Dollar General Customers, Employees Document Hazardous Conditions at Stores

Anderson, IN (WorkersCompensation.com) - Just weeks after the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed another set of fines for Dollar General stores for hazardous working conditions, employees and customers are posting videos showing what the stores look like. 

In Anderson, Ind., a Dollar General employee, Terry Bennett, went on TikTok to ask for help from the company for overwhelmed employees and crowded stores. Bennett's video showed his store's aisles filled with bins of product, and aisle end caps blocked by rolling carts filled with product.

 "We are in a position that we cannot get ourselves out of," he said. "We are overloaded with freight and we don't have enough hours in the week or people at work to put them away. And each time we stop to put them away, we get yelled at."

Bennett said everyone who works at the company is trying to hide how bad it is. And corporate pressure from the top down is adding to the problems, he said.

Bennett's video showed exit doors partially blocked by boxes, and boxes stacked four and five high filling one of the aisles. In a portion of the video, Bennett shows the backroom of the store that shows boxes stacked over six feet high blocking the storage area. Bennett said the boxes were so packed into the back room area that they were blocking coolers while a milk delivery waits outside to be brought into the store.

“My store manager is overwhelmed. We don’t have enough staff, and my district manager doesn’t do anything about it. All she does is keep putting pressure on [my manager], until then the manager puts pressure on everybody else, and they quit,” Bennett starts. “That’s why we don’t have any employees.”

On Nov. 18, another TikTok user, @_mesmerizeyou, posted her experience as a customer. In her video, she tries to push a cart through a Dollar General aisle, struggling because she can't get past the boxes that tower over her head.

The videos come after Dollar General received more than $12 million in proposed penalties from OSHA. In early November, OSHA proposed $2.7 million in penalties for the company after inspections at seven stores found conditions that posed hazards for workers. The U.S. Department of Labor announced that inspectors looked at facilities in Clay, Dothan, Odenville and Town Creek, Ala.; Darien and West Point, Ga.; and Panama City, Fla., between April 28 and June 3 and identified 31 violations including 11 willful, 16 repeat and four serious violations.

In addition to conditions that put employees at risk of being struck and blocked exit hazards, the agency cited the company for failing to label, mount or make fire extinguishers accessible;

storing boxed in front of electrical panels, increasing the risk of fire and electrical hazards, failing to use exit signs to facilitate safe exit in the event of an emergency, exposing workers to electrocution by not keeping unused opening in electrical cabinets closed and not providing handrails on stairs where required.

Those violations were similar to ones OSHA has identified at other stores across the country over the past five years.

On Nov. 17, a Dollar General in Lemoyne, Penn. was shut down because of a mouse infestation. According to a report from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the store was cited for the presence of pests including rodent droppings, and live mice running between bags of dog and cat food.

They violations and videos are just the latest this year in problems for the company. So far this year, at least three workers have filed complaints via TikTok. The employee complaints stem from a movement started by an employee to get complaints to the company. Employees have said that the company managers' tell employees to "put in a ticket" if they have complaints.

In a story in the New York Times, Dollar General said they were ready to "listen and learn." That story ran in April. Since then, the company has not released any information about what changes it would make, nor has it answered numerous email requests from WorkersCompensation.com in regard to the violations.

However, the violations, videos and shut downs don't seem to have impacted the company's bottom line.

“Net sales increased 9.0% to $9.4 billion in the second quarter of 2022 compared to $8.7 billion in the second quarter of 2021,” Business Wire reported in November. "The Company reported net income of $678.0 million for the second quarter of 2022, an increase of 6.4% compared to $637.0 million in the second quarter of 2021.”

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