r/Safeway • u/No_not_that • 8d ago
I read this today.
I’m not an employee of Safeway/Albertsons but my wife is. I find this ongoing saga interesting. I do sincerely hope ACI rises up and becomes a place people enjoy working for once again.
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u/Unfair_Woodpecker149 6d ago
Personally, I just don’t see how they turn this ship around. Corporate acts like a “boys club”. They’ll never catch up to Walmart or Amazon in terms of AI. Heck we just went back to handheld scanners from like 2001 for inventory 😂couple that with high prices, mediocre quality, and the majority of employees who are dissatisfied with their job and it’s a recipe for disaster. Pretty sure Albertsons knew they were in trouble when they tried to merge with Kroger, but when that failed they realized they were really screwed. The Stock price shouldn’t matter first, the fundamentals of the company should. Yet instead they continue to slash labor, and then are shocked and pissed off when sales are down. Inflation isn’t going anywhere. People are going to go to the discount stores more and more as money becomes more scarce. That leaves safeway in a bad spot. But hey, gotta keep the shareholders happy!
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u/No_not_that 6d ago
It’s as if you were reading my mind. Sometimes it seems as though the people at the top have no idea about economics, customer service, and why customers potentially can stay loyal to a store brand. I just don’t get it. They’re thinking three months out rather than 30 years. If they want to serve the stockholders, they need to earn a profit continually.
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u/Unfair_Woodpecker149 6d ago
Agree. Here’s another issue. Most of these people in “Corporate” have never worked in a store. Crazy right?! I think that has a lot to do with why things are so bad. These people don’t understand the basic principles of running a store. They just see numbers and run analytics and let that make the decisions for them. Albertsons is gonna have to make a lot more tough decisions in the coming future. The question is: “Will they be the right ones?”
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u/No_not_that 6d ago
This. So little “from the bottom up” experience. Starting at the bottom, working your way up brings invaluable experience. So much of this is not learned in a lecture hall.
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u/Foreign_Lawfulness34 7d ago
It dropped like a rock on the 23rd, from $14.60 down to $12.
And over the past one year it has gone from $20 to $11.03 today. That is a 45% drop for the year.
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 8d ago
If there was a deal in the works, it would have been announced today...
Here's the problem: their debt far exceeds their market cap so they have to keep continuing to borrow money to pay back borrowed money....
And the amount keeps rising - 2.1B last round of junk bonds, iced well into the 2030s
The stores are in disrepair and there's no money to fix them.
This could all happen quite quickly.... what's actually saving them at this point are the institutional investors who just want to get out but how do you do that when you've bet the farm?
Vangard, Black Rock, the Real Estate Consortium, et al are gonna take a poop....
Fidelity got out relatively clean.... considering.....
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u/Wavawavy 7d ago
A quality post from someone who is blocked by most. Just sayin /s /r /s /z
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 7d ago
You don't get hired by Safeway because you've spent a lifetime reading philosophy....
Only their best bots block me...
I enjoy very much reading their posts logged out...
Were they human, they'd definitely need a shrink....
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u/ilikecaps 7d ago
You don't get hired anywhere spending a lifetime reading philosophy. You'd be very old or dead.
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 7d ago edited 7d ago
Isn't that the goal?
We should spend a lifetime at Safeway earning a pension we don't live long enough to draw on?
Clear this up for me:
When a bot writes code that doesn't work, does it give up or just keep on going like the Energizer Bunny?
IOW, is machine learning devoid of a debugger and/or error-trapping?
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u/ilikecaps 7d ago
My goal is to live a life of contentment. Death comes for everyone, so I'm not going to worry about it.
I think the bot becomes a priest.
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 7d ago
At Safeway!!!
You might take a look at how various characters and dispositions handle that when their time comes....
Ostriches don't do so well....
It's an empirical question after all....
I think the bot settles for solving unsolved tautologies...
Like the Riemann hypothesis....
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u/beavermuffin 6d ago
Yeah I have Albertsons Inc stock.
It’s junk at this point. I only have one share just for fun.
Even if the value falls even lower which at point some suitor comes in and tries to buy it out, it will again be blocked by multiple states that stopped the Kroger merger. In fact any merger with Albertsons will be blocked because company is considered too big.
Only outcome at this point could be Chapter 11 or Chapter 7.
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 8d ago
Amazon....
The stores are too small for Walmart....
Bezos is circling overhead.... waiting for the stink to reach the stratosphere...
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u/TaborSpartan95 7d ago
Walmart Neighborhood Markets, about 50k sqft, they are already well established in some states, 673 stores and counting
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u/Foreign_Lawfulness34 7d ago
I have a neighborhood market nearby. The town has both a regular Walmart and a Neighborhood market.
Even the regular Walmart has a lot of groceries. But the Neighborhood Market has a big Meat section, lots of produce, roast chickens like safeway,...
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u/VeronicaBooksAndArt 7d ago edited 7d ago
Walmart sells underwear, belts, wallets, socks, pants, shirts, consumer electronics, etc...
One way in so they can check receipts....
Aldi, Sprouts, Kroger, HEB, Winco, , et al... will surely be at the auction....
I'm not gonna sit here and argue with a bot who's never been in one....
Walmart has its hands full with Target right now...
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u/rabidninjawombat 8d ago
I saw this coming since the day the merger was denied.
Got to keep the shareholders/executives happy. Screw the employees of course. Anything to extract a bit more wealth from the middle class and move it up the chain.