old stuff needs to be pulled to the front

Yeah, the stuff I’m talking about is always the front unit on the shelf. I can’t always be arsed to search behind the front one for fresher units, but when I do, usually the entire stock on the shelf of that particular product is expired all the way to the back of the shelf. So I don’t really think that’s the issue in my case. I might be more vigilant about searching behind the frontmost unit in the future, though.

every major retail store in the country is cutting staff to save money

Yeah, this store clearly has huge turnover as well. Probably not uncommon to see in grocery stores in general, but I think it’s worse here than other stores. The checkout clerks, for instance, often times have to ask for help for things like “how do I ring up the gallon drinking water refills” or whatever. (Which, of course, isn’t the clerk’s fault at all.)