I've been pondering the revenue/earnings shortfall without a seemingly complete explanation. I wonder if the stores are not open -- meaning some stores are not open all the hours they're supposed to be. I think about some of the fast food places that have been open limited hours or only open for drive through because they couldn't find sufficient employees. It seems fast food and DG would be drawing from a similar employee pool. Maybe the self-scanning tech is viewed not only as cost cutting, but also increasing store hours by requiring only one employee to be present?

I don't know if lack of employees is a substantial problem for DG, but I wish I had an answer one way or the other. I wish there was a metric like monthly-store-open-hours I could watch. Any thoughts on how this could be teased out? Something in payroll? A collection of webcams that show DG storefronts or parking lots? Something else?