I’ve been noticing it for several weeks and it’s only getting worse. I was there today and took a few pics.

What used to be wide open walking areas are now crammed with extra inventory. It makes navigating less than ideal (at times .. especially if you’re there when it’s busy), because it’s single file only. I’m not talking about the actual aisles, but rather the larger / main rows that feed into the separate aisles.

The outside garden area is just as bad .. maybe worse.

Are people not buying stuff anymore? What does this mean? This store is not under construction or anything.

30% increase across the board for food, utilities, fuel and other necessities has put the kibosh on "non-essentials".

So, you are seeing the fat waste as people get lean in spending.

It will get worse because many businesses and services focus on "want" not "need", and as they suffer, it will add more to the rift of "want" vs "need" spending.

In your pictures, I see a lot of scratch and dent models in the making. At our store, the products in that space would be scratch & dent, orders people placed then cancelled, or low priced products people might buy on a whim like a freezer for $198.

I'd guess with appliances in short supply, people placed orders at several stores, bought whichever showed up first, and canceled the rest.

My HD looks like that too. A few months ago everybody was complaining about stores being out of stock. I think HD probably ordered a lot of everything to make sure they had stuff to sell and now they have to keep extra inventory in the aisles. Better than being unavailable.

Supply chain catching up…right into inflation…means inventory glut.

They don't have enough help to put the items away?

Maybe lack of workers to restock shelves-put items in correct places. Our local HD had a number of empty spaces in the wire shelving aisle, but invetory showed it in stock. After 30 min it was finally found in another asile.

Just saw an article about all the big box stores, Target, Walmart etc having a collective “oh shiiiiiiiit” moment as they realize they ordered way too much inventory JUST AS consumers start to cut back to afford being able to fill their car tanks.

Just another thing Brandon has on his watch

Mine was worse. Palates left unattended on the floor of aisles. I made eye contact while lifting my cart onto and pushing it across one and down the other side.

They couldn't be bothered, and obviously have no pride in their employment.

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
Mine was worse. Palates left unattended on the floor of aisles. I made eye contact ...

Those chicks are the worst.

I wouldn’t say that it’s horrible, but I’ve noticed a little more stock not put away at my local Home Depot stores as well. I really don’t think that it’s so much an excess inventory thing, but after overhearing a couple store workers’ conversations I think it’s more a matter of lack of help. I heard a couple different workers talking about people that left for other jobs, took promotions, etc. I think that a bunch of items that were back ordered for quite some time, and appliances were particularly badly delayed, have finally come in but the stores don’t have the personnel that they did when the items were ordered and aren’t able to put them back as quickly as they had before. Honestly, the most consistent problem I’m seeing in stores of all types is not having enough workers to get the job done.

Aisle at the front of the store yesterday reminded me of a bazaar in a third world country.

The only difference was nobody hawking HVAC installs.

We may never know but if stuff gets unloaded on the back dock it seems strange to take it all the way out to the floor and bypass the back part of the store if there is room there for it. Seems like it would be even harder to maneuver things down the aisles if you don't have to.

It's time for a HUUUUGE July 4th sale.
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It also may be a result of all these shipping backlogs. Maybe a bunch of ships full of HD crap from China finally got unloaded?

My store/region is slamming everything they can into the place because they’re expecting diesel to keep going up.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
It also may be a result of all these shipping backlogs. Maybe a bunch of ships full of HD crap from China finally got unloaded?

I think that is very possible. Could be stuff ordered several months ago showing up suddenly and it has to go somewhere plus a slowdown of purchasing as others have mentioned. With "just in time" inventory system most stores don't have much backroom space. I would rather see them loaded up with stuff than empty shelves.

In the last day or two while travelling the isles of a local Wal-Mart Super store they had stock stacked up all over the store up and down some of the major traffic isles and in some of the minor isles that had so much stock stacked in the isles they were not buggy friendly and a person would have to walk sideways to pass thru and no employees trying to put stock on the shelves. ................... drill sgt.

Their ship came in.

Retailers claim they are loaded with excess merchandise and those pictures would indicate they aren't lying. I would guess the sales will be terrific.