How Dollar General's troubles have snowballed into cluttered aisles and stores forced to close by fire marshals

• Dollar General workers say their hours have been cut, creating a mess of merchandise at stores.
• A shortage of person power makes it tough to unpack new merchandise and update inventory.
• Dollar General has grown to over 19,000 stores and is often the only retailer in some small towns.

Editors note: This story was originally published in May 2023. 

It was Christmas in May in the back room of a Michigan Dollar General last year.

Two metal carts of Christmas toys leftover from the previous holiday season sat in the store's back room well into 2022. The plan, according to one employee who works at the store, was to hold the inventory there for a year until the next holiday season came around. "We're almost used as an extension of the warehouse," an employee at the store said.

Current and former employees who spoke to Insider say clutter at Dollar General stores has gotten worse over the last few years. They've said staffing issues, including cut hours and poor wages, are at least partially to blame because employees must choose between helping customers and stocking shelves. 

At locations from Louisiana to Maine, stacks of unpacked candy, toilet paper, barbeque sauce, and pet food have attracted attention from local fire marshals, who have ordered some stores to close when the clutter blocks exits or access to fire extinguishers, Insider previously reported. 

The clutter is one of the reasons that the Department of Labor labeled Dollar General a "severe violator" in March. The chain has racked up more than $15 million in fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and is in early talks with the federal government over a settlement, The New York Times reported in March.

A spokesperson for Dollar General said: "Our goal is to provide stores with the resources they need, including the appropriate labor budgets, to support our expectations of a clean, well-stocked shopping environment as well as excellent customer service."

Insider spoke with four current and two former Dollar General employees. They declined to be identified by name in this article for fear of professional consequences. Their identities are known to Insider.

Dollar General has reduced worker hours at many stores, leaving employees to choose between helping customers and stocking shelves

An employee in Michigan said the hour cuts started about a year ago. Another in the Midwest said their store cut their hours, along with others' at their store and in their district, at the start of 2023. 

"For most people, it takes away needed hours and needed money," the employee told Insider. And those lost hours leave Dollar General stores understaffed and cultured, the employee added.

Some stores have a single employee on duty for several hours at a time, according to three of the employees who spoke to Insider. 

"The morning shift is always the worst, because you spend the entire morning as the only person in the store," the Michigan employee told Insider. "I can't get any truck done," the employee said, referring to inventory that has been unloaded from a truck but still needs to be unpacked. 

Most employees that Insider spoke with said that their stores simply don't have the person power to unpack the rolltainers — the framed metal containers filled with inventory — that arrive each week. 

"The small back rooms are of course a problem, but they would be much less of an issue if stores were allotted enough hours to have employees stock trucks when they come in," one former employee, who worked at a store in Arizona for several years until last year, said.

Every other week, store managers have to update an internal Dollar General system with counts of each item that they have on hand, so that the company knows what's out of stock and what to send in future deliveries, the former Arizona employee said. But items not on the shelves aren't always counted, employees said. This can lead to more inventory being shipped to the stores when it's not needed. 

"But if the store is a mess or there isn't enough time, then system numbers become wrong," the former employee said. That can lead to stores getting more bottled water and pet food even when their storage rooms or aisles might already be full of those things.

The risks of being the only employee on duty extend beyond fire hazards. The stores are frequent targets for robberies, some of which have been deadly, CNN and ProPublica reported in 2020. In January, a Dollar General clerk was charged with manslaughter after police said he shot and killed an armed robber. The clerk said it was the sixth attempted armed robbery at that store since August.

Cashiers and sales associates at Dollar General generally make a dollar or two above minimum wage

Walmart this month raised the minimum wage for employees at its stores to $14 an hour, while Home Depot said in February that it would raise its starting wages to $15 an hour. 

Dollar General has made investments in training and new jobs over the last few years, including $100 million it announced in March to add more hours for employees.

But multiple employees that Insider spoke with said that Dollar General stores often lose employees to similar retail employers, such as McDonald's, that offer higher wages and more hours.

Cashiers and sales associates at the store generally make a dollar or two above minimum wage, an employee told Insider. As the minimum wage in some states has gone up, new employees frequently join at a higher hourly rate than workers who have been there for years.

"Somebody brought on today is brought on at what I hired at last year," an employee in the Midwest said. The fire marshal has closed their store four times due to excess inventory. When the more established employees see that, "they will generally quit" for a better-paying job, the employee added. "Then, I have to start recruiting again."

Despite the problems on the ground, Dollar General continues to earn positive feedback from analysts on Wall Street. 

The chain's outlook, from its plan to open its 20,000th store this year to its expansion into new products and services, such as banking and healthcare, earned its stock a "buy" rating last month from Corey Tarlowe, an analyst at Jefferies.

That clutter might keep some consumers away, but in many areas, Dollar General is the only choice for essential food items and home goods.

"If they can't get it at a Dollar General or the gas station, people go without it," the employee in the Midwest said. 

Do you work or shop at a Dollar General store or have a story to share? Reach out to Alex Bitter at abitter@insider.com or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at (808) 854-4501.