Where even Walmart won't go: how Dollar General took over rural America
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The main thing I find them good for is things like cleaning supplies, brooms, greeting cards, gift wraps which tend to be marked up elsewhere.
It seems like for a lot of goods, companies will only lower the price so far before bumping up the quantity.
The bargains vary. Some of the standards at both mentioned general stores and Dollar Tree (a widely-known dollar store chain) meet Walmart's prices, e.g. for ammonia, which beats any other grocery store by nearly a third.
How sad. One of these is a technology change. The other is local policy. We make choices about the communities we want to live in. This one was under his control, and his justification for a choice I think he regrets sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
The idea is to have no stock room so they don’t have to hire stocking staff, and make the cashiers do it when they aren’t actively checking people out. The trucks unload everything right in the store so aisles are always blocked with giant piles of boxes. It’s gotta be a nightmare for someone in a wheelchair.
But the worst part is of course the way they treat employees.
Working at a franchised establishment (like Dollar General or Walmart or Wendy's) is usually pretty middle of the road because they use their scale figure out how to optimize for every last but of productivity and that usually means working employees as hard as they can reasonably work. However, at the same time the franchise usually decrees something like "thou shalt not drag the brand name through the mud by running your location like a sweatshop." Small businesses have much more deviation in quality. If you think getting minimum wage for doing retail work in an 80deg store is a particularly bad deal then you're probably living in a little bit of a bubble.
Is this a joke?
Expecting something different from a job outdoors or in a kitchen would, I agree, be a little ridiculous. The wage should of course be adjusted accordingly, but this is just disrespectful.
Middle of the road? Try $8.00/hr.
I can't even begin to elaborate on how fucking delusional this sentence is.
Almost any job would be better, including being a cashier at a competing store that at least pretends not to hate you. Working in hot weather or bad conditions is acceptable only if you’re being paid well enough to make it worthwhile. $8 an hour before taxes? You can make more doing almost anything else, including McDonalds or begging on a corner, and neither of those things sound like they’d be any more dignity-destroying than what’s been described here.
We are literally talking $8.00/hr. before taxes. This looks inhumane to me.
As far as the hourly rate, that should be motivation to work on their marketable skills (work/study).
Sounds like a great high-school job, and if you're still working a high-school job at 35, something is wrong.
My point is that something is definitely wrong.
But to blame this on the workers is immoral, heartless, definitely a sign you have something wrong with yourself.
So I’m assuming that isn’t your point.
They are doing the work. They paying is someone else’s job.
Who said this is a “high school job”? What’s that?
Yes, I am blaming the workers. Making personal attacks against me doesn't change the facts.
The fact is, the reason people make minimum wage is because they haven't developed (or proven to the right person that they have developed) marketable skills.
That's why it's important to study hard in school and to work hard in your job. People get paid what they are worth in the marketplace.
I don't know anything about DG's business practices, but if the workers are not satisfied, there are other places they can get a job.
I do realize that some people face inherent difficulties in life. They weren't born with the same advantages or they were born with disadvantages. Maybe they made some mistakes in life. I'm not saying they shouldn't have a chance. I'm saying that there are things (education, discipline, etc) that they can take advantage of to better their situation.
Maybe they are content in their situation. That's fine too.
> The idea is to have no stock room so they don’t have to hire stocking staff, and make the cashiers do it when they aren’t actively checking people out.
What's wrong with cashiers stocking shelves? Seems perfectly reasonable to simply keep working while you are on the clock.
Where I live is kind of an extreme. There are a lot of places that do qualify as towns, and urbanization is definitely taking its toll on them. Local stores close down, and people have to shop further away. Still, this idea of a store that doesn't sell fresh produce seems completely alien - I haven't seen that pop up anywhere. Why does that work in the USA?
Yes you have. The Finnish equivalent is called Tokmanni. It's pretty much the exact same low quality crap. The only difference is that Tokmanni sells some stuff over €10.
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-food-desert...
and then lots of those people have chosen a car centric lifestyle and don't have a difficult time accessing a decent grocer.
It's enough people to be a significant public policy issue, but it isn't a defining aspect of life in these United States.
Popular topic recently: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dollar%20general&sort=byPopula...
Suburbia welcomes dollar stores just as much as rural America.
Dollar General asks for a tax break and says they won't build a store if they don't get one, and the government can either accept or refuse. It's not clear to me how you can prevent this situation, short of passing a law at the state or federal level that forbids municipalities from offering tax breaks. (Which I actually think the government should do, to prevent races to the bottom, but that would by definition mean more state/federal control over local tax policy, and is not likely to be popular.)
Please think for a minute before you post comments like "This is why you need to get the government out of business." They're so easy to make that often people post them before realizing they don't make any sense.
Then while Dollar General wouldn't get any sort of tax break for building in a town, nothing could stop them either. Buhler wouldn't have been able to reject the store.
A question the article doesn't explore is what effect government policies and actions at higher levels (county, state, federal) have on the ability of a large chain like Dollar General to drive out local competitors. It might well be that getting government out of business, in the sense of stopping it from playing favorites, at those higher levels would be a net benefit.
Government has a place in prescribing how business is conducted. Without local government zoning for businesses your cities would be pretty shitty places to live. Light or heavy touch is the contentious point.
The bigger problem is that businesses by and large control America. Sort that problem out, complaining about government pushing business around is laughable.