Dollar Stores: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
2023 ж. 18 Қар.
7 440 014 Рет қаралды
John Oliver discusses dollar stores and why Irish Spring is not his soap of choice.
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This isn't surprising. Owning a company, paying almost nothing to the people who actually do the work, and making billions while they suffer seems to be the entire goal of our whole country.
A country built on slavery with a deep desire to never resolve it...
No, just of the people who _run_ the country, both elected and lobbyists, because they're pretty much all in the same income bracket.
Don’t worry, it’s the same on this side of the atlantic. I‘d say the issue is capitalism, if I didn‘t know how other countries are doing. The problem is just humanity I guess.
You just described my experience in working for CVS stores, they do the exact same thing with labor as described in this video.
It's not just this country. You're describing capitalism.
As a former dollar tree employee... 100% accurate. Even the parts you were joking about. I really can't stress this enough. We were told to stack helium containers in front of the fire exit. I threatened to call the fire marshal. They ignored me. I called. They threatened to have me fired. I got my boss investigated by OSHA, made them into a liability for the company, got them fired, then quit.
Good for you!
Do managers get paid significantly more (or district/area managers if looking for a promotion)? I can't imagine the pay is a high enough incentive to treat their fellow employees like this. And good for you!
Not all heros wear a cape... or do you? As someone who takes violations like these as serious, my store was doing a remodel (big ass box store) and a pallet of hardware was left in the fire isle. it was overnight but we had so many workers working in the store. After assessing it was abandoned I moved it off stage. A lead said it was OK because the store was in remodel, I flat up told him that fire exits are not something you keep clear at your discretion, and we have nearly as many workers as we have customers in the day. If anything, all the tools (linoleum tile work also uses a blow torch) ment there was even a hire risk of fire.
Good for you! I was just thinking, what can people do to protest, and was thinking ...what if everyone went and like, filed OSHA or safety violations...
like a boss
As a former Dollar Tree employee, 100% true, I remember vividly being told that not only were all the security cameras in our store fakes to ward off potential robbers, but we literally sold those exact same fake cameras in the same store, same model and everything. Kinda breaks the illusion when you look up from the box that says “realistic fake cameras” and see the same ones hanging from the ceiling, that is if you could see it above the towers of boxes in front of you
They're so cheap they don't bother to have different models
Yup
that reminds me of this time i was sponsored by gucci. they sent me the wrong size shirt! they fixed it real quick but man oh man was i worried i wouldnt have a new gucci shirt to wear out! how embarrassing would that have been!!!!! any way, i never had to try to get money, it was just handed to me. life is EZ mode!!!!
My mom was manager at Dollar General when I was 6 years old. As a 6 year old spending long nights in a closed DG, I helped her stock shelves, take trash out, and collect shopping carts so we could leave hopefully before 1 a.m. I don't know when we got home, I always fell asleep on the way home.
I'm sorry dude :(
Wow
That is just disgusting company
my mom was a high powered exec at an advertising firm when i was 6. both my parents retired by 40. i never had to do any kind of physical work, we've always had helpers, maids, laborers, etc to do the stuff we're above doing. we got a lot of good nights of rest considering all our time was free. when you have $$$ life is EZ mode!!!!!
@@itchiegames Evidently that "EZ mode" doesn't include your grammar.
I worked at Walmart for a while, and a few of my coworkers described working at Dollar General as a torture chamber. They say that WHILE working at Walmart
I used to work at a Walmart. Humankind needs to invent a whole new language just to explain how godawful these jobs are.
That is bad when working in Walmart looks like paradice compared to working at $ Gen
I've heard it both ways since I worked at both. My manager at dollar general left walmart for dg, but when I was at walmart after (due to the $5-6 more per hour) so many people came flocking from DG. The only upside to walmart is you can be rude to customers if they're rude to you cause nobody can find a manager
My local Wmrt had three people die, within the past year, to causes often linked to high stress,
Well, there are more empty, so people tend to be more bold about stealing or straight up. Trying to fight the employees and I'm not talking about some s*** I've seen online. I'm talking about some shit I see when I go to the fucking dollar store.
Love that companies always say, "A union only gets between us and our employees". I am sorry but if I am alone in the room with my abuser, I want someone to jump in between us.
There isn’t slavery anymore. You can always find another job.
Agreed. Third parties are wonderful at work places. Email verification of what was said at meetings with the bosses. Cameras should be everywhere. I also want permission to record. I’m gonna do it anyway but permission is nice.
Or, you know, put together a union. @@maliant16
@@maliant16 Thats a pretty fucking privileged thing to say.
@@maliant16 Can you though? With the way companies are ghosting people I would say not really.
Those customers putting food away aren't helping the store, they're helping the community members they know need those things.
No no, they ARE helping the store and the store ONLY. The store, who is SUPPOSED to help provide the community who needs the items in the store. The store in this case is taking ADVANTAGE of the people helping and the worker because the more people help and provide free labor the less the store is incentivized to pay to provide the service themself. The worker in the store is being helped but will not gain more money for it and was put in that situation BY the store. The helpers are being used for their labor, it does not benefit them either. The customers pay a markup on the items, which is supposed to be for the service the store provides. but since the store is not providing it and abusing good Samaritans and worker alike to work more than one could, the mark up is not justified enough. This ONLY benefits the store owner who is not doing anything and yet getting all the fruits. Everyone but the store owner is getting fleeced. This is called "rent seeking" behavior. Which means: getting money without producing anything of value for said money. In this case, the amount they mark up does not reflect the value of the service the capital owner provided. Overworking and underpaying workers while charging as much as if they did not overwork and underpay them and pocketing the difference: Rent seeking.
One of my students worked at a DG and he couldn’t organize a union but he got the employees together and they got management to sign an agreement regarding pay and hours. I was so proud of him.
Speaking as somebody who literally just quit their job at DG, this feels like the ending cutscene in a video game.
I'm happy you got out. I worked there for a year back in 2010, and it was as god awful then as it is now from the looks of it.
Crazy I worked there for 2 weeks and was like yeah no...
Congratulations comrade, you can rest now
I agree my last day was Friday wake up Monday morning with a letter and a John Oliver video
🤪 L I T E R A L L Y 🤪
Time to eat breakfast and learn about another existential problem, have a great week everybody!
you have a great day! what a bittersweet way to start one’s day
Us.
If you're in America, have a good Thanksgiving. Right?
What was for breakfast?
Facts
Y’all, it isn’t just the dollar stores. The seemingly higher end retail establishments are often facing the same things; it’s a joke how accurate this video was. No one gets paid nearly enough, tasks keep getting piled onto them while man-hours keep diminishing. I loved that he threw in cleaning the bathrooms. Not a single thing in the store is going as well as it should and everyone hates it, but we’re still showing up doing our best. Be kind to retail workers.
Most def. But no one pays attention to the DOLLAR STORES because “low income” people are the main consumer. America focuses on the rich. That’s it. That’s all. If the rich aren’t complaining. What we say doesn’t matter.
For real. I have a friend who works at Pandora, and she doesn't get commission. For how much that stuff costs, the least you can do is give credit where credit is due
As a Dane I usually find American stores shocking and kinda offputting with just the insane laundry list of bullshit expected of the employees. Like the only thing I expect them to do is scan my items, generally run the store (stock items, clean etc.), and answer my questions about where stuff is if they have time. I do not expect them to bag my items like I'm a grown ass adult and I'd feel kinda insulted if someone started doing that. I also don't expect them to stand up, which for some reason is a thing in the US, like why the fuck would I care about when it's obviously impractical not to mention uncomfortable. And I do not give a shit if they smile or are cheery or say a nice goodbye, I wear headphones almost all the time when I'm outside and I'm only here to get the stuff I need and then leave. I don't buy food for the experience of it, I buy it because I need it to survive. Like I'm not about to claim that working in retail is particularly nice in Denmark either, it's still some of the lowest paid labor here and you still have to deal with customers. But at least retail workers here aren't expected to do random pointless bullshit that contributes nothing to the functioning of the store. And I think it's at least a broadly acknowledged truth here that work sucks and no one really wants to do it so we might as well be nice to each, and also no one likes to shop for groceries so we all just want to leave as quickly as possible. I heard most of this from an online friend in Florida and I think if I ever visit I'll just like hang around him working for one day and mock all the customers for being little babies.
you're a joke. read the title of the stink'n video, it's a segment on dollar stores, and it's supposed to be a comedic segment... Y'allA_Amazi being hyper critical where it doesn't count.
The customer is always right. If the boss is giving you a bad employee experience, that doesnt permit you to take it out on customers. Be kind to customers. If theyre employee is frustrated, believe me, the customers are too.
My friend, Brian Eurie, died in Indianapolis while working at Dollar General. He was shot and killed during a robbery. It happened all the time. No one at corporate listened.
I'm so sorry for your loss RIP Brian Shame on this company. I hate DG so much.
May your friend Rest In Peace ❤😢😢😢😢
When I got my OSHA 10 certification, my teacher told me that the one group of stores that get more OSHA fines then anywhere else is dollar stores. When asked why, she said it's because they get fined and just find it cheaper to pay the increase in fines then actually work to make their stores safe for the employees.
Maybe the only answer is for OSHA to stay on them with fines weekly, daily until they change their business model.
This is it right here. Right on the money. They don't want to pay extra to be safer.
Close the store until violations are resolved!
@@jaym7369but they won't
@@kaivickers166OSHA doesn't have the resources. That isn't an accident.
Hey! As a former Amazon employee, I can say that Amazon also has similar anti-union training videos, and makes every new employee sit through them as a part of the multi-hour training video gauntlet they put you through before you start. It sure does give you the sense that the thing these companies desperately need are, in fact, unions!
Same for Rubbermaid. Former employee
If you haven’t seen LWTs segment on union busting, I recommend it!One of Amazons anti-union videos come up in that one. kzhead.info/sun/es9xlLmQiaKlrHA/bejne.htmlsi=eq7BPUzGcJbqGjFT
CVS and Macy's both had them too when I worked at them. I think most retail workers see them.
I worked at a Brookdale assisted living facility and encountered the same thing.
i worked at walmart fomr 2014-2016/2017 and we were told the same/saw a video on the "evils" of unions. knew it was complete bullshit even at 18 fresh out of hs.
I worked for Dollar General for almost 2 years, and this lines up exactly with my experience working there. Our store manager survived on 5 hour energy, diet coke, and cigarettes, and she was about as strung out as you'd imagine. I hope she's doing well
Former FD ASM. This is accurate. The expectation was to assist customers, restock shelves and clean with one person for 8.50 an hour. Our store became infested with rats multiple times, finally, it got so bad some fell from the ceiling on a customer and her son which is when the health people were called and we were shut down multiple times. Also, the DM expected us to chase people who were stealing. When I quit, I lied about where I was going because I was afraid they would try to sabotage my new job.
Wait, people TELL their bosses where they're going to be working next. I just told mine "I've found a place with better hours," or "I'm leaving the field to do something with my degree," and didn't think I had to explain any more than that.
This is why America does not want universal healthcare or better worker rights. if you have the ability to leave a job that is abusive, you would. IF someone paid me 8.50 and told me to do all that, when I lived in Belgium, I would not rush, I would very casually go about doing the things and when things are in disarray at the end of the day, let it be. It's not my problem to make sure the company functions and if they fire me... ohwel, who is going to run the store then? But that is because I have the means to get fired, enough funds to survive, my healthcare is not effected and the worker protections from the gov, means I will get a nice stipend for them unjustly firing me. So eventually a business like that would just go under. Now that I work and live in America... I will be a lot more hesitant to do this, because if I am desperate enough to take an 8.50 job I probably do not have enough to cover my basic needs and I would lose health insurance or have to go on an expensive private plan. So if i lost my job I would be WORSE off. This is how and why America operates. To keep a boot on the neck of hard working people to force them to do things against their best interest because they HAVE TO. Unionize and organize! (also I would work hard if and WHEN my compensation matches my effort and if I would be valued instead of treated like cattle)
My mom just quit Dollar General (in Florida) and I practically did a happy dance when she told me she was finally done working there! She’s over 70 and was working there to make ends meet and was always being called in! We finally got her and my stepdad into some decent income adjusted housing (far away from Florida) so now she won’t have to work at all. My mom’s mood has improved 1000% since leaving DG.
Vote to keep income-based housing for seniors and needy. VOTE 2024😮😮😮😮
Anyone who leaves Florida should be 1000% happier.
You are awesome for helping them do that. What a relief it must be for them!
Our government needs to build way more housing. Housing should be cheap. Die mad about it, landlords.
Happy for your parents!
Worked at a Dollar tree as a manager for 2 years. Had to call OSHA multiple times because our ceiling was falling down and leaking and black mold was all over the walls. Wasn't offered any benefits other than one week vacation. Would have to literally break up physical fights between customers. The second i got my college degree i was out. Working retail full time and still needing food stamps should be illegal.
Food stamps are a handout to billionaires, on the front end and the back end. Food stamps subsidize wages supposedly paid by billionaires, while the stamps end up in a billionaire's pocket. You were just used as a vehicle to transfer a handout. 🤢🤮
Did OSHA follow through? I had to call them once and I heard back from them once and that was it
I’m so sorry you had to go through that
I was kept part-time to avoid being eligible for benefits.
Wow, I'm fascinated how in the US you view 1 week vacation as a "benefit". Here in Europe, in most countries, having 4 weeks of paid vacation is a right. The benefit is whatever your employer gives you on top of that, in my company's case 38 days of paid vacation in total.
John Oliver you are a legend. This program is saving hope in humanity
“Heyy, you want a job?? We can pay you in rat babiesz.” 🤣😂🤣😂 The skits are classic
I used to work for a company that processed Dollar General's worker's comp claims. The most common injuries there were gunshot wounds, spider bites, human bites, and one in particular was listed as "trauma to the right side of the head with toaster oven"
The hell????? DG is sickening - I had no f'in idea.
Wtf??!!
Human bites?
WTF?
Hol up HUMAN bites?
My wife works at Dollar General, everything in this report is completely true. She's working on becoming the new GM for her store just so she can attempt to improve her store. We've had stores here call the fire chief to have them come, declare the store must be closed due to being a fire hazard just so they could stay closed long enough to stock.
That is low key clever though
That's brilliant. I hope your wife becomes GM and then can use that experience to get into a job where they pay better though.
Be careful. A few GMs had to cover multiple districts bc there weren’t enough GMs in the region. The regional managers are a new level of hell and incompetence. I did corporate IT for Family Dollar and I will always feel for the store employees. These companies know what they are doing. The documents they use are often not locked and anyone on the network can read their dirty work.
Forex trading has left me no choice but to for me with the help of Expert Molly Jane Manderfield.
Wait, how did the investment scam bots get into this thread? 🤔
My great-grandfather turned down a 33% share in what would become Dollar General in the 40s. He owned another general store in Scottsville, KY and was content with just sticking with his single store. He never once expressed any regret or bitterness about it and he and my great-grandmother were some of the happiest, kindest people I ever met and both lived into their 90s. I wish more people were like them and were just content with their little slice of the pie. (Also I probably wouldn't exist had he said yes)
Current employee of Dollar Tree: Understaffed, underpaid, unable to clean or stock more efficiently, corporate not giving us enough hours, pay bumps or better equipment. So yeah I'm gonna leave soon.
I've got 1 more year. It's just enough to offset what I pay in Child Support out of my main job's check so I can at least afford groceries
current life of somebody with money: do whatever i want when i want, buy whatever i want, complete freedom, no work, no boss, no responsibilities so yeah im pretty fucking content in life. i dont have to do anything and i just paid off a bmw in like 8 months. $$$ = ez mode!!! LOL @ you
Hype Good luck buddy
As someone who worked at a dollar tree right after quarantine, thank you for covering this 😭😭😭
I think one of the best parts of LWT is how so many people get to feel heard I hope it was a genuinely cathartic experience for you
Similar story bud, I'm glad that he's talking about the nightmare that is scheduling and how much they want done in 0 time.
I'm glad you are talking about it in the past tense. More people need to stop working at these companies who treat their employees like crap.
@@dancahill9585 Some don’t really have a choice. But it would be cool.
How long did you last?
I had a job like this. They made people work alone on the night shift. I was one of them. I said it wasn't safe and we should at least have 2 people. Management laughed in my face. Not a couple months later, I was robbed at g*n point. I was lucky as a young woman in her 20s, all he wanted was money. I didn't have a panic button. I was traumatized and had to start therapy that the company didn't pay for. Another job I had this year showed the same anti-union propaganda video almost word for word. These companies do not care what you have to say. They'd pay you less and treat you worse if it weren't for the work unions did.
I'm glad you are OK. I hope you have moved on to better things and recovered from the trauma.
Best to sue the company. Document everything you can. Because this is the only way our country will give you recompense.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Im not from the US. Why do people work for these companies? Are jobs so scarse that you cannot find a better employer?
There are entire businesses that specialize in union busting.
I worked at a Great Canadian Dollar Store, which is the same - but not really the same as the other Dollar Stores. I'm happy to see that our store looked clean and inviting. We loved getting people what they were looking for. Everyone came to buy something, not only the poor. But the back store. My god it was a mess, just like we saw in the video. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes. I'm only 4"8, it was really scary to go in there and try to find something. When the regional manager came to help us one day, I gave him another box we just got and asked him where the heck are we going to put this? He just took with a smile and yeeted it over the rest. He said "You do this, no problem" How can you manage a store when you have no idea where your stuff is hiding? Well, it's closed now.
I was visiting some friends in rural TN last year and was stunned by how many Dollar Stores were everywhere down there. When I asked my friend about it, she said they are basically like a cartel down there and pushed out local businesses and detered other competitors from building stores in the same area. They basically have a monopoly in the rural areas there, so residents don't have much of a choice but to shop there. After watching this video, I totally believe it.
I live in a rural county in Tennessee and we have four Dollar General Stores here within just a few miles of each other.
Because of the monopoly Dollar Store are probably the single large employer in the area, so people have literally no choice but to shop in the company store.
I get mad at DG/DT for not selling veggies so I try my best to boycott & shop 1 x a month 30 miles away.
It's no better in other places in rural America. Upstate NY has Dollar stores in just about every medium sized town
I live in East TN and that seems accurate. Sad but true. These things are everywhere! It's tiresome. They will become the new Walmart. Pretty soon I expect to see some with a sporting goods section and a place to get your oil changed. This needs to stop!!
I've worked for dollar general and dollar tree. I also live in a rural area where they're the only place that sells food and goods. This is INSANELY ACCURATE and I'm honestly in disbelief someone is FINALLY calling them out.
I get the feeling that it depends a bit on where the store is located. The only ones that I've been to are in areas with competition and they haven't looked much different from other retailers. I've been working next door to one for the last nearly 4 years and they've still got some of the same employees as when I was hired and even though we've got a ton of positions open, I haven't seen any of them coming to join us. Then again, that Dollartree looks nothing like the ones in this video and I always see multiple employees there.
Wendover productions did a video about dollar general as well and covered a lot of these topics, but focused more on the stores, their impact on the community, and how they have slowly taken over retail in rural markets
Yup! Did you work there when their "motto" (hung up in our break room) explicitly said making money for shareholders was the #1 priority? I forget the exact wording. I *like* retail, but DG was awful. I left for another retail job for reduced pay and it was a huge improvement. The schedule stayed the same (except vacations and people getting sick), which meant I could actually make plans and rest. At my DG, the coworkers and customers were awesome but the corporation treated workers like less than shit.
Lots of stories out there of people winning suits when those crowded isles created by poor corporate wage management has a box fall on you. Just saying, guys
I worked for DG for 4 years and it was hell. Corporate gives the stores barely enough hours to allow for one employee to work at a time. Its the only retail store that I know where cashiers are required to stock shelves. My DM would complain if he saw the cashiers behind the counter.
I worked at a Dollar Tree back in college so that I had money for food (God forbid I needed the job for more), and I was robbed with a knife to my back a week before graduation. The most I got was a phone call from my district manager asking if I was ok, and I still had to finish my shift that night. I have so much sympathy for the people that need those jobs. I normally was one of two or three people that covered an entire store for a shift. It was hell.
holy shit lol, the audacity of that manager 😶
Wt!?, tramatic !!,
Please tell me you quit on the spot when they told you you had to finish the shift
@@idontwantahandlethoughThe audacity of the guy wielding the knife.
Did they rob the store, or did they rob YOU? Cause it seems to me that people could just load up a cart and walk it out the door and the employees would not give a shit
Oh, we need a Last Week investigation on Goodwill Stores.
Goodwill in general. I worked in the corporate offices of one of their highest grossing chapters for 5 years. The things I saw and experienced. They love showing off people with physical disabilities for clout but the amount of fighting I had to do against my boss to attend my doctor and therapy appointments for my mental illness, which still counts as a disability, was ridiculous. Somebody used the company facebook account to spy on me and they fired me over a post I made. I had to take them to court to get my unemployment. They kept changing their story but in the end I learned they broke 3 laws when they fired me. My lawyer told me this wasn't his rodeo against Goodwill. I've had two former Goodwill employees ask me for his number.
Or disability pay
Thanks. I own shares in Both Dollar General and Dollar Tree. I just placed an order to sell my shares in both when the market opens in the AM
Thank you for doing this, it's the type of change that needs to happen, because it's the only change that will matter to corporations like this. In the new hire packet for dollar general it states that DG's mission is to provide a good return for shareholders, value for customers and a chance at employment for store associates, in that order. I read between the lines that the actual objective is to please shareholders, the rest is just a means to an end. I've been working for dollar general for 5 months now. 85 percent of my wages immediately go into a savings account so i can pay my bills. The remaining percentage barely covers thr most basic of living expenses (sometimes I'm left washing my hair with bars of soap or things like that). I'm on food stamps, cant afford a car and despite saving the majority of my paycheck each week, all it took was a couple of somewhat higher utility bills to wipe out every dime I'd saved from then to now. Im getting out of here ASAP and have an interview this week. I pray that im leaving dolllar general soon so i may have some quality of life again.
@@memyselfi2005I really hope you get a better job soon. Best wishes to you.
The man in the suit snapping his fingers and telling the volunteer to hurry up is the most realistic thing about corporations ive ever seen 😂😂😂😂
Seriously - corporate fuckers just want slavery back.
In nursing you'll be putting an IV in somebody's arm and a nurse manager will walk by with their hands in their pockets saying room 202 needs a bedpan.... So give it to her!!!!!!
This show was all skit and less intel. I feel bad for dollar general but like what are people doing about it?
@@carolyniorio4476I walked away from my RN license after 5 years. Things were bad in the 90s, I can only imagine how bad it is now.
Hmm, maybe unfettered capitalism was not the right way to go? Except for the rich, they obviously love it.
That that lady knew exactly how to pronounce ‘filet mignon’ & ‘escargot’ then pointed out people like her have to eat ‘raymun noodles’ is absolutely my favorite thing for today.😂
as a southern, there is a huge comfort whenever i heard raymun noodles instead of ramen,
Raymond noofles
That lady doesn't understand that there's a huge spectrum between those.
Maybe not a mistake. Maybe they are paid so bad that they have to get the generic noodle brand.
@@samiraperi467seems like she does... it's kinda the point she was making
some of my fondest memories of working at a dollar tree was buying weed for the first time from a coworker named Juan, and discovering that the backroom actually has a microwave after cleaning out the backroom.
I love how a place becomes a mess, the higher ups say "we're going to take measures on training so they can handle this" - said training is making the bottom line sign some paper saying "yes I got the training that did not actually exist" and that's the end
Years ago, I was in a Goodwill...they get most of their merchandise for free, the CEOs are millionaires/billionaires, mark up some products more than what the same thing at the dollar stores cost yet a friendly employee told me she hadn't had a raise in 8 years. Insane. The corporate greed in out of control. I now call them GREEDYWILL.
A lot of supposedly "non profit" orgs are like that too. Basically as long as the company spends all the money it's taken in it's "non profit." Sure in reality there are very specific ways they are expected to do and then verify this but the result is still the same where CEOs get outrageous salaries voted in by trustees who just happen to own the real estate the nonprofit pays tippy top dollar for or better or same with whatever companies supply the organization with whichever consumables they go through or just massively overcharge for cleaning the floors at night, etc, etc. Many years ago there was a 92% tax on incomes greater than twenty times the average wage. This tax wasn't so much meant to be paid but rather to act as a barrier and deterrent to companies pulling exactly these kinds of shenanigans to peel off every spare cent for the managers and owners alone. Naturally this kept average CEO pay to less than 20 times the average income and by so doing it removed the incentives for these CEOs to empower the greed of any corrupt trustees or to funnel profits to shareholders (though since stock buy backs were essentially illegal back then anyway this was hard to do.) Back then the One Percent could only get richer by letting the rest of us get richer too while today they not only take it all for themselves but they also actively look for new ways to claw back what little we've saved. But for twenty years after WW2 this nation payed off that war debt and drove the biggest increase in economic activity and wealth in human history and it was ALL because that old top marginal tax rate made it impossible for the billionaires to take everything for themselves alone, allowing that money to fall to workers as living wages but also low prices with high quality as there was much less incentive to gouge and little profit in it. As a result this money actually being spent and circulated _literally was the postwar boom_ that made everyone richer and saw the Middle Class grow like crazy. And it was all because of that tax which ideally never needed to be paid just avoided the legal way. Unfortunately the One Percent managed to undermine and skirt it getting tax breaks to donate that money to causes that only benighted them ultimately seeing lower taxes that allowed greater greed. By 1980 they'd funded BS rightwing colleges to sell their propaganda and invent Trickldown and even before Reagan sold this magic beans to the boomers the top rate was reduced to 70% on paper and really less than half after tax breaks and much worse was set only on incomes above $10 million which was well above twenty times the average, decoupling that rate from a set multiple of that average being the biggest difference removing the need for us all to share in the good fortune rather than see it all go to the top. So CEO pay went from 20 times the average in the 1950s and 1960's to 60 times average in 1980 and over 400 to one today. That old very high top rate with very few loopholes fixed to a multiple of the average made all the difference, literally every issue we face from corporate resistance to progressive policies on climate, living wages and democracy itself would all be so much easier to tackle it was essentially only worth 8% of what it is now to fight us. Even Citizens United would hardly matter if there was 92% less of that cash to taint politics and if anyone it would taint would only ever see 8% of it after that. That old top rate is the real secret ingredient to duplicating the widespread prosperity the boomers took for granted.
I stopped shopping at the Goodwill as soon as they became a retail store of used items.
@@karlwithak. I'm sorry if that's your suicide note, it's lame. You probably even missed the fact that Corporate Rule and the Status Quo of the last forty years was completely built on dragging the fiscal narrative rightward by leveraging the eternal yet empty threat of the GOP going after abortion. Fear of losing seats to classic "anti abortion" Republicans too smart to draw the inevitable blowback of actually going after it allowed the relatively few corporate Dems to make you (apparently) happy with choosing only between socially progressive but supposedly electable fiscal conservative candidates instead of getting risky on all around progressives not to the right of Nixon. The fact that evangelical billionaires lobbying the SCOTUS and MAGA hordes jumping into politics undercut the old GOP threat of threatening reproductive rights has *completely shattered the control that the One Percent once had.* The literal reason we've seen so much positive momentum in organized labor is that there is NO unified or organized control for the first time in a generation. The lights are on but nobody is home. Institutional inertia coasting along is all there is delaying us from accomplishing _anything we want_ over the next two or three election cycles. So buck up already, Mopey.
I literally saw an empty plastic mixed greens container for $5. It was one of the exact containers you see in grocery stores with various types of greens for ~$1.99-3.99 WITH the greens inside. The label was still on it, too!
@@kyndkristen it makes you wonder who prices those items.
About 25 years ago I worked for a company that merchandised cards. My job was to go in and reset the card displays. I was sent into a Family Dollar that was changing some of it's layout. I noticed the employees taking laundry soap off the shelves and tossing it into bins. I asked one of them if they weren't afraid they were going to damage the product. They told me it was all going into the trash and that they had just restocked it YESTERDAY!!!! Even though they knew they were going to be moving where it went, over a month earlier. I asked about them donating it or taking it home to use since they were throwing it into the trash. They said they put a camera on the trash bins to keep the employees from doing this (even though they didn't even have a camera watching the registers!) and the trash was kept inside to keep people from taking it out of the trash to use. Now this wasn't a few things of soap. This was an ENTIRE AISLE, JUST STOCKED. When I asked why they didn't donate it the employee said she had asked corporate the same when she first started working there. The response "those people are our base customers and if we donate it, they wont come buy it". I've never purchased anything there since.
The waste at Dollar General is mind boggling. (Former employee)
One of the most despicable acts of capitalism, throwing out perfectly good products and food because giving it away would rightfully put them out of business. The measures taken to prevent "theft" are stronger than anything else in the company. It's inhumane, they actually just hate people, and nobody should accept these practices.
Truly disgusting. So many food pantries could really use personal items like laundry detergent and toiletries etc. So many desperate people out there.
@mlr4524 and a number of people will pick it up
Where is the FIRE DEPARTMENT? Dept of Health? Oh yeah. Bad neighborhood or money in palm😮
"This bag of Skittle." "You mean Skittles?" "Nope."
“We can pay you in rat babies.” “How many?“ And the way it’s delivered on both sides is the hardest I’ve laughed at anything on TV in a long time 😂
Omg me too! That "how many" did me in!
All the actors in the end sketch were great. And I'm not just saying that. Freakout lady, rat baby wagey, and the indifferent to mortal suffering corporate man, all nailed their roles. Like they were born to play them. I would love to see them get on SNL or something. I'm not their agent or anything, I was just really surprised with how funny and impressively well acted that was.
What's he gonna do with them?! 😮
I thought he said "I'm ready." Because DG employees are clearly willing to work for however many or few rat babies the company is willing to pay.
I love that actor. He was great in Will and Grace but I adored him in Grace and Frankie. Even his bit parts are hilarious.
Feeding the warehouse rat a Pringle is somehow a wholesome vibe
Kinda like a little pet. ❤️
Well, at least the rat is helping make room for more stock.
@@theodorebear6714like prisoners get?
@@theodorebear6714those rats been there for generation on generation. The humans are the rats' pets at this point. The rats been there longer than most of the employees probably.
@@trevaenglish1542 the rats family has been living in that neighborhood for thousands upon thousands of years, likely before humans were even on the continent
As a former dg manager, literally everything said was true. Everything.
Am I the only one who couldn't stop hearing the guy call it "Dollar F&%@ It!" at the end?
I worked for DG for 6 months in 2013. By the end of my time there, I was the longest tenured employee in the store.
I love your vibe
Wow
“I would tell you we do very good in good times and we do fabulous in bad times.” The most accurate description of the American power structure.
"We are the Royal family and we aproove this message"
I think that's just called capitalism
War? Stonks. Bank collapse? Bailout. Then stonks. Housing crisis? Stonks. Global pandemic? Stonks. Inflation? Stonks. Gas prices? Stonks. Most people don’t have access to stonks? Stonks.
And the rest of the world ends up copying them. Even if they weren't the first to do that shit, they perfected it. Man. Shit womps.
@brandonayong5823 They don't even have that in the US. ... And yet, the US acts just like the Royal family. Canada, I understand. Australia, Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, or anyone else who still has the royals as their figure head "head of state," I understand. But the US? The fug is there excuse? Capitalism. Of course it is. What else could it be? lol.
As a former dollar general worker I feel validated.
In Canada we have Dollarama and they're eating Walmart's lunch. They stock a remarkably wide range of products in a small space. Clean and tidy. They are supply chain experts, working with manufacturers to stock Dollarama branded product. It's actually fun to shop there.
Dollarama is what a dollar store should be.
I worked at Dollar General for 4 years. This is 100% accurate. DG is terrible to employees.
Me too, and I was happy to walk away when I did
Took you four years to figure it out??
That's not the point of minimum wage@@karlwithak. Besides, I'd take a Dollar General employee any day over some stuffed shirt who sends emails from bed all day.
So why you guys protect it like it is your daddy store.
@@karlwithak. We all just gonna pass how you gotta be incompetent 27 times over or..... Was that you saying the quiet part out loud? Lulz
My sister used to work for Dollar General and was pretty badly injured by falling freight. It took *forever* and a intense lawsuit to get any sort of compensation. All she was asking for was for them to cover her medical bills.
I feel bad that you Americans have to endure this kind of dystopia! I got this rare leg injury and had to see doctor for five times..and get this rare medicine. It cost me about 50 dollars..since parking wasn't free! Obviously I got full pay from all those days I couldn't work. Our society would have had me covered..by my employer offered a more expensive, but faster and efficient option IMPORTANT EDIT: For my sick days employer only has to pay for BASE hours. No weekend, evening or night extras etc. ... BUT MY EMPLOYER DECIDED THAT IT PAYS FOR EVERYTHING EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. Imagine how reliable and faithfull workers in my country are?
Dude they genuinely would rather fight a $500,000 lawsuit than pay you a penny to get better. They wanna make it as unattractive as possible to ask for care. I'm glad you got the compensation, but as someone who fought that fight, I'm guessing that you guys missed out on a lot of life and opportunity while you were stuck banging your heads against that wall.
@@dome2919 Look.. America is Fucked UP. This is general idea with your newest ally. I mean your $500000 lawsuits are a complete joke. They would never happen anywhere else. I heard about a case where this lady received $700000 from McDonalds since a hot nugget landed on her daughter. In Europe.. there would have been a case..where they would have seeked mothers role in this injury. Mother would have been trialed and had a conviction for failing to control her kid. They would have seeked if that mother is truly capable to have control of that kid..after the fine that mother receives from that McDonalds incident. The idea of the family receiving any money from this is insanely stupid.
@@kimniceomg you are living in a socialist-communist dystopia -Is what an american would say.
@@winzyl9546 Exactly!! Instead according to studies my country has been the happiest for 6 years straight. ..if only Americans would really understand how much taxes they pay..and how little they receive back..maybe that could open few eyes?
Just want to say i live in a smaller city with a DT and DG and its always been clean, organized, and the workers were always super friendly and helpful. Im not sure if this has to do with our city being so small so they dont get as bombarded with everything, the fact that the workers are awesome, or both. Either way, i just want to thank my cities stores and the workers there for being so wonderful and i hope things get better for everyone. No one should have to work in the conditions presented in this video, especially for this crappy of pay and long hours. I wish you all the best and thanks to all of you that keep these stores running as best they can, it really does help out shoppers, like myself.
It's great to know there is a unicorn 🦄 of a store out there. I live in a small Florida town that has 3 stop lights. We have 3 DG's, 1 DT and 1 FD along the 25 minutes it takes to get from one end of town to the other. All 3 stores chains have great employees that are overworked and under paid. They work very hard but it's a struggle for them to keep up. Their managers work crazy hours to cover the continuous payroll cuts. Some of the stores are so behind you can't get through the store because there are stock U-boats everywhere and their back rooms are full. It's hard for them to get caught up when managers work alone from open till lunch time when they have payroll for a cashier. So after working 6-8 hrs alone they get to start working there truck, setting ads, doing their resets, store paperwork and employee training. God help them if they have to hire a new employee on top of this. The best stocked store has a SM that comes into work at 3 am alone 3-4 days a week just to get something done. I hope these hard working people find the gift of their own unicorn store soon.
I’m Canadian, we have dollar tree locations and I’ve never in my life seen anything remotely like what’s pictured here. It’s unbelievable someone would run a business like this. *Edit* I’m about halfway through now and it just keeps getting worse how does it keep getting worse?
All the stores they showed are in minority neighborhoods. I’m surrounded by dollar generals and family dollars, and none look like that. Been to a couple near the city and then they start looking like that.
I am afraid so.
I can't believe over 400 violations amounted to only a $13.1 million fine. If you want to know why the system doesn't work, it's because the punishment for unlawful behavior is not a deterrent, it's just a tax.
The fines don't matter unless they are actually paid.
I can't believe they're allowed to stack violations like that. There's got to be a point a company gets put under mandatory management if not outright shut down.
@@TooLoozethe fines don't matter unless they actually impact the business consequentially
$13.1 million in fines over the course of years to a company making $1.6 billion in *profits* per year is a fuckin' joke. At this point those fines are just the cost of doing business.
In any other situation the american carceral system would say incarceration and torture is the solution. But if youre a corporation its just cost of doing business
I got a feeling this show can last forever, because I bet you there is no corporation that will not make you nauseous.
You meant "nauseated"
@@gw6667 Omg thank you so much
At what point will people understand that **CAPITALISM IS THE PROBLEM**?
Well my company: They have huge amount of grocery stores, hotels, restaurants etc. During the worst lockdown phases restaurants were closed and nobody was staying in hotels. This company didn't lay off anyone. Instead they offered an option for restaurant and hotel workers: They could work in grocery stores with their original hours, but with grocery store wages. Grocery store wages are higher than restaurant or hotel wages here. Many of those workers earned a lot more during lockdown..and when lockdown was over they returned to their original jobs. My employer also have paid Christmas-bonus during last years. During Covid-shutdown-years it was about 100-150€ (about the same in dollars), but last year it was 300-500€. We have our own social media channel.. and base level worker can say there that CEO's ideas suck..as long as you remember to stay "matter-of-fact". Would this multi-billion corporation make John nauseous?
Welcome to Corporate Tree General.
OMG! I applied last week as an alternative to Walmart as a Senior 😮! Pulling application immediately! Thank you for your humorous journalism and support for DG workers! Wow! So sad for the employees dealing with this crisis.😢
Yea don't do it. I'm 50 and on my 4th week, it's kicking my butt all over.
I used to shop at dollar stores. I never saw the disaster or knew about robberies. The best experience I had was when grocery stores were selling out of bottled water, a dollar store had just one or 2 bottles, but a magical second employee appeared said “wait here” and went in the back, and brought all the water everyone wanted. A line had formed with quiet murmurs of “they have water”. It was a nice communal moment before we all separate and hunkered down in our own homes. It was nice to be in a line of women who were not the filet mignon eaters, quietly getting service.
My wife is a former manager at a DG and this is 100% accurate. The only reason her store was clean was because was constantly working 60+ hours.
Every day manager that gets to plan their termination tapers off their hours to something reasonable before they go. I had 2 months of 40 hours before I quit. The back warehouse was full and we had an entire truck just stocked in the rolltainers on the floor. For the entire last week my orders to staff were 'do stuff?' And I told the customers we were remodeling.
here 30 hours a week is considered part time. 40 hour weeks are normal and 80 hour weeks are what you need to survive at $16/ hour. Mostly cuz you would get 36 hours of overtime. Now how would one achieve this? You don't, the company doesn't wanna pay that o.t. ( or a real wage!) so just higher a manager on salary and abuse the rules. They make x amount a year without over time pay. dollar general just min/maxed it that's all....
A couple of my local DG stores were forced to close by the fire marshal because there was so much product in the aisles it was a safety hazard! 🤯🤦🏻♂️
@@maxwellt.wiseman8570 A couple of my local DG stores were forced to close by the fire marshal because there was so much product in the aisles it was a safety hazard! 🤯🤦🏻♂️
Going to hope she found a job where they at least tried to cut staff turnover.
He didn't mention the dollar general that successfully unionized in Auxvasse, Missouri in 2019. Management refused to bargain and simply closed the store. It still sits vacant to this day.
welcome to corporate america. If it costs us money we ain't doing it. Fuck your well being!
This is the way.
Craziness
Strain, it's despicable.
Wtf
I worked at Dollar Tree back in 1994. We always had a full crew consisting of a manager, 1 or 2 register people, and a stocker(who would also cover lunches for the register people). The store was kept neat, clean, and it was run pretty efficiently. Just seeing the condition of the stores now, I can't imagine the stress level of the employee.
Worked at DG twice. Six months the first time in 2016, quit in the middle of my shift because I could not take another second. Lasted one year the second time in 2021-2022. That second time, by the time I left I had been there longer than any other employee at that store. During that year I went through 5 store managers, even more assistant store managers and countless other store employees over that year. At one point I ran the store by myself for a week. I was a part time employee with zero training past the register & stocking lol. Actually they never trained me on those either, you just figure it out. I lost count of how many times we were shut down by the fire marshall due to the aisles being so cluttered with stock that we could not get up in time before the next truck would come. One time a tractor trailer hit the front of our building, partially ripping our store front sign down. So it was dangling over everyone's heads as they walked in/out of the store. We repeatedly asked to close as it was unsafe and they refused. They kept saying they were sending someone out to deal with the sign but no one ever showed up. A customer finally called the city to complain. The fire marshall and someone from the city came out and shut us down. Put a sign on the door that said the building was condemned lol. We had been open like that for a full week. That sign could have EASILY fallen and hurt or killed someone. They do not care. Amazingly once they had been shut down they had someone out the next day to deal with the sign...which just consisted of cleaning up the debris because the firemen used their equipment to rip the full sign down when they showed up as it was unsafe to leave it dangling for even a second longer. I spent my birthday stocking alone inside the locked store while my assistant manager slept off a hangover in her car after staying out all night drinking with my store manager the night before. That was actually a great day. I don't mind stocking, I didn't have to deal with customers and I love being alone. Couldn't even be mad at the managers bc they were SEVERELY overworked and burned out. They literally never had time off and still had shit pay even at their positions. At one point we had no store manager so they had the assistant store manager work from 7am-6pm, 7 days a week for MONTHS!!!!! She asked if she could have one day off and they said they'd get back to her and of course never did. That poor girl was in a very, very tough spot in life, needed that job and couldn't just quit so she was trapped there just dealing with that. To this day she is the coworker I feel the worst about and I truly hope life is better for her right now. I will just say that no matter how awful the job itself was, NOTHING was worse than the customers. The customers are straight up dehumanizing towards dollar store workers. I've worked in other retail stores and it doesn't come even remotely close to comparing.
As a store manager of Dollar General I feel this so much. My first month at my store I was robbed at gunpoint and saw my coworker get shot. Two months later I got four trucks in six days and no one to this day knows why. I currently haven't had a day off since November 5th. And no one at any level in store makes enough money to do this job.
Homie you gotta get outta there!! 😭
Is it possible to just hire enough crew and to hell with corporate? Be a rebel by showing corporate more sales would pay for the staff and cover the added costs.
the Biden Administration has proposed a new rule that would require employers compensate full-time workers in management, administrative, or other professional roles for any overtime worked if they make less than $55,068 annually.
If you have a UPS warehouse near by try to work there. It's the holiday season and they are usually hiring.
As a former assistant manager for dollar general in Tulsa, I can verify that they don't give a hoot what we go through for them. You work and slave away, you get no time with your kids, and when you ask for more help, the answer is always a resounding no. I make more now in 3 hours than I made for an entire week working for them...
As a former employee of one of the three named companies, the worst part is that I'm left sitting here thinking, "yeah, all that is true and there's honestly even more that the show didn't have time to cover."
Golly, I bet there wasn't any unpaid labor with having employees clock in early and clock out late, but intentionally within rounding distance to round down! It doesn't sound like much, but it added up to 1 to 1.5 hours a week per employee on average (5 minutes early, 7 minutes late, and if you had lunch, 5 minutes short). With 4 employees at 12.5k stores ("back in my day"), that's at least 50k unpaid hours per week. At minimum wage of $7.25, that's over $360k taken from workers and fed back to CEOs and shareholders. *edit:* I am underestimating the number of workers, and using the low end of 1hr unpaid per week. I am also using the lowest minimum wage in the country (my state was higher). This amounts to just under $19 million a year as a conservative estimate. *edit2:* this doesn't even count what they did to managers at the time. Obligated to work 54 hours a week, and when a law was being passed that would require compensation for >40 hours, I got to sit in on a call that explained they'd be reporting 40 hours, but the 54 hours was still mandatory
@@ZedaZ80 so how much are these shareholders earning in dividents, and how much are the top people earning in wages. And would a decision to cut down dividents be able enough to make a drastic change here?
@@nielskorpel8860 Not that much, dividend yield is at 2% and the stock price went down from 259 to 121 in 1 year, so this is an all around shitty company.
@@nielskorpel8860 I worked for a Family dollar as an assistant manager and was often working 6 hours in the opening shift by myself. I made 8$ per hour. That was not that long ago. This was a terribly accurate video.
Right. The one I worked for staffed the areas that had executives living in that area. And because the public knows it is understaffed several stores are regularly robbed.
John Oliver is an international treasure.
I worked for a pound store in Ireland for one day in 1998. Made 2 pounds an hour. Was devastated when I opened my pay packet. It was back breaking work, unpacking boxes and trying to cram products on to shelves.
My company got called to a Dollar General to board up the storefront after a break-in. The manager signed off on the work, and we were told us how to contact their corporate office for payment. We called and mailed them for three years trying get our invoice paid. They didn't bothered to call us back once. I guess vendors aren't the only ones expected to work for free.
That's insane, literal Trump levels of corruption
Legal action?
contact a lawyer, that's likely collectable with interest
Absolutely file a lawsuit.
They can ignore it. It cost more for the person to file the suit than to get paid for the job.@@jessebarlow1277
As a former Dollar General Manager of 2 years, I cannot agree with the feel of this video more! My front doors were shot out at 8am and my DM made me reopen by 9:30. We still had police there!! These companies are killing small communities.
correction: did you mean communities are killed inside the stores? ;-)
Did you maybe ask yourself why you live in a neighborhood where it‘s apparently no big deal if A SHOP WINDOW GETS SHOT OUT??? That never happened in my west-european country. Maybe you guys shouldn‘t focus so much on greedy corporations and instead ask yourself why poor people (especially negros) cannot behave?
That is insane.
You know what's really bad and true, at least in my area, is that many of these stores are located in bad areas where crime exists and crazies hang out. Sad but true. Damn shame.
Home Depot aggressively don't want Union's.
Every time I go to dollar tree, it’s always a different cashier.
100% accurate and there is a lot more to cover about how crappy these stores are to work for than didn't get covered. Ask anyone who has had a "management" position at a store... they could all write novels.
I worked at dollar general while I was in university. It was the worst job I’ve ever had. My managers stole stuff out the back which I didn’t care about. But then one manager framed another manager of stealing over $200 and got her fired. Then upper management came in and hired a new manager who told me “I shouldn’t have been promised time off for school and needed to work on school days” 🙃 then followed up with “dollar general cares about education because they have a scholarship fund” 😂😂😂 scholarship won’t mean shit if I can’t attend my classes
It’s finally completed: kzhead.info/sun/aNKvYqyNo6yvhXk/bejne.htmlsi=ApjPQPFFV1caJIz1
My elderly mother got a job at one because my parents were really desperate for money. The DG was so bad. My mom was never actually alone, but she was the only one who worked. The manager and her buddy just hung out and watched KZhead in the office. Manager bragged about how much money she made, and would loudly tell the employees and all customers about her VERY far right views (we’re in MA, so not quite as common as other places). Absolutely atrocious person. My mom was scheduled over times she couldn’t come in either, and would get in trouble for it. My mom quit, she decided she’d rather be dead poor than work for that atrocious organization.
My supermarket offered "tuition assistance for college," making being a cashier a "great investment." They fail to tell you it's $2,500/yr, capped at $20,000, requires a full year of near full time employment, and is only paid to you after you pay for classes on your own up front.
@@ChristinaR404 YES the scheduling is wild. I would have to go into work on my days off to learn my new schedule and sometimes I was scheduled for that evening and the manager wouldn't even tell anyone. Or they would do the schedule at the last minute, cal and say "hey you're working tomorrow morning". A total nightmare company!
@@scifirealism5943 I love that they expect us to work full time and somehow make time for our classes... And absolutely garbage amount of money considering how wildly expensive college fees are! $2000 covers the cost of some books
There was a mom and pop that had been around since the depression in my community. They survived Walmart They survived 2008 They could not survive dollar general.
This is the part I don't get. How are these dysfunctional assholes able to outcompete anyone?
:(
That’s so sad
I used to work at dollar tree and I can attest for the fact that most days I was on my own in the building and most of the time the lines were long, and I wasn't paid very well, and I didn't even work in a shady area
I worked at Walmart and during covid was told straight to me face by management that if the store followed proper safty and health procedures we wouldn't be able to stock the shelvs in a timly manner, and the store would lose money. Was told to just ignore protocol and do whatever I could to ensure the shelves were stocked. So glad I managed to get out of that hell hole. Really am sympathetic to those who pretty much have no choice bu to work at these kinds of places.
"If you're convinced these are a terrible place to work, I'm not NEARLY done yet". Thanks John, you never disappoint.
Considering the guy who made Five Nights At Freddy's used to work at a Dollar General, I can now see where his inspiration came from
did not expect someone to mention fnaf under a John Oliver video that comment is gold
Didn't he base it off chuckie cheese though?
@@Perkele_foxtrot_oscar_bravo you can have multiple inspirations
That and Stephanie Sterling
@@alecmullaney7957 what about that person? No idea who that is sorry
Canadian ex Dollarama worker here. We do occasionally have boxes in the isle but at least in my store it was nothing like this except for about 4 days a year for the holiday isle changeover. I wasn't paid super well but there was usually 4-5 workers on shift, I rarely did cash and was basically the stock guy in the back. Unloaded trucks everyday. Sorted overstock etc
I worked for one of their maintenance management companies, and when I tell you they cut corners at every single chance they could, I mean to the point of not hiring sanitation crews to clean after their sewage backed up and filled the store in a layer of raw human excrement. They would hire the plumber to jet the line to clear enough blockage that sewage would drain again, and expect the one or two employees in the store to clean it all up. Our maintenance workers would show up to stores that were closed during business hours because there were no employees, or they wouldn't be able to get to the issue because the back room was floor to ceiling boxes. The corporate office would deny door replacements, referencing that the lease was almost up and so they were just going to close the store and open a new one down the street instead, leaving this one not secured in the mean time. They were truly a nightmare to work with.
to every worker: if an employer says you don't need an union, you definetly *_N E E D_* an union
In an ideal world labour unions would not be necessary b/c companies and management would just treat workers decently b/c it's the right thing to do. Unless and until this world springs fully formed into existence, Trade Unionism is a necessary check on the power of capital and every worker should be represented by a union.
As a current Dollar Store employee, my immediate bosses are pretty great but this is pretty spot on as a whole.
@@cowmath77what point are you trying to make with this comment??
@@cowmath77 Cultural how? Come on, say it
@@lessgoofyone That people with a cultural head scarf are more likely to get caught doing that I guess 😅
Not only is an armed robbery traumatic. Evidence needs to be collected.
I lost my sight and had major mental health issues happen while working at dollar general and couldn’t get unemployment benefits when they fired me… this story hit different 😢
"The company wants you to know" always leads to my thinking "we are saddened about the public finding this out about us but don't worry you'll forget about it later today"
"We are committed to this" = "We are definitely not going to do anything about this but we hope that by promising it will seem like we have faced the issue"
Don't you just love Corporate Speak? You just know their lawyers are telling them: Deflect Avoid Ignore.
That dollar general commercial at the start is the highest number of dollar general employees I've ever seen in a store at once
I've been in quite a few dollar stores over the years, but I've never seen one as clean, spacious, well-lit, and organized as the one in that commercial.... usually they look like some kind of dimly-lit post-apocalyptic warzone with that low-key "eau de garbage dump" kinda smell o.O
I always laugh at the back of their trucks on the highway with the oh so properly dressed mother daughter duo doing their shopping. No tats, no hair colors, no pajama bottoms 😂😂
21:00 When keeping it REAL GOES WRONG😂
If you know you know Dave Chappelle
The actors in the Dollar bucket segment are amazing! 👌
Agree. It looks so natural and convincing
The employees are so depressed at our DG. Sometimes the store is closed because no one showed up. As a former dollar store employee, I can never blame them.
Also, if you only put one employee in your store, it only takes one person to be fed up with it to have the store close down.
I’m glad you covered the twisted world of Dollar stores. In our town, the fire department actually forces Dollar General to close AT LEAST once a week due to the fire hazard created by the bursting freight trolleys and cases of merchandise shoved down the aisles.
I’m not American, I’m not familiar with these shops, but the FIRST thing I thought about when the over-full aisles and store rooms was shown was “that’s a fire hazard waiting to happen” 😱
Good on your local FD. I wonder if the store pays the workers when that day of catch up comes around. Can't believe DS hasn't said screw it and shut down the store themselves.
@@rosey_ie Biggest thing really to blame is the warehouse. They send us way to much. There are items that we havent recieved in months to a year while they give us same items over and over again. Our new Ceo which he came back from retirement is going to fix things.
You live in Western NY? Our fire department does the same thing. Just wondering if it's the same store of if this is a regular occurrence
@@rosey_ie What is the retail shopping experience like where you live ? And where is it ? But I've been thinking the American indulgent addiction to brick and motar "Lets go Shopping" needs to go the way of the dodo . While the traditional stock the shelves and let people peruse them will still be needed for some things. Many things could move to a virtual shopping experience , and then pick up your packaged order at locations , if not using delivery systems. Also communities should start setting up library type systems for many items we only need on a temporary basis. Ultimately consumerism as is ... is caused by the consumers habits . So the retailer side is merely exploiting a weakness of choice people make .
@3:00 - Smaller items (both volume and number) tend to cost more per unit compared to their larger versions no matter where you shop. When you're poor, however, the bulk option is generally out of reach even if it's technically cheaper in the long run. edit: Man, Dollar General & Dollar Tree make Canada's Dollarama look like paradise...
I had no idea this is why the Dollar Trees in our area are such a mess with boxes everywhere and super long lines. Around Christmas they had maybe 3 employees and still it was like that. I feel so bad for people who this is there only option to work or shop.
Those executives would bawl their eyes out with 1/100th the stress they’re putting on their employees
1/100th seems generous. I doubt they could handle a cash register at a fully staffed store, so at the conditions they leave their employees at they'd have a mental breakdown within a minute. Two tops.
Have you guys ever met execs? They’re typically not in charge of shit unless their competent enough to work their way up there. The two richest people I know also happen to be the two hardest working people I know. One is bringing in 2mil and the other over 5 mil a year. They handle extremely stressful situations that are a lot more difficult than a cash register.
@@dasonhandjryour friends are small potatoes compared to these people. We’re talking BILLIONS, not just single digit millions.
@@dasonhandjr keep licking that boot.
And? You don't have to work at dollar tree. You don't have to work any job you don't like. This is the United States. You can move up. You can educate yourself.
I worked for a dollar general. I was fired because I was forced to close the store since I was literally still dealing with covid symptoms and nobody would cover the 3 hrs of the shift. The management in that company care about as much as the rat being offered a Pringle.
I had to quit for similar lack-of-concern. My manager and the boss of the location refused to follow the COVID safety protocols and when I called up the chain in concern I got shrugged away. My coworker with asthma passed away from COVID later on after I quit. 🙃
@@gaycryptidhoursthat's messed up.
Working at Dollar Tree during covid was terrifying, my manager, a couple co-workers, and a lot of customers actively refusing to wear masks, and when they did wear them, they wore them wrong. Tried taking it to OSHA, but they closed my case without properly following up on it, just took my manager's word and some staged photos at face value. Store got temporarily shut down due to multiple employees getting sick a couple months after I quit. The cherry on top was putting up with all that bullshit while being called an "essential worker" and making less money than people on unemployment.
The actress playing Brenda - love them!! 😂
It's ironic this broadcast is just now hitting television. I had been living in my new house in the urban area of Detroit, MI since 2011 and in 2013 a new Dollar General was built just across the street😃. By 2016 it looked exactly like what the stores in this video resembled and continued to do so all the way to when I sold the house in 2023😐. ....😎
One big problem is that the penalties for union busting are still cheaper than letting a union form
I would tax corporations 2x-5x the amount their employees used in welfare benefits.
I work at Kroger as a union employee and make 13.75 an hour. We have people who have been employed here since the 80s making 14.75
@@mylifesucksabit poverty is a policy choice.
@@scifirealism5943 Absolute TRUTH!
@@msolomonii9825 yes.
I've been an Assistant Manager for Family Dollar for 7 years and I've never felt so heard. Everything in here is 100% accurate. Our store looks great but its not easy to keep it this way.
No most dollar stores ive walked into look like hurricane Katrina
I stopped at a Family Dollar a couple months ago. The store was pretty decent as far as most items on the shelves in good order, with not much in the aisles. But while I was waiting in line to pay a couple men did a snatch-and-run shoplifting. One distracted the cashier and us customers by talking loudly and throwing products in the trash can by the door, while his friend filled his arms with clothing then they both ran. A few customers in line dropped their merchandise and ran into the parking lot after the men, which seemed pretty risky to me, but they came back empty-handed. The cashier checked us all out while trying to call her manager. No weapons shown but it still must have been scary for her.
Most likely your store looks good as a result of one of those rare occasions where there is a manager who puts in the effort and further inspires a few employees to be the same. Again, this is an uncommon scenario...but it happens. Typically those types of workers are worth way more than what Dollar stores are willing to pay and never stick around for the long haul.
No. Every family dollar I've been to has been nice. They have more hours to allocate to employees versus dollar general.
Just know you're doing a thankless job.
I'm a current DG SM with 25+ years of retail management experience. I can attest to this story. I've seen sh!t that I didn't think a company was capable of inflicting on their associates. The freight flow is so ridiculous and it's nothing that sells. Yet they keep sending it. I've been there a month and probably thrown a whole store's worth of stock in the trash.
The real scummy thing about DG is that when they open a new store they are fully staffed, they do a great job pushing every other small mom and pop out of business, then once they are the only show in town they cut their staff and let the store go to hell like what you see here.
Almost like mini-Walmarts...that is their playbook for larger and more desirable markets 😢
Yes, the Wal Mart playbook...
I hate shopping at Wmart
Yeah! The family owned grocery in our small town of 2000 closed and literally there was nowhere to buy food then the squalid DG , Casey’s or another gas station. DG built a new DG Market and it is immaculate and well staffed. Of course the fresh food is pricy even by todays standards. I guess it’s better than nothing. We have a lot of elderly people who would struggle to get to the surrounding towns 15-25 miles away. Let’s see how fast it deteriorates.
You hit the nail on the head.,
As someone who started in retail in the 80s, these conditions have been problematic for the last 40 years in corporate owned 'convenience' stores.
It's also why welfare isn't robust: because poor people won't work for slave wages if they have government benefits.
Wow this is a real eye opener. I'm always at Dollar General and now I understand much better!
6:38 as a Japanese person I found this funny Next time I see her I’ll say “FREED Chicken”
I worked at a dollar general for six years. Night shift for 80% of it, everyday I would go in hoping I didn’t get yelled at by my boss, cussed out by a customer, or robbed. Some days I would daydream about wrapping my car around a tree instead of going into work. My boss was extremely verbally abusive to the point I spent four years on autopilot and I would often break down in the break room just wishing I was dead. After six years the most I made was $10.25 an hour, I felt trapped. The day my boss got fired, the assistant manager quit also. I hit my breaking point that day because I knew if I didn’t quit too I would be there from opening to closing everyday until they found some new people or I finally went to sleep forever. I quit that day and it was the best day of my life. I learned to not take shit from anyone, the next time a boss popped an attitude with me over something that was out of my control, I wrote them a two week notice that day. The old manager I had at dollar general even had the audacity to ask if I wanted to come work for her at Family Dollar. Hell would freeze over and the sun would die before I even considered working for her or any dollar store again.
I know it's hard to get money to pay for rent and such, but please don't let yourself be abused just for a paycheck. Honestly, I've been homeless, and it's way better than voluntarily going to a screwed up employer.
I am glad you learned to stand up for yourself. I hope you also learned other real skills, both "human" skills and *human skills.* The difference being, "human" skills are used working _with_ and _for_ and _over_ other people, and *human* skills are using what you were *born* with: moving quickly with high endurance, whether stacking bricks, tieing knots, or distance running; learning to actually _use_ your senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and memory, math, logics that define us as *sapient.* ( _homo sapiens sapiens,_ you may have _heard_ of it but, probably never had it defined to you) Then there are _civilizational_ skills, like fixing a car or toaster or soldering a pipe and doing plumbing repairs or fixing a roof or planting food and creating fertilizer and choosing the _right_ fertilizer, or researching how something like a vaccine or insulin or an antibiotic was discovered, what problems and steps were made at refining it, and _make it yourself._ It is shocking how _easy_ any of those things _are,_ and how hard it _was_ to get there; starting with _how hard it is to notice things for the first time!_
@@davidgoodnow269WTF?
Care of yourself 😢😢 Thinking about selfharm is a HUGE mark of depression. Pls don't let yourself unsave❤❤
Well done! I doubt you'll ever find yourself putting up with abuse again.
The crazy thing is, the federal government has been enforcing the laws on the books and have fined the shit out of these stores. It’s still not enough. It might be time to strengthen the laws and at criminal penalties
It most likely means that it's cheaper to just take the fines rather than improving conditions to prevent the fines from happening. Capitalism at its finest
I wonder if the fines they incurred actually cost them less than it would have to pay employees a decent wage, have enough staff, or heat/AC?
Yeah, we have to end the "limited liability" of management and stockholders. Executives of these companies--jail them or bankrupt them. If there are major stockholders of these companies, they should be jailed too. Other companies should be required to own ONLY non-voting shares, so there is some liability. Investors with less than $100,000 in the company can be ignored.
@@spikeybunny6577 Yes, of course. That is why the violations continue. Its worked into their business model.
I hate to tell you this, but having learned from the worlds largest retailer, fines are a cost of doing business, and those fines can be deductable is accounted right. It's a win-win for them in the end.