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- Retail work in the age of e-commerce and curbside pickup can be surprisingly physical.
- Whether they're picking orders or restocking shelves, workers' daily steps add up quickly.
- Target workers say their Apple Watches and other trackers show daily step counts of 20,000 or more.
Modern retail work can be a surprisingly physical job.
Walmart's chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said in June that warehouse workers walked "up to 10 miles a day" and lifted thousands of pounds — a job he said was increasingly being assisted by AI-powered robots.
The industry has basically always required store workers to spend long hours on their feet, but the miles can add up quickly, especially for employees tasked with picking online orders or restocking shelves.
Plus, with the use of activity trackers like Apple Watches, Fitbits, and even smartphones themselves, it's getting easier for workers to see just how far they've gone during a shift at a big-box store.
Over on Reddit, Target workers have posted some big numbers, often topping the 10 miles that caught the attention of Walmart's CFO.
A typical Target is roughly 125,000 square feet, which is a bit larger than two football fields. And of course, as track athletes can attest, each lap around the field is about a quarter of a mile.
It's not uncommon to see users sharing screenshots with daily step counts of 20,000, with some saying they've topped 40,000 during especially busy periods like the holidays or Target Circle Week.
"This week I broke my record & hit 40,000 steps in one day— gotta love Circle Week!" one user said on a subreddit for Target workers in July.
For an average-height person, 20,000 to 40,000 steps translates to 10 to 20 miles walked, or 40 to 80 laps around a typical track.
"My highest was 24,790 in a 4 hour shift," another commenter said. "I literally don't know how I did it but fulfillment made me lose a TON of weight."
By comparison, a US Postal Service letter carrier in Tennessee told CNBC in 2021 that he typically covered 14 miles during the course of his day.
The specialty shoemaker Clove has highlighted nine other occupations with high step counts. Healthcare workers topped the list: It said some hospital staffers could reach 60,000 steps, or 30 miles, during a 12-hour shift.
Of course, this doesn't all happen in one go, and the data from personal devices doesn't differentiate between steps taken on the clock and off.
A Target spokesperson told Business Insider that while the company did estimate time and distance as part of assigning work, it did not individually track employees' movements throughout the day.
In addition, like many employers, Target has mandatory break periods throughout an employee's shift when they can sit down, have a bite to eat, and drink water.
And though the distance might sound strenuous, one worker told Business Insider that online-order fulfillment was "a more active type of walking compared to stocking," adding that "for some people (including me) it can be more comfortable actually."
One Reddit user asked for footwear recommendations, saying, "My converse are not comfy enough for the over 20k steps I take a shift." Several commenters suggested shoes from Hoka and New Balance, while a few endorsed $10 running shoes from Walmart.
It's unclear which direction these numbers are trending, given that fitness trackers have only recently become widespread, but web and app sales figures suggest they could be going up. Target has said it fulfills 95% of its digital orders from its stores rather than from fulfillment centers, as Amazon does.
After all, if more and more people are tapping an app and staying put in their cars, someone has to be running around the store on their behalf and bringing the order out to the parking lot.