My store is a large Sears, fully stocked, looks great, everything available we have always been known for. Plenty of traffic, people ready to buy... and nobody to ring them up!
Slow burn, Black Friday will be a disaster. Members walking away from carts full if merchandise because they don't want to stand in line forever.
The sad part is that we have plenty of registers and payroll available to hire.
???
Sounds like the Sears in Buffalo NY. Beautiful store but no one ever at jewelry checkout, no one at shoes, no one at mens checkout, 1 cashier at bedding checkout with 10 people in line. All the time!
Yep. While convenient to real, actual customers, thieves sure LOVE the U-Scans. All sorts of ways to steal now. Companies that employ U-scans just gave a golden ticket to thieves. Shrink is astronomical.
And having one employee to oversee the machines is meaningless. They are not trained loss prevention personnel, and thieves are fully aware they cannot be touched by anybody who isn't actual LP, so they gleefully abuse the system.
If I bought a retail company that had U-scans, I would immediately have them removed. The savings on shrink alone would enable me to hire at least two human cashiers.
KMart got rid of their self checkouts because they were leased and Kmart couldn't afford to keep them after their 2002/3 bankruptcy.
Nobody wants to bother applying for a job at a business that is failing. Then there's the conundrum about word of mouth. Word does get out about how awful the working experience is at Sears like the lack of hours, the badgering over credit, PAs and SYWR, bad management, etc.
With this economy, if somebody leaves Sears, that position might take a very long time to be filled, if it ever gets filled. In most areas, there are so many other options that pay better, offer much better job security, opportunities for advancement, etc. All of the holiday help are pretty much settled in to their jobs at this point. They are just working elsewhere!
News flash: Kmart had self-scanning registers at least 15 years years ago. They were ahead of the game. Unfortunately, Kmart learned what stores that use them now are learning...they can be a security/inventory control disaster. With rampant under-ringing or pretend scanning, theft was pretty high.
this is one of the many ongoing failures of SHC leadership
Of course. That's why they should've implemented them years ago when there was hope.
Same in our Sears store. Self check outs would require a financial commitment so we can forget them.
Well once again they are about 10 years behind the times. Self check outs have been around at least that long.