Retail Watchers

Multitude of OSHA violations around the country!



Typical :twisted:

Dollar General has a few thousand more stores than McDonald's at this point. Isn't it expected that some stores are absolute disasters (beyond the usual mediocrity, of course) that get OSHA's attention?

pseudo3d wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:20 pm Dollar General has a few thousand more stores than McDonald's at this point. Isn't it expected that some stores are absolute disasters (beyond the usual mediocrity, of course) that get OSHA's attention?

I am not surprised, but given they own the stores (rather than franchising them) one would think they'd have a governance structure in place to ensure there are no OSHA violations.

There are no store standards with Dollar General. I have not seen a chain with stores in as poor of a condition as Dollar General. What is interesting however is these Dollar General units, no matter how poor the conditions are, have steady customer traffic. Family Dollar is close on poor conditions, but not as bad (I think that is since they have so few customers). Once in a while you get into one store of either chain that is neat and well kept but that is a very rare thing.

However Dollar General for what it is, is a good useful store. They open in "towns" in some cases with populations little above 1,000 and provide access to a wide range of merchandise not previously available. They employ a couple people in the process. Their pricing is very low, often within 3% of Wal Mart (and lower on sale items) and they have what I would describe as a useful, down to earth merchandise mix. Their private label items are more than decent quality (towels, pillows, shower curtains, rugs, certain very basic clothing). They are very effective at grocery/consumables compared to competitors of this format.

storewanderer wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 6:30 pm There are no store standards with Dollar General. I have not seen a chain with stores in as poor of a condition as Dollar General. What is interesting however is these Dollar General units, no matter how poor the conditions are, have steady customer traffic. Family Dollar is close on poor conditions, but not as bad (I think that is since they have so few customers). Once in a while you get into one store of either chain that is neat and well kept but that is a very rare thing.

However Dollar General for what it is, is a good useful store. They open in "towns" in some cases with populations little above 1,000 and provide access to a wide range of merchandise not previously available. They employ a couple people in the process. Their pricing is very low, often within 3% of Wal Mart (and lower on sale items) and they have what I would describe as a useful, down to earth merchandise mix. Their private label items are more than decent quality (towels, pillows, shower curtains, rugs, certain very basic clothing). They are very effective at grocery/consumables compared to competitors of this format.

I've found that the usual urban / rural divide in Walmart stores (urban are bad, rural are good) applies to Dollar General. I was in a Dollar General in semi-rural Arkansas that was one of the cleanest, nicest, best looking stores I've ever been in. The product selection was also much better than my local "urban" Dollar General.

arizonaguy wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 7:46 pm

I've found that the usual urban / rural divide in Walmart stores (urban are bad, rural are good) applies to Dollar General. I was in a Dollar General in semi-rural Arkansas that was one of the cleanest, nicest, best looking stores I've ever been in. The product selection was also much better than my local "urban" Dollar General.

All of the Dollar General locations I visit are rural. If the urban ones are worse than some of the consistently horrible for years now ones I've seen like Sun Valley, NV; Portola, CA; Silver Springs, NV; Dayton, NV- I cannot even imagine what they must be like. These stores are filthy inside, messy, poorly stocked, awful on price accuracy, and just a terrible shopping experience. The issue isn't the product- if you can actually find what you need, but literally everything else with the operation of the store is the worst I've ever seen. The ones in Portola and Silver Springs did get self checkout added. They don't tend to them so if there is a problem the unit sits idle for hours before someone bothers to make it work for customers again. Silver Springs and Dayton do not staff the checkstand or pay any attention to the door (has a bell glued there) and I often wonder how much merchandise walks out. I suspect nobody knows. Also their bell is useless as half the time the employees seem to be out front smoking so they have no clue. I guess they would see if someone walked out without paying if they are already standing out front smoking, so I suppose there is that...

Dollar General is new to my area, and all of the locations are new-builds. So far I have not encountered one I consider "bad" but the stores are not convenient for me as they are in surrounding towns. But they seem to me a bit like Subway and are giving off a vibe that we could see some serious inconsistency in a few years.

They do manage to pack a pretty good selection of merchandise into those stores though...I usually end up buying something when I visit that I have a hard time finding elsewhere.

pseudo3d wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:20 pm Dollar General has a few thousand more stores than McDonald's at this point. Isn't it expected that some stores are absolute disasters (beyond the usual mediocrity, of course) that get OSHA's attention?

No, I believe it is intentional and their M.O.

I spoke to their managers in Palm Springs way back when and they were doing the same things.

veteran+ wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 8:58 am

pseudo3d wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:20 pm Dollar General has a few thousand more stores than McDonald's at this point. Isn't it expected that some stores are absolute disasters (beyond the usual mediocrity, of course) that get OSHA's attention?

No, I believe it is intentional and their M.O.

I spoke to their managers in Palm Springs way back when and they were doing the same things.

So I looked up some of the violations, including blocked exits and improperly stacked boxes. There's no good monetary reason to block off exits nor improperly stack boxes. That speaks more of managerial incompetence than some grand conspiracy by the company to...rack up OSHA fines and get bad press?

Furthermore, there were 54 stores that had violations in the last five years, and even we generously extrapolate that by 100 times, that's still 3% of their store base, a tiny minority of their stores, which means statistically you'd have a better chance of finding a non-violating Dollar General than a McDonald's with a working ice cream machine.

pseudo3d wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 1:34 pm
So I looked up some of the violations, including blocked exits and improperly stacked boxes. There's no good monetary reason to block off exits nor improperly stack boxes. That speaks more of managerial incompetence than some grand conspiracy by the company to...rack up OSHA fines and get bad press?

Furthermore, there were 54 stores that had violations in the last five years, and even we generously extrapolate that by 100 times, that's still 3% of their store base, a tiny minority of their stores, which means statistically you'd have a better chance of finding a non-violating Dollar General than a McDonald's with a working ice cream machine.

I wonder what they think of those Wal Marts that have so many pallets all over...

The reason the Dollar General units are a mess is due to lack of labor. The stores that are relatively busy but have only 1-2 employees on shift are so far gone that it isn't like they can get an army in there and fix them overnight. The freight comes in and they have nowhere to put it. So they put it wherever they can and wherever there is space (the stores have small backrooms).