Target Reducing Self-Checkout Hours in Certain Stores To Fight Missing Inventory

Challenges with Target’s self-checkout lanes continue as the retailer is cutting down the hours of operation at some of its stores, according to Business Insider.

This shift does not apply to all of Target’s almost 2,000 stores. However, employees said that a major driver in this decision is due to staffing levels and sales volumes.

Staff said the retailer is trying to keep the percentage of overall store sales via self-checkout lower than a certain threshold.

A big portion of Target locations are open every day from 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. However, Reddit users on r/Target mentioned that the self-checkout lanes in some of their stores were only open from 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Business Insider reported that a Target worker in Illinois confirmed that the self-checkout in the store she works at had lowered its hours and were no longer open beyond 8 p.m.

In contrary to this, staff in Oklahoma and Michigan said their stores hadn’t experienced this shift, but they highlighted worries about having adequate staff available to cover enough full-service lanes to avoid long lines for customers.

The worker from Michigan said, “If and when we do have to close the self-checkouts in the morning and in the evening, we’re going to have a lot of people extremely upset with us. I’m going to have to explain to them that they are closed down due to theft.”

As well as shoplifting being a contributing factor to the shutdown of more lanes, a recent study also found that customers were accidentally not scanning their items properly, and this has been another reason for a reduction in lanes.

This decision also comes into place as some stores put a bar on only 10 items for self-checkout lanes. The retailer said this would help “reduce wait times and better understand guest preferences.”