JOIN THE BOOMING
DOLLAR-STORE ECONOMY!
chain, there are people responsible for bringing bank deposits,”
Frisch said. “The people at the
end of the day get screwed. They
clock out and leave, and then have
to do the deposit.”
John Nicoletti is familiar with
the dollar-store labor model.
In early 2012, Nicoletti took a
manager’s job at a Dollar General
store in Martin, Tenn., he said.
HUFFINGTON
10.06.13
working 60 or 70 hours per week,
often putting in 12-hour days or
longer, doing nearly everything
on his own because his staff was
short-handed. Nicoletti said he
believes many managers take the
job believing they’ve attained a
supervisory role with some cachet, only to be disappointed.
“Psychologically, they get you
to believe that you are actually a
... the influx of more affluent shoppers
at these stores has helped create a
“dollar-store economy” in the wake of
the Great Recession.
He’d put together a long career in
retail, managing gas stations for
years before starting the new job.
He’d heard stories of brutal hours
at dollar stores, but a supervisor told him when he started that
he’d be working about 45 hours
per week. Nicoletti couldn’t work
much more than that because
of neuropathy, a painful form of
nerve damage caused by his diabetes that limited how long he
could be on his feet each day.
Nicoletti said he was quickly
manager... But we’re stock people,” Nicoletti said. “They want
you to continuously work. There’s
no stop. It’s just a continuous productivity thing with them. They
really worked people into the
ground until they got everything
they could get out of you.”
Nicoletti said he soon found
himself pleading with a regional
manager for more hours to give
employees. He said his own workers were shifted to other, similarly
understaffed stores nearby. As the
stress of the job mounted, Nicoletti’s doctor informed him he’d
developed hypertension.