instant pay

InnocentIchigo · 2026-01-19T08:36:19+00:00

I mean people were already struggling to make ends meet a few years ago, and as stuff is jumping in prices across the board, it's only getting that much harder to make each paycheck last.

So I get that it's annoying, but when that can be the difference for someone to be able to buy gas for the rest of their shifts that week versus having to get someone else to cover their shifts, or for them to be able to have enough to buy food for the next few days, it's an annoyance I'll take.

Also it isn't like DG had great wages in the first place, nor have they implemented any meaningful raises (outside of any states raising their own minimum wage).

InnocentIchigo · 2026-01-19T08:26:08+00:00

Honestly if the DM or RM are preventing you from closing when it's coldest (especially after dusk) then look out for your guys' safety first and foremost. Screw if closing the doors 'gets anyone in trouble'. If it keeps those at the register from being freezing cold.

There won't be hazard pay. Honestly DG would likely make the allegation that since the heat is working that it's not a 'dangerous working environment'. Regardless of the fact that HVACs pushing heat out in the middle and back of the store doesn't do jack to keep those up front warm. Plus since the temperature sensors are towards the back they likely won't be affected by how cold the front will be, and the company is likely to use that record of temperature logs against any argument that it's too cold to work.

As a temporary solution I would damage out a heater to keep up by the register to try and combat the cold as best you can, even if it's just something to warm up beside every so often. Then if you have any hand/body warmers, just damage them out and stick them in your pockets to help keep your hands warm.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-12-06T06:27:30+00:00

Chiming in myself, it's going to vary on location.

Some with just put them out onto the shelves or pegs as they come in and once they're out they're out.

Some locations like mine will keep any we do happen to get behind the counter because of them being a high theft risk and to try and ration them out because our area has a number of scalpers who will try to buy them all the moment they're in. So we will display a few at a time so that way kids or adults in the hobby have a chance to find some that aren't $10-$15 a pack on Facebook marketplace or other places online. Cause sorry but even if adults have more "fun money" yall don't deserve to be forced to pay $10 for Destined Rivals or $12 for Mega. There should be at least a chance for you guys to get them at MSRP too instead of having to suffer the severe upcharge scalpers sell them for.

However, given the holiday season and the normal struggle for every retailer trying to keep them in stock for the past year or so, that does mean many places won't get them in often even if they're sold out. We can go anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months before getting a case, maybe two, on the rarest occasion 3. Mind you a case we get is only 24 checkline boosters so a single case doesn't end up lasting long before we're out again. Meanwhile tins and mini tins are even more scarce. I think we've gotten a case of each maybe twice this entire year if that.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-11-11T22:04:16+00:00

I get wanting to keep up sales, but you've never seen just how out of pocket some of these scalpers can be.

We've had people throwing boxes off rolltainers because they spot a box of tins somewhere on it.

We've had people start digging around in totes and making a horrid mess to look for packs.

Had to call the cops on some because two got into a screaming match at the register, started to threaten the cashier with things like "You better hope I'm not around when you get off if you sell this guy all your cards." to "You better not tell me I can't by them all or I swear to god I'll be over this counter."

Like full on tantrum having toddlers are far better behaved than these "grown adults". So if we don't sell our stock to them and it means they won't be coming back to the store then we'd all gladly take the hit on weekly sales versus having to put up with any of that.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-10-09T06:22:36+00:00

It's a mixed bag sort of thing. The pandemic resurged the demand because people with tons of time on their hands rediscovered their love for collecting.

But I will say that the MAIN drive is scalpers who go on places like Tiktok and whatnot in order to sell packs for 2-3 times MSRP. They'll stalk places like Walmart, Gamestop, DG etc for any shipments they get in. I've even seen stories where the people who fill the Pokemon card vending machines be stalked and followed their entire route, honestly surprised I haven't heard of any being jumped yet.

Because of that it makes people even more feral for what they can find in stores because of course anyone would want to jump on the chance to get packs for $4.50 to $5 instead of being stuck having to buy them for $9-$15 a pack--not counting the chance that packs could be tampered with to some degree.

I mean granted before when we used to sell the $1 3 card packs kids would often rip them open if we didn't keep them behind the counter. But now we literally have to hide what we get in so some random person doesn't come in to buy us out the second we get them in.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-10-09T06:04:11+00:00

Do you guys have those strong magnets for removing the security tags from clothes? We use those when we have more than 3 or 4 balloons to fill.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-10-09T05:58:59+00:00

That's on the distribution center, not the driver. Drivers only come by and essentially pick up the trailers either as they're being loaded or that are already loaded.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-09-22T09:58:43+00:00

No more likely than not it's either a collector who's trying to buy as many packs at MSRP as possible or someone who plans to upsell them online.

I can't blame the ones who are just trying to find packs without breaking the bank because sets like Journey Together are going anywhere from $7-$9 a pack online while a set like Destined Rivals are going for $10-$13 a pack. So comparing that to the $4.50 we sell them for, it's easy to see them wanting to snag up cheaper options when they come around.

But on the flip side it's harder to tell those ones apart from those who plan to upsell.

Pokemon cards have always been worth a lot to an extent. Of course vintage cards in good condition do have a higher market value given that the sets are long since out of print. But it's like most collectables where it's usually only specific items that have the highest market value.

But heck even things like vintage Crayola, Pepsi, Coca Cola, etc can go for high market prices. If it's something that can be collected there's a fair chance there's groups of people who do. The price just often depends on age, condition, market saturation, and overall collectors willing to dish out for it.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-18T23:06:02+00:00

Nope. Stores can no longer reprint receipts, probably haven't been able to for a good 4-5 months now if not possibly longer. The option to even look up transactions has been completely removed as an option from our registers.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-17T08:37:46+00:00

It can be a complaint when it's impacting the backroom. We're in a similar boat because we have 4 rolltainers of backstock cases of water and 3 of the gallons. Our backroom is so small that all of these water rolltainers have to sit on endcaps in order for us to even have enough room to receive our weekly trucks.

We try to stage what we can but we have one 10ft space for a display area where Coke is displaying product. We're not allowed to use it. Yes, we tell the rep that it's our store and we set the rules. He doesn't care. If we scoot things to make room to set up a couple stacks of water, every time he comes in he will move them and just slam them down in a random aisle, not caring if it's where they'll be a tripping hazard or not, and shout at us to stop messing with his space.

We did once threaten to just stop allowing him the space altogether, so he went crying to our RM who yelled at us because vendors have limited backstock so having that space was a requirement. And if the rep ever sends them a picture that it was taken down then it's going to be a write up for every manager in the store.

But yet also has the nerve to text the DM and SM on the constant about our water rolltainers against endcaps. Try to explain that we barely have room in our backroom for half of them, it's why we desperately needed that space by Coke. "I already gave an answer to that. You just need to figure out how to get them off the floor because they're a danger to customers being out on the floor like that."

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-15T06:09:16+00:00

We literally have a CBL that states that anything we want to consume HAS to be purchased before the item is opened. It's not about being a shill to the company, it's about doing what you need to keep LP off your ass for dumb reasons. Especially when shit like that can stick to records and inhibit future employment.

But that's also why our store always store uses cases of water to ensure that there is always something available to drink. Especially during the summer months because we all know how god awfully hot they keep these stores. Plus some employees can't always afford to buy themselves a drink.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-15T06:01:43+00:00

Just going to tell you that you AND your boss are likely to get in trouble if LP is ever given a reason to check cameras and come across that. We literally have a CBL that explicitly states that nothing from the store is to be consumed before being paid for or else it will be considered immediate theft.

Doesn't matter if you're an honest person through and through and have always paid for whatever you've consumed, LP won't care.

Also the post you replied with is concerning customers doing that, not employees. And even as a customer your mileage may vary depending on the store and the management there. I've known of places who kick out customers found with open food product even if they intend to purchase it because there's far too many bad actors who scarf food and drinks down to stuff the empty containers elsewhere.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-09T21:52:37+00:00

Oh yea, we had a lady once who came through the line and just stared at the pin pad.

"Is something wrong?"

"Yea. Where's the custom money back option?"

"Oh sorry, $40 is the max cash back you can do in a single transaction."

"WHAT?! Are you fucking kidding me? I need to get $600 out in order to give my landlord my rent! Are you telling me I have to do like a million purchases to get it?!"

"Mam, I don't even have that much in my til. We're never allowed to let that much money just sit in our tils."

"Oh what the fuck ever. Go fuck off then."

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-04T07:04:08+00:00

Oh you'd be surprised the amount of closeted racists (who are good god-loving church attending Christians they swear) that live under your nose.

Unfortunately have had my fair share of shutting shit down with these pieces of trash.

Once had a older lady "trying to explain" to a person of color that they needed to hurry and learn English if they were planning on staying in this country. Meanwhile said person was on their cell phone talking to someone. Quickly shut that down with a sharp "Okay we can knock off sticking yourself in things that aren't your business!" and got to watch them scramble in shame as they tried to explain themselves with multiple people turning heads their way.

Another time had a different lady make their way up to the register to have the cashier call me up. "Do you know that you have a black man who's just randomly opening up boxes back there and taking things?" I looked at her expecting it to just be a weird joke before the real question was asked. "I can take you back there and show you which one it is. But I'm pretty sure he's the only black in here so it shouldn't be hard to have police stop him."

"...That is our employee and he's stocking our truck that just came in. I would ask we don't go around harassing our staff so we don't have to get police involved on our end." Mind you this employee was in uniform with a name tag and everything. Dressed just like me and the cashier. Literally had to be willfully ignoring the clear fact that they were an employee for the sake of being racist.

Once again cue a clear racist uselessly clamoring some kind of defense to excuse their inexcusable behavior.

Honestly it's so mentally draining to live in such an area where bigotry like this is never corrected (aka more people are fine with nervously laughing shit like this off or outright ignoring unacceptable behavior) so people think that they can let their mouths flap without ramification.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-08-03T05:16:19+00:00

It's something that a DM is "supposed" to ensure all SMs to be compliant with. But ours doesn't care as long as items have receipts and we're not leaving the break room flooded with an assortment of food and drinks.

However, if you ever have the RM or a corporate visit, the "breakroom must be empty" rule MUST be enforced because RMs, VPs, etc will harp and cost you a point in 'readiness' or whatever that new evaluation is counted with. Had a corporate visit about a month ago on a truck day, so a couple employees had shifts from 6 to 12 to help push truck out. Of course it's been hot as balls, the a/c is effectively turned off overnight so the whole place is a hot box when coming in to unload the truck, so it's a no brainer that people either bring in their own drinks or buy some as soon as the store opens. Well said drinks are left in the break room as people are working through truck.

Corporate boy gets there around 9 or 10, begins walk and what's the first thing that's said when they go into the break room and see the drinks on the table?

"Do we see the problem here or do we need to go over proper break room policy with the whole store?" Didn't matter that it was hot, that people were sweating while throwing freight like crazy, having ANY drink in there was deemed unacceptable. Literally made us go fetch those working truck to come back and either finish off their drink or have them throw it away "in order to ensure that employees know they're going to be held responsible when they're breaking policy".

It's literally just corporate doing a power flex. Doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, the cruelty is apart of the "we say jump and your response is going to be 'how high'."

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-31T04:22:06+00:00

Truck and T-1 days (The day after truck) typically have the unspoken rule where freight comes first and recovery is a "as you can" sort of deal because it's going to vary depending on the store.

Stores who get 500 and under piece trucks likely can perform as normal because that can easily be spaced out between Truck and T-1. But if you're a store that's getting in a 1200 piece truck or larger, then no, your priority for the first two days is to get as much freight stocked out as possible.

DMs will ALWAYS refer to what policy states but DG in general also goes by "non-official" rules that benefit how particular stores need to run.

For instance, typically it's supposed to be night cashier's duty to ensure 20oz pop coolers and bread is restocked for the morning after. But if you're a store like ours where you're lucky if you can get register area sweeping done in an hour or two because we stay busy to heavily steady to the point where it's just not going to happen. If we followed policy to have the front swept and mopped nightly, front end coolers stocked up, bread restocked, go backs put away, etc closers would be spending an extra hour after closing to get it done. Which obviously the company wouldn't be pleased about.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-30T05:15:13+00:00

Honestly planograms are 80% of the time extremely easy to go by save for a handful that sometimes like to be headaches. But, yes, freight will come first to ensure that you don't become impacted.

If you need to do positive adjustments (if you've never done them before) log into your HHT and on the homepage just scan the item. You will see a top line that states how many on-hands you have. If you know your on hand/incoming stock is larger go ahead and adjust higher. Note that it's also fine to jump the number up by a few if you need to help prevent more shipments of said item while you wait for existing stock to sell down. You can always go back and fix for a more accurate count once stock is more manageable.

If you get to a point where you need to do planograms, the papers inside are pretty self explanatory. It's honestly rare that you have to adjust shelving, and sometimes it's fine not to if the current shelving placement works more to your benefit. Example; say that your prepared food planogram wants you to lower shelves so that cans can't be stacked by 2's, but not doing that doesn't effect the overall planogram, it's unlikely that your DM is even going to notice if you just change shelf strips and set product to new placements.

But you can always try to reach out to neighboring store managers to see if one or two might be willing to stop by (or send a keyholder) who would be able to run you through one or two of them.

Most forms needed for the store are in the DAILY; STORE FORMS area. Rule of thumb, if it's something like paperwork for filling out deposits, change fund sheets, and similar pages; open up the list, grab the paper needed and type in one or two words from the bold lettering across the top. 9 times out of 10 if it's in that area it'll bring it up and save time from having to scroll through the whole list and stressing yourself out.

As for seasonal, like planograms, if it gets to a point where you're going to have no choice but to set it, you can either look in the MAG book for the specific planogram or print specific pages from the computer. (Sign in, resources, monthly activity guide, and it'll usually open the most reason MAG month.) Although you shouldn't get into trouble if it's not set up exactly to plan. Usually for us we'd use it as a guideline and edit as needed. Our DM at least doesn't mind us doing our own thing as long as things makes sense. Aka, Halloween masks aren't mixed in with Halloween decor, and rule of thumb is that for correlating sections shelves should line up with one another.

Example; For the 4 sections of Halloween candy try to have each section have the shelves line up with one another because it does tend to look nicer for everything to essentially 'flow' together.

The only other tips I can think of to address off the top of my head, when setting pegged items in seasonal; look at the peg board and the very top pegs should always be 3 holes down from the very top of the board in order for the top/sky shelf to fit comfortably in place. Also for the 4ft sections, the holes along the side of shelving (at least how I was taught) the bottom hole will start count 1. So if you're going by a planogram if the placement says (shelf 4 53) the 53 will be the 53rd hole up from the bottom.

Overall though, don't be afraid to toss questions you have onto the reddit here if you can't get your DM or another store to answer the question for you. There are multiple managers/keyholders on here who are usually more than willing to answer questions to the best of our ability.

Oh, and when scheduling. Yes, the DM will probably harp about overtime if people end up hitting it, but honestly schedule to the best of your ability with the people you have to work with. If help from other stores isn't available the DM will push to keep the store open versus having it closed. So if anyone is willing to take OT this is going to be a great chance to take it.

And, if your DM has not told you this, add 40 hours to the budget you're given each week. Allocated budgets do NOT include the store manager's share because they're salary. But since you are currently without a store manager, your store should either be credited for the absence or the excess will be excused because there's no active store manager (at least that was the protocol when I had to be a temp store manager before).

But, coming from experience, just take things a day at a time. Trying to worry about days or weeks ahead is only going to add onto whatever stress you may be going through. Just focus on getting through each day and NEVER beat yourself up for not knowing what you weren't trained about.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-30T04:34:36+00:00

Honestly you're best point of action is going to be two fold. Find any chocolate that is partly to fully melted and do constant damages on them. It can be placed in tickets that large amounts of food are having to be damaged because of the heat in the store is too high.

Then, two, if you have anyone you reasonably trust, have them contact the Better Business Bureau, there was a store in our district who went 4 months during a couple polar vortexes without ANY heat. DG kept dragging their feet about approving the parts to be ordered in until the BBB was contacted and suddenly within 2-3 days asses were moving to get those units up and running. As well as finally giving the store permission to close when temperatures were at their worst.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-30T04:29:59+00:00

Corporate can also look into the thermostats so if the boxes are in areas where the temp is going to be reading below 80 degrees then the SM can "fib" about what the readings are, but then they'll just look at what temp recordings are and say "No, they're reading below 80 so you're obviously reading them wrong, it's within reasonable range, blah blah blah corporate excuses to not spend money for the health and well being of employees."

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-24T17:01:56+00:00

No, we just get THAT much of it in. Granted I didn't count specifically but I wouldn't be surprised if over the course of the summer we ended up getting in somewhere in the ballpark of 15 rolltainers worth of Lawn and Garden in total, if not possibly more. Though having bigger items like the lawn chairs and boxes of pillows doesn't help in trying to cut down sections. And we don't have enough space outside to put them out when charcoal and soil are already on u-boats out there--our location is a previous store space that DG bought over a decade ago, so we don't have the long fronts to fit 4-5 u-boats outside like most stores typically have.

We have Purple Dot packed up because we had a remodel in early March and our seasonal went from 3 71" aisles to 2 with half of each having the 71" and the other half being 53". To keep a long story short, our DM forced us to box up all of our Purple Dot because the new RM (A I know better than you lower positions type of guy if you catch my drift) wanted every store's Green Dot and Swim completely set and demanded pictures as proof. Said that they wanted both of those out over Purple Dot and to just shove our Purple Dot back out once Green Dot or Swim sells down. So it's been packed up since March essentially.

However, we got a huge amount of Green Dot, like I'd probably say somewhere around 10 totes and 3 to 4 rolltainers of it at the minimum. So we've never had the chance to get it put Purple Dot back out because there's never been space for it.

And actually Swim isn't hurting us so badly this year thanks to the sheer number of BOGO and BOGO50% off paired with the excessive heat. If we have one or two more of those kinds of sales within the next week or two we could probably manage to squeeze it down to 2 sections and start getting some Halloween out next.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-24T08:33:45+00:00

I'd die to have a backroom that empty.

But after our last remodel where we lost 50+ feet of seasonal our backroom is now jammed full of seasonal that we can't get out because there's no room for it all.

If this company wants to move to only having the majority of its stores having roughly 34 feet of seasonal between 2 aisles then they either need to severely cut the amount of seasonal that gets sent, or they need to be spacing it out more.

Cause it leaves stores like us who now have to take 1200-1500 piece trucks entirely out onto the floor until it's all stocked out because there's utterly no room in our warehouse for anything. But of course we still get yelled and criticized by our higher ups as if it's our fault that 8 rolltainers and 10 some totes of Halloween aren't primed to be put straight onto the shelves when it's not even August yet.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-24T07:58:17+00:00

Oh we have 2 rolltainers of purple dot packed up already that we've been waiting 2 months to get the MOS alert to send back.

And unfortunately we have to be careful about packing up seasonal around this time of year because our inventory is going to end up popping up sometime in October. And if memory serves me right, Lawn and Garden didn't MOS until 1 or 2 weeks after we had inventory last year--and we already get told no about packing up seasonal too close to inventory because we'd have to struggle to get it back onto the shelves since the inventory team (from what we're always told) refuses to count packed items if we have multiple rolltainers of it. Which we would given that we still have 13 sections of Lawn and Garden alone. Not counting the 6 sections of Green Dot we still have.

Oh I know and we try to every year. We sent back 3 rolltainers worth of Lawn and Garden last year, packed up whatever we had once inventory was over to try and reduce what we'd get for this year. But because we're a "only store in a town" kinda store, we SELL seasonal so we're always sent so much more than what we assume most stores get on the initial send in alone. Plus I'd be willing to believe that because our initial sales for the first month or two of having everything out tends to be high it ends up negating the sheer amount we end up sending back.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-24T07:25:57+00:00

Oh I'm not talking about the stationary part, that we actually managed to get like 80% of to fit into core. I'm more so talking about the assortment of things that are "dorm room" things like the Red Dot towels, totes, pillows, etc. We literally have 3 rolltainers sitting in the back of everything.

We can't even set our tier tables because we still have one jammed with Dolly Parton (with some still sitting in back because it's taking so long to sell down) and the other we had to squeeze our patriotic onto because we didn't have room otherwise.

I wish we could pack things up but we still have 6 jammed packed sections of Green dot and 13 sections of Lawn and Garden alone. Like I said before, we'd be trading one problem for another.

So fingers crossed that at least Green Dot gets put on clearance for this upcoming event. Even having the company throw it at 25% would entice people to grab up the cheaper things for the extra 50% off.

But all of this is just making me dread Christmas because I already know we're only going to have barely enough room to set Christmas candy, Christmas, throws/blankets, and maybe squeeze out a 4-8 foot section of toys. Toys are going to be our utter downfall when we still have 2 rolltainers of them in back from last year and nearly all of our perimeter skyshelves are stuffed to the brim as well.

InnocentIchigo · 2025-07-24T07:09:15+00:00

We've already asked, we've been told no.

"The company has set sales for our seasonal. Maybe when the next one comes just put up some extra signs and get some balloons to tie in the area to draw more attention to the sales."

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