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I'm not in the US but what makes you feel this is run down?
The ceiling looks incomplete with no wall and the color scheme is drab and dreary.
For large chains in the suburbs this is totally normal. They're basically warehouses in a sea of parking lots filled with shelves and racks. Sometimes there's carpeted areas in between the tile walkways or displays that go up high enough that it feels enclosed. For smaller or more urban stores, you don't see this kind of construction.
You're in a Walmart.
They claim to be cheaper so they can have that drabby distopian look.
In the good parts of town, they look nicer. In the poor parts of town they're legit worse than that.
Fwiw, I'll pay the extra dollar per shopping cart for the superior look of a target. Target is generally cleaner and crisper looking. As always there are exceptions to that rule.
Also the implication that countries outside the US don't have dumpy stores is laughable. Europe's got plenty of stuff like this, just usually not as large. Here in the Netherlands we have shops like Action and grocery stores like Lidl and they're a shitshow inside most of the time.
Lidl in the US is definitely a step up from Wal-Mart.
That’s a Meijer
Wasn't sure at first, but then I saw the mPerks sign.
Target has been going downhill. Lots of crap in the aisles now, and inventory is stocked during the day. It’s like shopping in a warehouse.
It's incredibly difficult to find anything at Target, especially gender-neutral hygiene products since they hard-segregated hygiene into men's and women's. Just give me regular ass bar soap.
My partner was looking for coffee and looked all over the tea section and nope, naturally coffee belongs next to the liquor and red vines.
I hate going to Target, but I still take it over Walmart. At least I don't feel dirty shopping at Target.Retail in general is hiring much less staff these days so they always look like shit. I heard on the radio that they are removing self checkout now too because of theft? I doubt they will increase staff back up to compensate. I kind of want to be there in rush hour the first time to watch the shit show.
The economics of removing self checkout are not there. You check 6 customers per attendant at self checkout - the store would need to lose $150,000 in merchandise at self check out per year to break even (assuming $30k/yr for the wage slave).
In a previous life, I did loss prevention. The average shrink rate in retail in the USA is 2%. That means 2% of the merchandise leaves the store without being paid for.
An average Walmart does millions in sales each day. Conservatively 2% of one million is $20,000.
Thousands of dollars of unpaid merchandise leaves a big retailer every single day. It's part of the cost of doing business. That's also why online retailers are cheaper. They don't have to deal with external theft. They still have internal theft.
Shrink is the industry term. It's merchandise that isn't paid for and isn't there when inventory happens. Theft is most of it, both by customers (external) and employees (internal). It's also things that aren't rang up right at the register, damaged merchandise that isn't removed from the system correctly. It's a big umbrella term.
It varies. My Target is exactly the same as it ever was.
Ugh. Target feels suffocating to me with all the red and the way everything feels like an end table covered in popurrí.
Welcome to Costco. I love you
The "unfinished" ceilings are common in warehouse stores. It is largely a feature of practicality. Since electrical, water and ventilation typical run overhead and needs to be serviced occasionally, putting drop ceiling tiles up would make them difficult to work with, particularly when you need a scissor lift (rather than a ladder) to reach the utility lines. But it also has some benefits like higher lighting fixtures which means less direct/more ambient lighting, fewer places for pests to roam in the building or dust to build up, etc. It may just be that I'm used to it, but it doesn't bother me as an aesthetic. Drop ceiling is more common in smaller stores.
Not sure what you mean by the drab colors. The floor looks like it could be whiter and probably needs a polish, but the blues look nice enough to me. There's not much to decorate though as most of the story is wide open with very few surfaces that aren't covered in products for sale.
Pretty much anywhere you have overhead storage with forklifts, you're going to not have a drop ceiling. Otherwise you'd just have people hitting the damn ceiling with the forklift. They already hit the sprinklers enough.
Yeah, I'm sure that is the primary reason.
Oh yeah, this is super standard. Honestly I had to scroll down to find what was even notable to you about this picture. I live in a major city and basically every store I go in to looks identical to this.
That's not run down, that's a warehouse. Is it falling apart? Is the flooring worn? Are the walls cracking? Ceilings leaking? That's what run down means, not whatever your weird complaint is about the decor and color scheme is.
This is totally normal for Walmart to look like. It's basically a warehouse with extra steps.
Ceiling design is intentional, it's cheap and it maintains temperature much better than a drop ceiling or whatever else you'd want up there.
Walmart normally has skylights too to let in natural light but I can't see any in the pic. That looks like a poorly maintained Walmart.
This isn’t a Walmart. It’s Mejer.
Yeah I knew it wasn't walmart by the stuff at checkout not being the right color, but I've never seen a Mejer before. I take it they're basically the same thing as malwart?
More expensive, has NFC, but essentially the same stuff as a Walmart.
Can you show us what you think they should look like?
Coz I’ve seen Americans, Australians, and Europeans call this normal looking. So I’d love to see what you think isn’t.
That's just a default Walmart, unironically.
This isn’t a Walmart. It’s Mejer.
Huh, I thought Meyer was red, more like Target
You might be thinking of Fred Meyer, which is red.
Or Oscar Meyer which is a hotdog.
My bologna has a first name...
Or Lane Meyer who thought he was better off dead.
That ceiling is supposed to be that way. The insulation is on top of the roof deck, and the lack of a suspended ceiling gives it a more open feel. That's why they painted all of the roof structure white (it also allows them to use less power for lighting). Walmart has a lot of problems, but store design isn't one (although retail layout is, IMO).
We have a few of these warehouse type shops in the UK, Costco, Matalan, that sort of thing, it's not styled like a high street shop would be.
My local Asda is like this, but they're Walmart now. I've got a feeling that the Tesco is too, but I haven't been for a while.
Yeah, the bigger supermarkets are too aren't they? Like there's some lovely supermarkets with nice styling, but they're usually the little ones.
My Tesco Extra looks nice and has a ceiling with very cool lighting. Big local Sainsbury's has a ceiling, but they should definitely improve cleanliness in some areas. And ASDA Superstore is a filthy mess. I try to avoid it, because it's disgusting.
that's pretty common for big box stores. they're put up cheaply and the buildings are only rated to last 15 years in some cases.
It's a Wal-Mart so yeah, that's normal.
It’s not a Walmart.
Even the worst store in Germany looks better than this.