The good store is clean the floors are swept, aisles open, merchandise in its place.
At the bad one, merchandise is scattered all over the place, and unpacked boxes fill the aisles.
The factors that account for the difference sound quite small.
The good store has dedicated recovery staff, whose job it is to put stuff where it goes.
The bad one doesn’t.
The manager at the bad store just kind of lets anything fly.
Still, Robyn, which is a pseudonym, says a lot of the blame is on corporate.
Rather than attempt to revive struggling stores, she said, they’re left out to dry.
It makes the problem worse," she said.
Dollar Tree did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Most people have probably had experience shopping in their own version of Robyn’s “bad” store.
Aisles are filled with unopened boxes, stacks of bins, and full dollies.
Merchandise is strewn about.
It’s representative of the broader decline of the in-store retail experience.
Stores are slashing costs, cutting corners at every turn, and generally ignoring the consequences.
“When you cut costs, there’s a very immediate and very visible impact to the bottom line.
Yes, they’ll lose customers in the process, sales will fall, and loyalty will dissipate.
But that’s all subtle and harder to trace.
What that looks like on the ground is stores filled to the brim as boxes pile up.
In other words, it’s not just Dollar General anymore but also Target and Duane Reade.
Much of the explanation is staffing, or rather, the lack of it.
One way some retailers have compensated is by reducing staffing.
Adding to the staffing problems is the simple lack of space.
There’s no stockroom for keeping products stowed away and nobody to unpack them when they arrive.
Skeleton crews are doing their best to keep up, but they’re constantly being squeezed.
Shipping schedules are unpredictable.
That’s what’s happening at the Walgreens where Stephanie has worked in Florida for more than a decade.
They’d end the store with four or five people.
Bins can’t be left out overnight.
“It’s not even their fault.
But sometimes, constraints make it so it’s impossible to keep up.
“And there will be some store managers that are much more lax.”
(By comparison, they’ve announced 5,581 store openings.)
To be sure, there are limits.
For people with mobility issues, going to an overcrowded store isn’t even an option.
That’s part of what’s happening with Target, retail analysts told me.
Despite the retailer’s recent struggles, e-commerce has been a bright spot for it, Goldberg said.
“They need space to stage orders and pack orders and hand orders off,” he said.
The setup also loads up associates' duties, Saunders added.
“They pick orders for online delivery.
They take them out to cars for curbside pickup.
The dynamic is one of a race to the bottom that’s turning into a race for survival.
Retailers are stretching on pricing and staffing and quality, and eventually, something’s got to give.
“Rather than thinking, ‘How can we differentiate ourselves to really attract shoppers to come to us?’
“The less you invest in in-store experience, the more the customers are turned off.
So you are sort of pushing them away, to online.”
Increasingly, though, it’s an everywhere problem.
Anecdotally, many consumers have noticed more piled boxes in more retailers lately, not fewer.
And that’s not just because it’s the holidays.
Rents aren’t going back to where they were.
And there’s always Walmart, which operationally doesn’t seem to have this boxes-everywhere issue.
“One of the biggest compliments was that we can walk through the aisles.
I was like, what?”
“It’s a nasty little cycle.”
Emily Stewartis a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
