopping carts that lock their wheels if they try to go through a fire exit. Many stores have this feature to stop shoplifters.

Stop punishing customers with locked merchandise and find other ways to deal with it. Get more employees to watch the door. Have more employees to cashier and open up more registers. Having more employees will cut down on shoplifting, improve customer service, and make customers come back more often.

These are the same retailers who will literally write up a manager over an employee getting 15 minutes of overtime pay...

The concept of hiring more employees is lost on them. And in markets like mine, finding people who actually want to work in their stores is also difficult.

And don't forget the fact that the level of violence, threatened or actual, is substantially higher in these last few years. I had more violent incidents in the year 2020 alone than all my years of retail experience combined, and by the first half of 2021 we had doubled 2020. Managers assaulted and literally sent flying backwards into the glass windows just because they were in the area. Knives brandished. Armed robbery. Building break ins.

Read the headlines and then try to find similar stories; a preponderance of the evidence will indicate that there have been more homicides committed against retail employees. Over a decade ago I was working in a center near a Home Depot store where a armed robbery occurred and a Manager was shot and killed, and it was national news for days because these things just don't happen. I can think of at least two Home Depot employees murdered at the front of the store not even directly interfering in a shoplifting in the last two years. Stores are literally being burned by shoplifters who get a few hundred bucks and cause tens of millions of dollars in damage and put the entire store team out of work for months or years.

I have personally been chased, threatened, and even had the CEO office called by a random bunch of people across a three day period in an attempt to get me fired just for offering a basket to two tweakers sitting on the floor getting ready to load a purse with jewelry when I was visiting as the District Manager.

Staffing is currently not the entire answer. Do I think theft is worse because of understaffing? Yes, I do, but I think the losses are from the amateur shoplifter. These are the ones that the undercover LP detectives used to take down all the time who would be well dressed middle aged women and usually there is the key to a Mercedes or BMW in their purse and you recognize the address on the Drivers License as a nice neighborhood. These are the ones who take a pause and swallow as they walk through the worthless Checkpoint alarm gates as if the front of the store is about to be pulled up like a drawbridge and an army of store detectives are going to surround them like SWAT.

The people who have knives, bear spray, guns, a group of people coordinated in cars without license plates (why isn't that an automatic pull-over by the PD?), etc. are the ones causing the majority of these losses, and adding staffing is not only not a deterrent but in fact is putting more people in the path of danger.

Something has to change, and the false narratives perpetuated like "these stores bring in tens of millions of dollars so they can afford to let this cart load of stuff be taken, besides they can file insurance claims" make it worse. I can't believe how many people think that these stores can just call their insurance carrier after inventory and get a check for the loss. They really believe that stores don't lose any money on theft. And obviously we all know that they are not insured for theft. I've even been part of tests to add substantial payroll and it did not make any measurable impact to shrink (saved a couple basis points) but significantly reduced profitability.

I used to believe that just adding staffing fixes the problem, but I have had to change my thinking because it just doesn't and additional measures are needed. It requires more than people now, I'm sorry but it is reality. To be clear though, severe understaffing absolutely is a contributing problem at some chains as I have made clear elsewhere.

[jamcool]

The more often you have insurance claims, the more likely you lose your insurance-or pay higher rates.