Walmart annoyance-maybe stockers can answer some ??

No clue. Our Target stocks on Sat mornings. Even as late as 10:30 am. Which means often when I'm there. It's so annoying, why don't they stock at night?

They* do stock at night. They have to restock big sellers and product that arrives during the day during daytime hours. 

OP: They could be reaching product from both sides of the cart. It could be more efficient to leave the cart in the middle of the aisle. Maybe they're just doing it to piss you off. 

*Walmart, Target, and Kroger all stock at night. 

What I want to know is why do they bring out skid after skid of merchandise, blocking an entire row of a store so if you want to go to the next section over, you have to walk all the way down to the end of the store and back up the other side. I always felt like this is a fire hazard not just an inconvenience.

I do know with Walmart that a number of times a day, they are required to go through all shelves and pull merchandise forward that has been purchased to make the shelves look better. So, while they may have stocked overnight, they need to tidy up and might have to bring more of something out from the stockroom.

I must shop at Target at the right times of day or week because I never encounter this problem. Sometimes I see a cart with tagging stuff in the baby seat to mark stuff down, but it’s just a regular cart and not one of the big ones you guys are mentioning. It’s one of the perks of working from home and having a flexible schedule.

Me either.  Now that I can shop whenever I want, I still haven't noticed this issue.  The only stock people I see during the day at Target are the Pepsi/Coke people.

Perhaps I don't notice them because half of the people in the store are kids who look to be 12 and younger.  That always blows me away how many school aged kids there are out and about every single day.  I know people home school, but it still seems like a lot of kids.

I worked as a cashier at Target and a few other stores. Most of them had a policy where you went off register about 30 minutes before the end of your shift and you had to take a cart of returns or discards and put them back. Sometimes, it was just a few things. Other times, it was a full cart. Two places had stuff sorted by department so you weren't all over the place. This is common.

The stock my Target on Sunday mornings. Someone up thread said they stock whatever they get that day during the day. Well, unless they are getting deliveries at 7am on Sunday morning, that's just not true. I usually go right when they open on Sunday to avoid the crowds. ALWAYS the aisles are blocked with stockers. It's super aggravating.

I had the same experience as artgirl1 when I worked in big box retail stores. I ran a service department and was only allotted staff for a set number of hours. I had a laundry list of things that needed to happen in my department daily after I left. It would really steam me to come in the next day and see that only about half of my list was completed by the night crew. When I asked them about it, they told me that after I left for the day the ex-Kmart assistant manager that worked nights would come and tell them they needed to leave what they were doing (their actual JOB) and help stock shelves or restock returns, etc.  So I would come in to a messy train wreck of a department the next day, and if a secret shopper happened to come by when my employee was out stocking shelves or if we had a visit from the district manager, *I* would be the one to get dinged and lose my bonus because my department wasn’t up to par. Good times, good times...NOT. Corporate retail SUCKS.

 
Nope stuff was in boxes returns are usually in smaller normal carts not 2-3 of the large ones in each isle. They also were not working on putting stuff on the shelves like I have seen at Walmart with the same type of carts. This store has just declined horribly. I will probably give them another try if I have to go anywhere near it but after having to come home and order stuff online because they had such a mess and the employees couldn't even find what I was looking for. There is another Super Target a bit further that is really nice but I don't know why this one is just so poorly managed. Years ago I worked at Target for many years and know how things used to be done things have just changed so much and not for the better.

I will sign on this post. BTDT

I will add: 

-Shoppers want the lowest possible price. Stockholders want profit. The way to achieve both? Cut payroll. Not enough people/time to train people to do or do what needs to be done the right way.

-When you cut payroll, you are not hiring full time, just part timers. And not only just part timers, but those willing to accept irregular hours (you never know from week to week if you're getting 4 hours of work or 34 hours of work).  Or when those hours will be because you have to have completley open availability and the schedule only goes up 5 days in advance. Generally speaking, full timers do better work, are more efficient, and have more commitment than people who don't get a commitment from the company themselves. Hard to keep staff. Always hiring new people, having to train them, and then they get sick of the lack of regular hours and quit.

-Everyone gets tired of hearing about the profits the company is making while being told hours are being cut or staff is being cut, so "work harder, faster. If it can't get done, that means YOU are at fault". Oh and make sure you smile at every customer because customers complain if you don't and you get written up, (all while customers are swearing at you and calling you names). Turns off a lot of employees, so they quit. So, again, hard to keep staff, start the merry go round of hiring and training again.

-No one wants to work overnight/early morning hours. One store in our shopping plaza that I know well has a 3am truck delivery. The goal is to have it unloaded completley by the time the store opens. Never happens. Why? They are supposed to have a crew of 10 people unloading the truck. In the last year, the highest number of people they have had was.....3. They simply cannot find people to hire for that shift, even when they increased pay $2.50 an hour. When you are missing 70% of your needed workforce (and keep in mind that 10 people is the minimum corporate forces them to use, not what they really need, which is more like 12), merch is going to back up and end up on the floor in carts/skid. 

-When merch ends up on the floor because there is not stock room staff to unload it, that means managers and front end staff have to do it. Which means it gets down to when they can squeeze it in, when they are not checking people out, running go back carts, cleaning the bathrooms because someone decided it was okay for their son to pee into the floor drain or leave a used tampon on the floor, cleaning the floor because a customer got mad that we didn't have a pair of shoes she wanted so she decided to open lotion bottles and pour them all over the floor, following around known ORC people... And when you get called to the front to ring up customers, you better stop what you are doing immediately and run because heaven forbid a customer wait more than a minute -- cue a complaint to corporate and a write up.


So. Yeah, the floor can get littered with carts of merch. 

Doesn't make for a good shopping experience, but the reason shopping has gone downhill is because corporations keep cutting payroll to increase profit and decrease prices. 

Thanks Mallie for adding to my post. Ironically, when I posted this morning, I had just gotten home, from doing a truck. My truck arrives at 2 am; 4 people (out of 10 didn't show), and and the truck was double what was scheduled.

You are kinder than I am when pointing out that everyone wants the cheapest price, the best service, and the least inconvenience when shopping. And MOST retail employees truly try to provide the same. But as customers, everyone should realize that retail staff are human, and can only accomplish so much in the limited amount of time they are given. We are employees, not managers, or corporate representatives and have to follow corporate procedure. But customers could actually contribute to a positive shopping experience by acting responsibly also.

Don't place items which you have decided against purchasing on a random shelf. Hand it to the cashier and say you changed your mind. There is an efficient system in place to return those item to their location.

Please do not leave your coffee cups, food bags, etc on shelves. They potentially damage the merchandise, and unless someone sees them, can start smelling up the area. Then someone has to clean it.

Treat the bathrooms as you treat your own bathrooms.

Keep your children in control. Don't hand them a shopping bag, let them shop the shelves, and then just throw the merchandise on the floor, while you take your crying child out. Or another favorite, open a box of legos and let the child play in the aisle, then leave it all on the floor.

Please don't open packaging to examine the contents, then throw it all on the shelf. Then we have to damage it, or go through it and compare it to another to make sure all the pieces are there. If you must examine a package, please ask staff to help. We usually can open the package without damage to packaging or product.

To me, most of these are common sense, but unfortunately, some customers lack that. I have always felt that high school should require that everyone work retail for 6 months so they are aware of what retailers and their employees actually experience. And then maybe we would all appreciate the value involved in the shopping experience.

I've also worked at a few retailers, including one for many years as management. I can say this for sure: It's not the same as when I started. What took five associates to barely keep up with fifteen years ago is now assigned to one or two associates, and they're supposed to manage it all. I haven't worked in a store in the last ten years that had enough people to complete basic tasks, let alone things like doing all the returns before the end of the night. That's why the stores tend to look so bad. 

ETA: Because cutting payroll and making big bonuses for the grand high poobahs is more important than the actual shopping experience. When I started in retail, I was full-time with benefits and forty hours a week. I had a set schedule, too. The result was that I felt valued, and I worked hard to benefit the company, store, employees, and customers.  

Thank you and all the other retail workers who do their best to make shopping at best a minimal hassle. I do not get annoyed by stockers attempting to stock shelves even at the busiest of times. The alternative is that I cannot get the items I need. I have also heard complaints from Peas who get peeved that their stores are never stocked. And yes, many stores do stock at night. I have shopped after 11 pm and it looks like a warehouse exploded all over the store. The stockers try to be efficient and helpful. It might be a minor irritation but not worth complaining about.