In cruising through large mall based dept stores these days it seems that management is cutting staff back and there are often lone individual clerks responsible for overseeing HUGE floor areas and multiple departments in many cases. How the hell are they going to control losses in these scenarios?
They’re not. It’s not like most stores allow the staff to do anything about shoplifters anyway – where I’ve worked, if you saw somebody take something you could only watch them and try to get a manager at the same time, and if you lost sight of them for a second, that was that, because in theory they could put whatever they’d taken down somewhere. The most I ever did when I was working the fitting room was saying something like, “I’ll hold onto that CD for you until you’ve tried those on,” when said CD fell out of a pile of clothes they were carrying.
This becomes annoying when you have to check out your socks at the cosmetics counter. Walking from an easy exit to the middle of the store 1 or 2 floors away and back out just to find a person near a register.
K-Mart is technically a department store, isn’t it? The one near me might as well be called Ghost Town. Since there are very few customers, none of the registers are ever open. I have actually wandered around looking for employees to take my money. If you need something from jewelry, toys, or sporting goods, you are instructed to go there and wait until they can scare up someone to assist. And the dressing rooms! Not only do they look like a good place for a pervert or mugger to be lying in wait, but anyone can take anything in any quantity in there with them. I can only imagine how much stuff leaves the store that way.
Don’t get ,e staarted pm De[artment stores, it will get ugly
Umm, ok.
the thing that bugs me is the self check out. i don’t work for your store, i am not paid to check out. it is not faster or more efficient.
bring back your employees!
Nope, it’s a discount store. That’s a whole different animal. They aim at customers who value low prices over selection and value. Target and WalMart are also discount stores.
THEORETICALLY, a department store will have salesclerks to help you select the right items, and they will upsell at every opportunity. For instance, a lingerie section in a department store might have a woman (and in this case, it almost has to be a woman) who will measure you and fit you with a bra, or who will recommend an undergarment to hold everything up and make you look a bit bigger here and smaller there, when you find you need a strapless gown. In KMart, WalMart, Target, and places like that, you go to the lingerie section, you take your best guess at your size, grab a bra off a rack, and maybe try it on in the dressing room. The dressing room attendant in a discount store is only there to prevent loss. S/he will not offer opinions as to which bra is a better fit, and s/he is certainly not going to go fetch another pair of jeans just like this one, but in a larger size.
I haven’t been to a mall department store in some years. Back when I did go, though, there was a noticeable difference in service. The higher priced stores generally had much better service, and the clerks would help you select just the right shirt and accessories to go with that suit. The lower priced stores would have salesclerks, but these people were usually just kids hired to put some warm bodies on the floor. Most of the training they got was simply to make sure they could run the cash register. Nowadays, I do most of my shopping online…and the AI helpfully suggests other items I might like, based on other customers’ selections.
A slight hijack: at practically every discount department store I’ve been to, only a small percentage of all registers are ever open, even during Black Friday. If a Wal-Mart Supercenter Or Super Target opens 10 registers at the most, why build 30 of them to begin with?
Good - if it’s not faster for you, don’t use the self check. It is faster for me, as long as I don’t have a bunch of stuff am not stuck behind people who don’t know how to use them.
I’d rather not deal with an employee at the checkout unless I have to. 
As for department stores, the little bit of shopping I do, I’ve noticed the same thing - it’s hard to find someone at the rare moments I do need help.
No…but it means one cashier can (in theory) do the work of four! Fewer people to pay! Nothing else matters but the bottom line – even though people steal piles of stuff through them. I wouldn’t be surprised if some stores lose more money due to them though theft than they ever would have spent on having actual cashiers.
Yeah, they suck.
So that the stations will be available. The cashier at Register 3 is about to end her shift. Another cashier will open at Register 4 and start taking customers, or will direct the line for #3 to go to #4 to be checked out.
Also, sometimes the computer in a particular register will flake out. In that case, you simply shut down that register and open a new one.
I do think that the stores should open more registers at the same time though, especially on Black Friday and Christmas Eve. Not gonna happen, the manager simply won’t schedule enough cashiers to do that.
A few of reasons… (though during our heavy sales days, every cash register is working).
First:
To allow cashiers to log on and log off from registers without having to ring on another person’s drawer/till. Cashiers are held accountable for overages/shortages on a register on their shift.
Assume 10 cashiers and 10 registers. 5 of the cashiers go to lunch, and 5 floor personnel are pressed into service as cashiers to fill in. The floor personnel would have to go onto the 5 vacated registers. You have two choices here: count down the register and put in a new drawer before the temp cashier steps in which takes ~10 minutes per register, which is inconvenient for the customer, or let the temp cashier ring on the main cashier’s drawer which makes tracking down shortages/theft more difficult; if the drawer is $20 short and two or more people have been in it, who is held accountable? If only one person has had a drawer and it’s short, then it’s apparent who is accountable.
The more registers available, the easier it is to rotate cashiers on different shifts onto new registers. First and second shifts overlap, second and third shifts overlap, and there are temp cashiers and swing-shift cashiers… they can be pressed into service immediately by putting them at an empty register, rather than keeping them idle while a register is shut down, counted, then reloaded, or having multiple cashiers on one drawer.
Second:
To be able to temporarily press into service non-cashiers to deal with heavy customer loads. If cashiers get swamped, and floor personnel are available, they can be called up and placed at empty registers for a few minutes. If there are fewer registers, fewer temps can be called up. Or no temps could be called up, if registers match the number of cashiers available.
Third:
Redundancy. At any given point, a register may be having problems-- can’t read cards, or the scale is malfunctioning, or the belt is screwy. A cashier can simply switch their drawer to a working, empty register and reopen, rather than shutting down the register and having one less cashier available. This is the big reason our outlying register areas (pharmacy, Tire/Lube, etc.) have at least two registers available.
(While typing this up, Lynn Bodoni hit the main points far more succinctly.)