Personnel shortages for 2 years in Meijer, plus Walgreens problems, plus can return machine problems

Meijer personnel shortages for 2+ years

Meijer is a variety store centered around Michigan and the midwest. They have 250+ stores. They sell everything from clothing to groceries, sporting goods, bathroom supplies, and most stores have a pharmacy with $1 antibiotics for common, generic antibiotics.

For the past 2 years they have had personnel shortages. They used to be open 24/7 but now have limited hours from 6am to midnight because they cannot find enough people to work retail. Retail has lower margins and pays less, so not as many people want to work there.

Can return machine problems at Meijer

Meijer also has soda can returns. In Michigan any bottle that is carbonated must have a deposit on it and when you return the bottle or can you get your deposit back. The deposit is 10 cents per can. At this point in time only 60% of beverages are carbonated, the rest are not and do not have deposits. Items without deposits include sports drinks, bottled water, coffee in cans and bottles, teas, etc. As you can see Michigan is behind the times in bottle return policy and is far too impotent to simply unable to update it’s policy.

Can return machines have become popular at the stores. Each store must accept all cans, sizes and flavors in the machines that they sell at the store. They do not have to accept cans or flavors they do not sell. For about 2 years the Meijer machines do not accept all cans that they sell. This means every time I return cans I have to call someone, which takes 10-15 minutes, to get them to manually process cans.

An employee told me a third party programs the machines. So it appears the machines have not been updated in 2+ years. This adds to the frustration of shortages.

Walgreen personnel shortages since October 2022.

Walgreens is a pharmacy chain in the US midwest and they sell bathroom supplies, medications, a few odds and ends like candy (very profitable), greeting cards, even a few office supplies.

Since October 2022, 2 stores near me have had personnel shortages. It normally takes 6-8 hours to fill one prescription and it’s not uncommon for it to take more than a day or 2 to fill a prescription. They have also had shortages of some pharmaceuticals and ordering problems. That is, they order an item and they get the wrong dose of an item, further delaying critical asthma medication.

Similar problems in the 1970s

In the 1970s we had quite a long period of poor customer service in all the stores we went to. This included Kroger, Farmer Jack, Kmart (famous for still having poor service after 45+ years), even at a car wash. During that time we also had high inflation (late 1970s) which left little money for a business to pay their employees, they just did the best they could but for the most part, the only people who would accept the lower wages were people who just didn’t care about quality or service.

It was also in the 1970s when people who gnawed on lead paint on windowsills as kids were coming into the job market as teenagers. Permanent brain damage from lead ingestion might have a bit to do with poor service, or poor parenting. It was also in the 1970s that the lead issue was finally being addressed with the US finally banning lead paint in 1978 and also lead gasoline.

Summary

While I would call these shortages minor, they are multiple shortages which still add up to frustrations. This is the new normal, for now.

When you don’t pay people enough the good quality people eventually leave to be replaced by low quality people who just don’t care about customer service. This leads to more frustrations and people even leaving the store to take their business somewhere else. But if you pay people more, the store just has to raise its prices to cover the increased expense, which adds to inflation and makes that particular store less able to compete with other chains.

I hope these issues get fixed soon. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by good customer service for too long.