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Losing Connection

Found this story about retail shrink very informative. The separation between the business ownership and the community it serves is cited as a factor :

..an emptier store — where workers are fewer and farther between, lower paid and less satisfied — may be more vulnerable to theft by both customers and employees, according to Lawlor. Especially if it’s a chain that seems disconnected from the community, he said. In 2022, the average reported dollar loss from employee theft (including merchandise theft, refund fraud, cash theft or passing merchandise to friends) was $2,180, in line with 2021 and 2020 levels, according to the NRF’s report. 

“In the good old days, a lot of stores were family-owned, the owner was right there,” he said. “You knew them or the family, you had a personal relationship, or you might just feel more of an obligation and be protective of the inventory and the business. So all this kind of builds upon itself.”

One big change I have seen in the time I have been in America, is at the Home Depot. It used to be that you would find an employee ready to help at every aisle. Irrespective of the aisle, they were all knowledgeable about the what was on stock at the store and eager to learn about your project and steer you in the right direction. All you had to do is ask. On weekends, the Home Depot in my town had these DIY classes that you could sign-up for and learn to do the job under expert guidance before you ventured forth on your own. As a new-comer to the country, I absorbed all of this, learning how to do customer experience right. 

These days, the staff at Home Depot can be hard to track down and once you do they have no idea where things are (if they even are in the store) and look up the same app as you do as a customer. The inventory database the app uses is highly unreliable so it almost does not matter what they claim to have in stock. The employees most certainly can't consult you on your project - they lack both the knowledge and the passion to do the job. 

Ironically for me, when all the help was available for the asking, I had no need or use for it. Reading this Retail Dive story makes me wonder if stores like Home Depot were more anchored in the community back then and started to become faceless and soul-less over time leading to such disappointing and subpar customer experience. Maybe shrink follows from there.

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