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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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whatever you say hoss, I've worked retail and I can assure you that customers are morons who cause unimaginable amounts of busy work for people and I could have served a vastly greater quantity of goods to people if they were not physically present.
I can't tell you how many hours of my life have been wasted folding shit just so it looks nice only for it to be torn through again in a matter of moments. Or how many hours I've spent doing online order fulfillment looking for shit that, without the storefront, would simply be stored in a bin, but woops, no, I have to search literally an entire store because customers take shitc and put it in random places, because they're too fucking lazy and inconsiderate to even return the items to an employee if they don't want them.
Retail is a fucking hell of work that should not exist, and its workers are treated like dogshit servants
also doing online order fulfillment without the customers shopping is literally what this is about. I was ALREADY DOING IT. Just with the task made infinitely more difficult by people ALSO shopping. Idk what you're on where you think removing the customers presence from this is somehow untenable
As are warehouse workers. I understand that retail workers suffer. I just don't think that you could convert every retail shop into a micro-fulfillment center. It just wouldn't be cost effective.
I mean, this is just silly on the part of the company and won't last because, as you say, it won't actually be cost effective to do it. Retail shops are not meant for warehouse operations and cannot be converted effectively. They're not better off converting every retail location in a micro-warehouse, they're better off closing 75% of locations and consolidating into larger warehouses with actual fulfillment infrastructure.
But the people working them are going to be abused, over worked, and underpaid all the same. It'll be a different qualitatively, but trauma isn't comparable. Both jobs are terrible under capitalism.
I think the biggest problem with what you're saying is that stores are already doing it. What does happen, can happen. If having customers check out their own groceries and pick their own product is so profitable, and the other is not, then why are they doing pickups? On the one hand these retail giants are so smart they're using the Piggly Wiggly model because it's the most cost-effective thing but they're also throwing all that away on apps and online ordering?
Distribution chains already flow from larger warehouses to smaller stores. A store that is a last-mile micro fulfillment center works just fine in the distribution chain. In fact, when you order online they already ship stuff to their stores for your order. They're already taking things from the larger fulfillment center and moving it to a store. Then an employee gets it ready for you to pickup. They don't actually have stock of everything listed on their site. They even bounce inventory from store to store.
Walmarts are warehouses. Lowe's Hardware and Home Depot are warehouses. Sam's Club, Costco, BJs, etc. They're not distribution centers but they are warehouses.
It's a valid point. I would say there are two hypotheses - one is that running fulfillment out of those stores is cost effective. The other is that online ordering is a required customer experience to compete with Amazon despite it being less cost effective.
I think we're seeing the death of retail, not its transformation. Retail still hold all of this real estate, so they're trying to make a go of it, but drop shipping from centralized fulfillment centers with robotics and fit-to-purpose infrastructure and technology is going to beat Instacart and gig-economy serfs on a cost basis.
The only reason DG might try to turn a store into a mini-fulfillment center is to liquidate it's inventory as cheaply as possible and then shutter the place. They are reporting themselves that their customers are literally running out of money. More than likely, when their customers can't buy, they'll just shutter the store and pay a Big Lots to just liquidate all the inventory.
All these shops are sitting on dying commercial real estate. That whole market is falling apart. In the end, it's just gonna be bankruptcy proceedings and consolidations, because no one can make your local dollar general into a fulfillment center without a major capital investment and that's highly unlikely to turn a profit.
It would be nice if all these spaces could convert to housing. I want to tank home prices from the sheer amount of housing options available...
Oh don't worry. We can leave it up to the anarchists to turn derelict commercial space into housing.