Target appears to be piloting a major change to its stores. The retail giant is reportedly scaling back on self-check hours, and it's having unintended consequences. Customers at Target stores have recently been flagging long cashier checkout lines on social media, which appears to be the result of understaffing and closed self-checkout lanes.
In a new Reddit post, a Target employee claimed that the store they work at has cut its self-checkout (SCO) hours by half.
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“We’re open 8-10 normally but I just got told that our SCO will now only be operating 10-6:30,” wrote the Reddit user.
Another user replying to the post claims that in the Target store they work at, not only have self-checkout hours shrunk, but so have the number of cashiers.
“Ours are open 11-7 now. We're supposed to have two cashiers until 11. We have one,” wrote the user.
Another Target employee in the thread claims that they were told that the reduced checkout hours was due to the company attempting to prevent retail theft.
“Was told, it’s every store and it’s to prevent people/ employees from stealing and if we were to use them then we can get fired if we used them after 8pm est,” wrote the user.
A spokesperson for Target did not confirm or deny that the company was permanently reducing self-checkout hours at its stores, but clarified to TheStreet in an emailed statement that “select stores” are undergoing “a number of tests.”
“In select stores we are piloting a number of tests to determine their impact on the overall guest experience,” wrote the spokesperson. “These tests vary by location.”
The news of Target's reduced self-checkout hours comes at a time when the company is being blasted online by customers for having long cashier checkout lines. In a viral tweet that was posted on social media platform X on Feb. 13, which gained over 26.9 million views, a user shared a photo of a long line stretched across a Target store in Virginia revealing that only one cashier was working at the time.
Some users in the comments of the tweet also revealed that they, too, have spotted long lines at their local Target stores, and cited closed self-checkout lanes as one of the culprits.
The target by me closed all self checkout and let one person check ppl out. After the line got massive they realized it was dumb and let ppl use self checkout.
— Lily Doxy 🇭🇹 (@lilydoxy) February 14, 2024
Target employees are also being encouraged to evenly split the amount of guests using self checkout and regular cashier checkout lanes due to a new policy, according to a report from Fast Company.
Target has recently been battling retail theft in its stores, which could be the reason why it has reportedly has cut back on self-checkout hours. In a November CNBC interview, Target CEO Brian Cornell told CNBC that retail theft was the reason behind the company announcing in September that it was closing nine stores across four different states.
“They were stores where we made big investments in additional asset protection. Working with third-party security, we have used other devices to try to control theft,” he said. “But we closed those stores because we deemed it wasn’t safe for our teams to continue to operate in those environments. And it’s really hard to make a decision to close a store.”
He also revealed in the interview that the company has been working with lawmakers and exploring the use of different technology to help tackle retail theft.
Retail theft has dramatically increased since 2020. According to recent data from the Council of Criminal Justice, shoplifting incidents across the country were 16% higher during the first half of 2023 than the first half of 2019. Also, according to the National Retail Federation, shoplifting in 2022 resulted in industry losses of $112.1 billion.
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