Why Investors Are Turning Against Dollar General 

I literally try to apply to Dollar Tree (also Dollar General) at age 21 and the manager literally told me, "You seem smart. Don't work here. You should go to college." At the time I thought it was absolutely buckwild.

This is not going to be solved by investors. The root cause is a desire for profit over all else. Investors, even more than the company itself, are laser focused on profit. This is a nice PR bump but it does not resolve the contradiction from which the problem stems.

I was Assistant Manager for 6 months at a Dollar General in Spartanburg, SC in 2013, for a whopping $9 per hour. Worst. Company. Ever. They had two employees manning the entire store most of the time and we were to do all the cashier work, stocking, unloading the trucks, and only one employee (me) opened and closed the store. I had to drive the deposit to the bank in my own car at my own expense. Any inventory shrinkage was blamed on the employees. The cameras in the stores are not to catch customer theft, but to keep eyes on the employees. Before I was hired that store had an armed robbery where the thief took the cashier's car keys and cell phone at gunpoint, and the corporate office blamed the employee for losing her car and cell phone and would not compensate her or help her in any way. I heard this first-hand directly from the employee who I then supervised. They can go straight to hell right after f**king themselves.

Why do we give a shit about the platitudes of one of the shareholders? This is nothing but an add saying "We're gonna fix it! Come shop at our shit show of a company." & "We're the responsible capitalists see? We really care about people." A brief search shows 92% of Dollar General employees make less than $15 an hour although she didn't say a damn thing about that.

Personally, I'd like to see Dollar General go under. They are a depressing blight on our rural areas. They sell cheap junk and our rural communities deserve better.

-Pays every employee minimum wage -Staffs entire store with 1, maaaybe 2 employees for entire fricking 8 hour shifts -Store goes to sh!t "We need an independent auditor to figure out what's going on here, what could possibly be the cause, wtf?!?"

Shareholders caring about worker safety? HAHAHAHAHAH! Yeah Right! Not buyin' it for a second.

While this is a good step, it's just gross that they didn't come in to care about worker safety until profits were at stake.

Presenting an investment firm as the hero of the story doesn't sit right with me

So I was transitioning into a new city where I didn't know anyone and had to get a job fast. I was hired by Dollar General. They were opening a brand new store and need temps to stock the new shelves. I liked it fine, and was asked to stay on in the new store. I did. They had brand new central air and built a cage around it to keep it from getting stolen. but nobody thought to buy a lock. ( they stocked them for five bucks. ) the unit was quickly stolen. We had one of the hottest summers on record. They pushed those employees to work in 120+ heat. there were no windows. no secondary ventilation. They were forced to unload and stock continuously to keep the store looking well stocked and new. Anyone not meeting quota got written up. weeks turned into months. no one getting us air. Then it got hotter. High humidity. I know of two girls that passed out due to heat stroke. No one did anything. I got the hell out and begged others to follow. They were so exhausted and over worked and mentally broken they didn't realize they could easily get another job doing the same thing where it was saner and safer. They were all afraid to call and complain to corporate. My biggest failure is that I didn't call for them. I have guilt for that today. But I was also in a strange city trying to pay my rent and navigate a new life. but I shoulda advocated for them. I hope they are doing well and all got out and are working somewhere where they are valued as humans.

Bare minimum pay = bare minimum work. Dollar tree is one of the few places I've seen an entire crew lock the door and quit.

Why is this channel airing shareholder propaganda? They're the ones who created this problem. Where are the interviews with the employees?

I'll say I am proud to live in Dekalb Co. Georgia where they banned any new Dollar General stores from opening.

Corporate shareholders do not make decisions based on altruism. I'm surprised this channel posted a corporate PR video like this instead of something about organizing dollar tree workers. I know the people that run this channel don't believe that shareholders are going to save us, only workers exercising their power will. Or maybe at least they did...

dollar general and others like them , hire minors They don't raise wages up or give out benefits for full or part time workers Too many stores are understaffed and poorly staffed Too much work is placed upon 2-3 employees and no help Customers are extremely rude and short tempered

Translation: "This is cutting into our potential profits, so we're doing something about it". Nothing more. Kind of surprised this channel aired this video.

I have never shopped at a Dollar General. Dollar General managed to open a store in our rural community. The company agreed that their big rigs drivers would not drive through a six mile canyon road where these big rigs often get stuck and require truck tow trucks to get unstuck. Dollar General lied to our community

Dollar General (private equity bought) is not Dollar Tree. The abuses are happening with the private equity-owned Dollar General. You're supposed to be confused by the name similarity, of course. Private equity is a new word for "piracy."

I gotta say, take the whole "Dollar General brings food to rural areas" thing at the beginning with a grain of salt. Dollar General just brings crap foods in after it kills the local grocery store. I'll need to look into this more, but unless these investors are pushing for better food quality too, Dollar General needs a lot more fixing than JUST the workplace conditions (not that it isn't a promising start).

Why does this feel like a corporation trying to preemptively make an apology video so that they can continue to do their crappy business model. This just feels like propaganda for good PR.

I'm surprised there wasn't a consumer/patron suit for public safety. That looks dangerous to even enter to do any shopping.

I'm proud to say that my former coworkers and I started to form a union. Sadly, we never to go on strike, but the District Manager was very pissed at us organizing. After we left (we all found better jobs) the employees after us did actually walk out. Never be afraid to organize. Together, we can actually make the corporate taskmasters listen

Well that was a nice press release. Really puts the investment group in a nice light. But uh, I thought this channel strived to do journalism, not corporate PR.

I thought this channel was supposed to be about putting workers and unions first, not as an afterthought to the interests of capitalists and their investment firms who only seek to improve conditions enough that it doesn't hurt their bottom line. Shame on More Perfect Union for producing a video like this.

This is a bad look for More Perfect Union. Flacking for shareholders instead of advocating for unionization? There is a DG 2 blocks from my house. The employees always look so exhausted and depressed. This is one of the worst places to work. Shareholders don't care about workers until it hurts quarterly earnings. MPU should be ashamed of themselves for putting out a straight up PR video.

That's great and all, but are they doing it out of genuine concern or because they're worried about hurting their financial gain? I'd imagine if they were concerned with employees they'd also push for higher wages and better staffing. Especially considering you're not gonna solve the issue of of all the products blocking exits and outlets without more workers.

Platforming investment companies is gross.

Fines are not enough. Executives need to face jail time.

It's about time someone did something about this!

Wish I had video taped my old store. Target reduced hours so much that the same thing was happening there. My manager had boxes fall on her (she needed stitches.) Another had their foot crushed when something rolled over it.

Strike, Strike, Strike!

This really feels like a sponsored ad for corporate image

What is Domini’s position on Dollar General workers unionizing, which would otherwise certainly be involved in such an action?

No one that can get a job anywhere else will work at Dollar General Store. I fell sorry for their workers. It's 100% the company, not the employees.

The store managers aren’t even allowed to dictate what comes on the trucks. We would get the same products that never sold over and over again with no where to put all the overstock. They refused to give me more than 27 hours but I would work them all in a row sometimes with double shifts

This sounds like a form of appeasement to stop workers from rapidly organizing tbh

The corporate greed of not staffing a store in retail causes so much grief among employees and customers that going there is out of necessity. When a customer has to ring a bell to get checked out because they've been burnt on prices not ringing up correctly there's problems that are so unnecessary if the leadership in the corporate headquarters really cared. Yeap I like run on sentences.

As a DoorDasher I've learned to steer well clear of shopping orders to Dollar General. The place is utter chaos and I've been into multiple. If you're lucky enough to find the section where the item is supposed to be, it's probably out of stock whilst none of the available comparable products are in the DD system and thus cannot be scanned onto the order; so I have to get on the line with the customer and go through the lengthy and humiliating ordeal of figuring out how to proceed when nothing they want is in stock. By the by, I don't blame the employees at all. This is what happens when you don't invest in proper training or pay people enough to care whether or not they lose their job.

A couple of carts in the aisles is not a real safety issue. Love the "we care" propaganda when the actual issue is the understaffing caused by garbage pay and no benefits

I worked at dollar general as a assistant manager for 1 year and 6 months . And we have this same problem in Oklahoma , I tried to talk to the district manager about what we could do to make our store better and he just got up and walked away and he told a different store manager that he wanted to fire both of us my manager and myself just for telling him what we could do different for the customers and what could be different

Interesting report. The "issue" is ultimately not, in fact, workplace safety - it's what the perception of this might do to profits and shareholder value. Good to know what's important.

Pay the workers a living wage. They can't hire enough people to work there. The ones who do work there are often alone in the stores. How do you man a register and unload trolleys at the same time? Can't be done. They need at least four people on the days the truck comes in, if not more. Also, the regional manager's expect them to work overtime without pay. That's a lawsuit they won't win and will cost them millions. The higher ups just want those fat paychecks. Tie their checks to how well the employees say they are doing. I bet they don't get a passing grade.

So, what you're saying is the only thing you managed to do was force DG to hire independent safety assessments of their stores. What kind of oversight do you have in place for this, to prevent DG from hiring the cheapest inspectors to go around and do the bare minimum? I mean, there are a LOT of DG stores, as you said, it's going to take a lot of inspectors to go through in a timely manner. Also, what then? You'll probably just force your minimum wage staff to do even MORE work to compensate for trying to follow safety standards that you set without any additional pay, but go ahead and pat yourselves on the back cause you forced DG hand in hiring contractors.

1. Dollar General = The Devil for chasing away small town businesses 2. I'm happy this group did what they did, but I don't want to live in a country where we have to hope that shareholders find it in their hearts to enforce basic employee safety. As the woman in the vid points out, this is rare. I want OSHA to have the authority to fine them into oblivion if they don't comply with the law.

Worked for Dollar General Warehouse for 5 years. I watched the entire company deteriorate over the past 3 years. Rat infested warehouse, store and warehouse extremely understaffed. Employee attrition is through the roof and they cant get half the product on the shelfs in time before it goes bad or before it is covered in rat urine. The last 3 months I worked there we were investigated by OHSA at least 4 times for rat infestation and numerous safety issues.

I worked at a dollar general where the store manager was stealing money from the safe, and the regional manager was in on it. I desperately needed money at the time and applied for the cashier position but the hiring manager told me it would be better to be an assistant manager, more pay. I was still in training, that manager quit, I couldn’t open the store or anything until we got assigned a new manager from a different store. She was teaching me all kinds of stuff that didn’t seem right, the numbers didn’t add up unless she counted it, she would have me go do something else, etc. but when the regional manager would come in, they’d have a talk in the office before he’d come inspect the store. It was only ever me and 2 cashiers in the store expected to man the registers and unload truck shipments (all really tall/unstable/disorganized) so it’s not like any of us had time to do anything other than work at this inhumane pace. Anyway, one day a coworker’s toes got crushed under a float full of packed merchandise and the manager wouldn’t let her leave work, I was pissed and put in my two weeks notice shortly after. I wasn’t even there for a month. That coworker called me later telling me how the manager and regional manager got caught up for stealing

Shareholders are not your friend.

Corporate propaganda on more perfect Union, what is this world coming to.

After all, investors are the actual customers

Welcome back to the 19th century. We've been warned countless times over more than 40 years that this is where we are being herded.

Why is there a corporate pr video on More Perfect Union?

I am disappointed this channel would whitewash shareholders like this.

Ive delivered for dollar Tree and Fam dollar, they complain constantly that the company doesn’t give them overtime and its strict on it but there’s too much to do to not have OT

I love hearing from CEOs instead of the actual workers dealing with the actual problems like you know lack of pay lack of hours lack of safety lack of everything but this is just talking about this the fact that the business itself isn't functioning because it's not functioning. Instead of you know the fact that they pay as little as possible work you as little as ours as possible and have as many people as possible cuz they know their turnover rate is so ridiculously high because they don't care about their employees. How about you have more employees on here instead of just a CEO that doesn't understand what the employees are actually going through

This was my first retail job, I learned terrible habits

It goes to show we the people are alone in this fight,this channel was suppose to be for us,the working and honest living,not for these investors to come with pr stunts and be like "ohh we loosing money lets do something about it"

Unsubscribe. No respect if they’re going to shill and bootlick corpo boots.

Wtf? This feels like an ad for an investment firm.

I think if store managers were hourly it would help as well. I don't think anyone working at store level should be salary.

The workers of Dollar General should own it. Investors be damned. They don't get good PR for the bare minimum. This is gross.

Why is MPU turning into Vox. $1M is nothing for an investment firm.

great call presenting the group profiting from the worker's misery and unsafe working conditions as the heroes of the story MPU /s

“Come with me… and you’ll be… in a world of OSHA violations”

I am currently Assistant manager at DG. i am at the store by myself for 8 to 10 hours a day. We can't get more work hours or hire more people because corporate is a joke. We are constantly overstocked but can't get stocked on the shelves. And lets not forget this company doesn't give an employee discount.

So shareholders can make more of a change than employees... what a world we are living in...

I worked for a DG for 3 months. My manager was the worst and most emotionally abusive person i ever met. She would gaslight and force swings and extended periods of no shifts based on whatever or whoever she was mad at. 1 of my coworkers walked out in the middle of her shift after she was forced to stay through a possible miscarriage. I was told by ever sungle one of them me coming in and giving them support was the reason they all stayed so long, but they were all planning on leaving soon after i did. Worst part of all of this, management was aware. The other stores all knew about ours and what happened in there. I literally told on manager who had to fill in for ours about it personally.

I have a significant portion of my retirement money in Domini, and I’m extremely proud of them! This is what someone who had my money should be doing-many thanks for standing up fir workers, Domini!

Just be honest, yall are just trying to protect your investment. Pay your workers a living wage and don't work them down to the bone. Invest in people!

I’m 67, been all over the US, have yet to see one that’s NOT a retail dump………

Investors care about employee safety? Really? Since when?

What they're doing is wrong. $21 million in fines. This isn't free market economy, it's capitalism- the love of the pursuit of stuff

Dollar General brings little value to the communities it shows up in. Their prices are exorbitant in small towns because they have a captive audience. And it's very much NOT a grocery store. Just boxes of cereal, bags of chips, and canned food, along with candy and a bunch of cheaply made non-food products. Why not build the same size building, but have it be a real grocery store? Oh yeah, and pay your employees a livable wage and care even a tiny bit about their well-being.

Shareholders: “Negative public image and OSHA fines are starting to affect profit margins and revenue.” Executive board: “Our estimates say that current strategy of cost reduction is best to keep revenue high by eating the fines.”. Shareholders: “A substantial amount of shareholders disagree. Comply to minimal OSHA rules, and let’s improve public image by doing some fluff piece about it, mentioning workers a lot, on one of those leftist RU-vid channels.”

Does this channel do paid, sponsored promotions now from companies? Why is any of this good for workers? The benevolent investment company and shareholders are going to fix things now that profits are in jeopardy? Theyre not going to fix the workers rights that haven been violated, they just want good press and profits to return. Honestly kind of ashamed in this channel for this...

I know as an employee, when I've had an employer that flagrantly did not value me and especially my safety, man... I would rob them blind. Lol

you know shit's getting real when even the shartholders are angry 😆

A bit late to this video, but I was a truck driver for the Dollar General fleet for a short period of time. I drove regional meaning I stayed in a specific part of the country, the Southeast in my case. Driving and delivering for them is hard as well and not worth it in my opinion pay or benefit wise. As the driver you're required to unload by yourself in any kind of weather, extreme heat, cold, rain, i had to unload in a storm that had tornadoes, they expect you to take only 20 minutes per store. We had multiple stores per truckload we had to hand unload and the loads usually had what we called rolltainers that they said could weigh a couple hundred lbs but were always overstacked by the warehouse when they loaded the trailer that we had to push and pull by hand through parking lots in disrepair with large cracks and up these steep inclines into the stores themselves that if you didn't get a running start on would either flip the rolltainers which weren't stable to begin with let alone overstacked or would start pushing on you and go back down potentially falling on you. These are several hundred lbs devices that will hurt you easily, I know because I had 1 catch my hand in the netting when it flipped and broke a bone in my hand in 12 separate places. Dollar General tried everything they could not to pay worker's comp for my injury when it happened on DG property while unloading their product. I was out for several months to heal and was told all my personal belongings were put into a box and stored in a locked room only management could open and it would be there when I return. Well I'm given the pass from the doc and physical therapist clearing me for work and come back and all my belongings are mysteriously gone. 1 cardboard box with the total cost of roughly $300 of personal effects gone and all they say is sorry and won't offer reimbursement. There were 7 or 8 boxes with the same name in that room but my 1 box was thrown out. Also day 1 of orientation they told us and gave us propaganda about unions being bad and if anyone comes to us about a union to report them immediately and made us sign paperwork about it before they would start the orientation process.

Spotlighting an investor is weirdly off-brand for this channel.

Corporate Propaganda...what a laugh.

The fact that More Perfect Union allows someone from Domini to use them for PR is so ridiculous and against all of the things you guys pretend you are for. NO WHERE in the United States does anyone enjoy having a Dollar General or a Dollar Store in their community. "Providng affordable products to low income communities" hides that fact that these places are the SHEIN of physical stores. I live in a city that has 5 of these stores within a 5-mile radius and it is an absolute shithole. We need grocery stores that we can walk to, not junk!

Jesus, this video is good, but I can't listen to an investor representing a company with $1.5million dollars in anything and pretend they have the public good in their best interest. also lol, dollar general brings cheap goods to rural areas? sure, maybe after they choke out any competition and sustainable local business, and then wrench all money spent there out of the communities.

I live in a small town, about 12 miles from another small town. Both towns have a Dollar General store. I quit shopping at Dollar General, about a year ago, for this very reason. You go in, and stuff piled up in every aisle. Most the times, whatever I went in to buy, I couldn't get to the item due to boxes and crates being piled up in front of the item. And, most the time, everyone who's supposed to be working there, are outside smoking! No more Dollar General for me!!

And here I thought maybe it was just our little town. What a joke.

I quit shopping there years ago because the aisles were always cluttered to the point you couldn't go through them. Pathetic.

Was this channel hacked?

I worked there for a few weeks. It was awful,our store didn't even have a General Manager🙀

Fine's won't change behavior. They're parking tickets to Corporations. It's the medium/large sized investors that will make the huge guys change for the better to everyone's benefit (again). Be careful you don't get bought up yourself in more Corporate Consolidation, Domini. It's time to bring Democracy to Corporations to hold them accountable to We The People.

Coming back to check on things a week after this went up, and honestly I'm kinda surprised this hasn't been deleted, because personally I'm having a hard time taking this channel seriously after this.

My local DG has a very conscientious manager and stock is rigorously maintained. I can't speak to safety or management/employee relations, but they don't have turnover, and that usually means something.

Hell they don't even treat customers right!

Yes yes I have shopping at Dollar Generals before and I have seen the unsafe conditions. Very bad sometimes.

I worked at a subsidiary company to dollar general. Popshelf, which has no HR department as a manager at a newly opened store and the building was so out of code that every emergency exit but one was blocked at all times and the roof leaked when it rained. The stock room was filled with thousands of items with no where to go because the stores are fronts to lower distribution costs.

Great comments...are you also going to take the step of using your shareholder influence to ensure that Dollar General pays it's employees a living wage, in addition to the safety concerns, or are you just worried about the literal millions of dollars in fines?

Products dont cost much but they have next to zero value.

Very weird to bring on an investment firm on this channel. Like this company profits off dollar general and they will never want working condition to be very good because that will hurt profits to much. Ir would be far bettter to remove the need for super cheap places instead of marginally improving worker conditions, and that assumes something happens after the audit which isnt guaranteed. No but seriously, gross to bring profiteers off exploitation and the very reason we need unions.

Is this a commercial?

That shouldn't even be a list OSHA should just be able to shut the entire company down

What is this? An advertisement for some investment firm? Cool, shareholders want bare minimum offerings to workers so that they can continue to exploit the workers for a profit for longer. Kind of a pathetic vid.

When you have two people in a store that needs at least six to operate this is what happens! Corporate don't want to pay for 6 employees to work a store which in turn bites them in the arse because when stores are disgusting people won't shop. Dollar General has no logic in a business sense anymore, if they ever did.

How much did they pay you to put this video on your channel?