Understaffed high street stores.

[2littleguineas]

Has anyone else noticed high street stores are becoming more and more understaffed as time goes on? The only staff I see in-store now is those on the check outs. There's rarely anyone around to ask for help and there's always queues when you're trying to pay.

I work for a large pharmacy chain, taken over in recent years by a US Company. Since they've taken over, they've drastically reduced the number of staffing hours in store but still expect business to grow.

I live rural and a lot of shops locally wouldn't be chains so hadn't noticed this much in other stores. But recently I've been on shopping trips to large cities and have been surprised to see how bad it's became in most stores. I found most of the staff weren't friendly more so in clothing stores. It was much better in supermarkets though. I can understand the staff feeling frustrated at been expected to do the work of two people, bearing the brunt of customers annoyance and also their managers who expect them to cover check outs and complete other jobs simultaneously but I don't understand their rude attitude to polite customers.
Anyway I'm wondering how long these companies can get away with the poor service they're providing. Does internet shopping mean we now have to put up and shut up and this is the future of high street shopping?

Yes, particularly in comparison to shops abroad where there seem to be bags of staff.

H&M seem to be particularly bad for this. One person on the tills and a mile long queue, no other staff to be seen.

I work for one of the big supermarkets and I know for a fact they have essentially cut most stores labour budgets in half and won't let any recruiting happen unless its for the 'skilled' areas aka management and counters and cafe type thing so its not your imagination. We're all fed up of it. This is after making half of us redundant

DH works as a store manager for a well known high street chain. This time last year, in addition to himself and his deputy manager, he had four full-time shop assistants and two part-time/weekend cover staff. He also had Christmas temps who would be offered pick up shifts to cover holidays in the summer (mostly students home from uni).

This year he has two full-timers and two part-timers to cover the same opening hours. Basically he's lost a third of his staff budget/hours. He gets paid from 8.30 in the morning but is there for seven most mornings because it's the only time he can get anything done in the office.

Trust me, the staff hate it as much as you do!

I've noticed it on makeup counters! I will go to a couple of different department stores - HoF, Debenhams, Boots on my lunch to get some foundation or whatever to find no-one around! At all! Its happened a couple of times so now I order online to save the hassle. Then they wonder why the high street is declining. Its a viscious cycle.

CaptainCallisto I work in retail and gtp similar for us. We always had 3/4 weekend staff, they've left and haven't been replaced. We no longer get Christmas temps. Any staff who've left haven't been replaced.
It's made working really difficult and stressful as we bear the brunt of customers frustration and the companies expectations of growth. I keep polite to customers but when they expect/demand that I stand with them to guide them to choose a shower gel/deodorant ECT I now politely refuse and point out I'm on my own and need to serve customers at the agdjj out. I find customers don't see the companies as been the ones to blame, they seem to think it's our fault we're understaffed.
Until recently I had no idea how wide spread this has became on the high street. It's shockingly bad and it was interesting to see it from a customers point of view too.
I've been feeling very hard done by as an employee but I also now feel very hard done by as a customer been expected to stand and queue for ages, not get any help if needed, use self service checkouts or ordering systems, all in the name of making even more money for these multi national companies.
I don't see how it will ever change though with all high street stores operating on the pamd model. They want us to shop online so even staying away from stores won't work.
As I say I live rural so I will on the main be avoiding there multi nationals and won't be planning any more city shopping trips anytime soon. I actually found there was less selection in those huge shops anyway. They were full of mass produced poor quality tat, took hours and hours to trawl around and weed out anything I might like.
A quick pop into my local town will always produce an affordable, quality outfit in less than an hour. The scales have well and truly fallen from my eyes in regards to high street shopping.

I tried to go buy some bits from a department store recently. There is now no longer anybody in the lingerie section to assist with fitting, if the fitting room is even open (usually locked now). I attempted to go buy a make up item too, but there wasn’t a single person available on that part of the shop floor to ask advice from.

I’ve gone to brastop and urban decay online instead. Debenhams can sink for me, it’s a shocking store.

I’ve noticed it in Boots as well as other places. If you do find someone to ask about a product, they’re usually helping someone else, or in the middle of a task they can’t stop. M&S locally has till staff and that seems to be it.

I spent 5 mins trying to find a member of staff in a department store recently to ask if they had any more sizes of a skirt in stock. When I finally tracked one down she said she had no idea, she could try to find someone who might know but to be honest it would be faster if I just went online. It really is the death of the high street.

I think Zara is the worst for this locally. I've often tried stuff on and then abandoned the idea as the queue for the till is gigantic

Boots near me is awful, no one mans the till at the front door so you have to use the till at the pharmacy, can take an age. It's now a shop lifters paradise.

No one was able to help me when DD was trying on bras in m&s,one member of staff was manning the normal fitting rooms and putting stock back on the floor, luckily I am pretty clued up bra wise but again you could pop the underwear on and walk out of the store an no one would know.

I find this in M and S. I went into one of their flagship stores (prime location in a regional shopping mall) and there was hardly any staff... but about a dozen people who looked like they were down from head office having pow wows in the middle of the aisles...and getting in the way.

Cost cutting?

Competing with online retailers and having overheads like leases, business tax, power and utilities, means their cutting back on the only thing they can - wages.

they're cutting back.

Obviously. 😳

My local Boots is terrible. If you go in early you have to walk around the store until you find someone who can stop what they're doing and jump on the till to serve you, a staff member told me that they don't have a designated till operator start until late morning.

I have noticed this too.

I also feel that they are no longer trying to have each garment in a range of sizes - just shoving 10 size 14s on the rack. When you ask for another size the answer always is "No, but we can order it for you and it'll be here tomorrow", which defeats the purpose of going to the shop. In House of Fraser they actually want you to pay a few pounds for them to order a bog standard size in a current range.

It’s so frustrating. There is never anyone to ask anything. Retailers will only have themselves and their short sightedness to blame when the high st dies.

I’ve also noticed the poor stock controls and weird sizes available. I tried to buy a top in H&M the other day and there were 10 size 4’s and 1 size 8!

LoafEater I think retailers actually want the high street to die. Online retail is much more profitable for them. By short staffing stores they're driving people to order from home themselves. I believe this is a transitioning period where we're all been groomed into doing the vast majority of our shopping online.
Whether or not customers will actually play ball or not remains to be seen.
After last week's shopping trip and seeing all the poor quality clothing and service I've decided to buy less items and spend more per item for better quality in stores where customers are given good service.

I only shop online so I don't know
But if it is a plan, it's sad because all they green space they've built on in London, they could have saved it and used shopping streets for flats instead. Not that any of them are affordable flats either!

I feel sorry for retail staff, I've seen mad queues in shops on the rare occasion I go.

Costs are enormous.

It's things like rent, business rates, raising the minimum wage, auto enrollment pensions. It is more expensive to employ people now and and there's more competition from the internet.

It wouldn't surprise me if most retailers want to focus on internet sales. Out of town warehousing is cheaper, rent and rates wise, and you could get away with less employees too.

I dreamt of doing the job of two people in my last place. It was really more like 3 or 4.

A lot of the time I would be alone in my own 3 person department and carrying another besides.

I work in retail management. I do several hours a week unpaid to get stuff done. Staffing is tighter than I’ve ever known. Companies want good increases year on year. Having bricks and mortar is very costly. People that come in to look, get my advice so they can order online or complain loudly if everything isn’t 100% to their satisfaction. People know complaints online get nipped in the bud quickly so frequently stories get exaggerated to get vouchers/products free. We have cameras that read footfall and then get bollocked for people walking out without purchasing. It’s usually a family in and out, in and out or people wanting directions etc. Of course, if you are short staffed some people won’t get served. Not rocket science.
People always moan about the high street but it is evolving. Online is so profitable.

Yep. Most of the changing rooms in our local Debenhams are closed. Clothes on ground floor, fitting rooms on floor 1, completely other side of lifts: bit of a trek even if you were on the same floor. As if trying to shop with a small baby in a pram wasn’t bad enough. I ended up just walking out when the item I had didn’t fit and I couldn’t face going down to get another size & coming back up.

Been expected to do the job of 3+ people is the norm now where I work. Last year there were 3 people covering 3 different sections in our store and two more on the tills. Now one or two of us is expected to do it.
I had myself ran ragged trying to cover it all but once I heard how much profit our company makes I stopped. I will do the job of one good person and that's it.

Yes the over heads are higher than ever but plenty of retailers are turning over larger profits each year, let's not lose sight of that.

Yes, the locked changing rooms are infuriating. At the very least they could put a sign up saying where the open ones are, or to ask at the till by shoes.

I used to work in one of the large high street department stores. When the store first opened we had a manager, 2 supervisors and about 12 customer assistants. By the time I left we had 1 manager that we shared with another, much larger department, so said manager would basically ignore us. We also just had 1 supervisor and about 5 customer assistants. Shortly after I left the supervisor did and they didn't replace her, so basically they had no one running the department

I noticed the last time I went in to shop I couldn't find any staff members (and they didn't have any nursing bras in the store like they did when I used to work there, which is what I specifically went into town to buy! I had to buy online instead )