this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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Retailers within the same chain seem to have different policies on how many check outs are staffed.
I'm in Australia and buy our groceries from woolworths.
There's one I go past on my way home and there's very rarely any proper checkouts manned. There's usually one "express" at which you can only buy 12 items or something, but there's usually several people queued there.
The other one where we go to do our weekly shop always has several proper checkouts manned. Usually when there's more than 1 person being scanned and 1 waiting they will call over the PA to get another staff member to open another lane.
IDK who's decision it is or what strategy they follow to decide which stores will do check outs what way.
Grocieres...from Woolworth? Funny. Here (Germany) it's just a horribly shitty dollar-store without any food.
The Australian Woolworth is a totally unrelated company.
In Germany the Woolworth GmbH was originally founded by the American Woolworth, but then sold off. The American one essentially died later.
I had no idea. Although I fondly remember it being cool and then suddenly becoming absolute dogshit.
Thanks for educating me.
I also remember my mom driving over the boarder to shop there when I was a child, so that checks out for me
At least you have the good kind of Woolworth it seems 😁
We have two chains which form an oligopoly in the grocery market here. Coles and Woolworths (Colesworth). Like tesco or something. Better presented than Aldi.
So, like everywhere else I guess. 1-3 chains taking over everything. When I was young we had a Mon&pop near our house. Now it's like 3-5 supermarket brands, of which most are from the same group and only virtually competing.
Yes, we recently had a formal govt enquiry into the lack of competition. Not very effective.
Until a few years ago there was an independent supermarket just down the road. They did very well, but sold to a foreign group that owned a few dozen stores and they just didn't understand the market here - it collapsed within months.
Our left wing party just announced a policy for govt owned grocers like mamdani has implemented. However, they have no chance of applying any pressure to govt to implement that.
Sounds like a great solution to being overrun by de-facto-monopolies. But I know nothing about Australia's politics to make an educated comment.
Here it seems like a faint smell of diversity, but often 3 chains are owned by the same group. But at least there still is some competition.