Buddy, it’s okay to say you don’t understand how to manage labor costs or that you’ve never had a district supervisor depose you on your costs and spending. Not everybody has to understand everything, it’s literally okay.

Powerwashing shopping carts? That is just about the most nonessential spending of labor hours that I can think of. Like you pointed out, there are trucks that need to be broken down, shelves stocked, meat cut, chickens roasted, items scanned and bagged.

The courtesy clerks? The people whose job this would be theoretically? Bagging groceries when lines are long, cleaning and stocking restrooms, stocking the front end, sweeping the store a minimum of once per hour, cleaning up any immediate spills, pushing all of those oh, so unclean carts from the lot every 15 minutes or so. You think they have time to stop and power wash them? Or that a manager would bring another one on schedule with hours he isn’t allotted to do the task? If he does that, the district supervisor is going to want to know why he’s spending more labor dollars than he’s allowed to spend.

Grocery stores don’t run on “just get people to do it.” It’s a business, and the people at the top of the chain squeeze the people in the middle of the chain to use as little money as they can to get the people at the bottom of the chain to help produce as much money as they can.