
Where even Walmart won't go: how Dollar General took over rural America - moritzplassnig
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/13/dollar-general-walmart-buhler-haven-kansas
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pkaye
Do dollar stores has aggressive pricing? I've found they are a bad deal for
many common day goods. Usually the $/qty is pretty bad. One example that
sticks to my mind is aluminum foil. Those rolls are pretty small for the
price.

The main thing I find them good for is things like cleaning supplies, brooms,
greeting cards, gift wraps which tend to be marked up elsewhere.

~~~
readflaggedcomm
Dollar General and Family Dollar are general stores, like used to be common in
days of old. They are not "dollar stores," which refers specifically to stores
where all or almost all merchandise costs about one dollar. This is a point of
confusion on every article about Family Dollar and Dollar General, because
most people commenting apparently never go there.

The bargains vary. Some of the standards at both mentioned general stores and
Dollar Tree (a widely-known dollar store chain) meet Walmart's prices, e.g.
for ammonia, which beats any other grocery store by nearly a third.

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js2
> _For all that, while Alfers feels sympathy for Nech, he said the Dollar
> General is the future. “The Model-T put horses out of business. It’s hard to
> protect existing businesses,” he said. “I would still vote for Dollar
> General. If one state didn’t accept the Model-T it wouldn’t have changed the
> outcome. I think Buhler voted their sentiment. The question is, in five
> years will they have a Dollar General or something similar?”_

How sad. One of these is a technology change. The other is local policy. We
make choices about the communities we want to live in. This one was under his
control, and his justification for a choice I think he regrets sounds like
cognitive dissonance to me.

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extralego
These places are just awful. I went in one last summer and the girls working
there were drenched in sweat. The management refused to set the thermostat
below 80 degrees! And the cashiers had to stock shelves when there are no
customers _at the cash register_ so of course they were sweating. Usually when
you go in one, the only employees will be somewhere deep in the store and you
have to wait a long time until they check the register for a line.

The idea is to have no stock room so they don’t have to hire stocking staff,
and make the cashiers do it when they aren’t actively checking people out. The
trucks unload everything right in the store so aisles are always blocked with
giant piles of boxes. It’s gotta be a nightmare for someone in a wheelchair.

But the worst part is of course the way they treat employees.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Meh. Those conditions are par for the course in jobs like that. IMO it beats
working fast food any day of the week.

Working at a franchised establishment (like Dollar General or Walmart or
Wendy's) is usually pretty middle of the road because they use their scale
figure out how to optimize for every last but of productivity and that usually
means working employees as hard as they can reasonably work. However, at the
same time the franchise usually decrees something like "thou shalt not drag
the brand name through the mud by running your location like a sweatshop."
Small businesses have much more deviation in quality. If you think getting
minimum wage for doing retail work in an 80deg store is a particularly bad
deal then you're probably living in a little bit of a bubble.

~~~
sonofblah
>If you think getting minimum wage for doing retail work in an 80deg store is
a particularly bad deal then you're probably living in a little bit of a
bubble.

Is this a joke?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
No. It's not a joke. There's tons of jobs out there that pay the same and
involve more labor and/or a work environment with a less pleasant temperature.
Pretty much any outdoor manual labor job and many food service jobs will meet
those criteria.

~~~
extralego
This was not an act of nature. It was the manager cutting the costs. 80
degrees is _not_ a normal accepted indoor temperature. This is unusual
punishment given the context and norms.

Expecting something different from a job outdoors or in a kitchen would, I
agree, be a little ridiculous. The wage should of course be adjusted
accordingly, but this is just disrespectful.

Middle of the road? Try $8.00/hr.

[https://www.job-applications.com/dollar-general-cashier/](https://www.job-
applications.com/dollar-general-cashier/)

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rebuilder
I wonder if this is somehow a very USA-specific issue, and I wonder why that
would be. I recently moved to the countryside in Finland, to a place that
isn't even a town, just a road with houses and farms. There are a couple of
rather crummy grocery stores within a few minutes driving distance, but mostly
people shop at the stores in the nearest city, maybe half an hour away.

Where I live is kind of an extreme. There are a lot of places that do qualify
as towns, and urbanization is definitely taking its toll on them. Local stores
close down, and people have to shop further away. Still, this idea of a store
that doesn't sell fresh produce seems completely alien - I haven't seen that
pop up anywhere. Why does that work in the USA?

~~~
swebs
>Still, this idea of a store that doesn't sell fresh produce seems completely
alien - I haven't seen that pop up anywhere

Yes you have. The Finnish equivalent is called Tokmanni. It's pretty much the
exact same low quality crap. The only difference is that Tokmanni sells some
stuff over €10.

~~~
rebuilder
I hadn't thought about Tokmanni as a grocery store replacement, more a general
goods store. Now that you mention it, they do have a crappy food section that
consists of edibles in cardboard boxes. I always pass by that part since I
don't go there for food, but maybe that explains my blind spot.

~~~
bigtunacan
That is exactly like a Dollar General. Small food section in cans and boxes.

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js2
Previous discussion 10 months ago, 227 points, 317 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15500510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15500510)

Popular topic recently:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dollar%20general&sort=byPopula...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dollar%20general&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

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scarface74
Why do they frame it as only “poor middle America”. I use to live in
apartments that were going for $1700/month for a three bedroom (now $2100 a
month less than 3 years later) and there is a Dollar Store in the same complex
as a Publix across the street. The city had a median household income of
$100,000.

Suburbia welcomes dollar stores just as much as rural America.

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moltar
Just drove thru upstate NY for 3 hours. Can confirm. Dollar General in every
small town.

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mizchief2
This is why you need to get the government out of business. They shouldn't be
choosing what stores are built where nor should they be giving certain
businesses tax breaks over others.

~~~
monkeynotes
Get government out of business?? I think it should be the other way round. Get
business out of government.

Government has a place in prescribing how business is conducted. Without local
government zoning for businesses your cities would be pretty shitty places to
live. Light or heavy touch is the contentious point.

The bigger problem is that businesses by and large control America. Sort that
problem out, complaining about government pushing business around is
laughable.

~~~
scarface74
Living in GA, big business serves as somewhat of a beachhead against it from
becoming another Mississippi.

