Archived Corporate, are you listening?

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The other day I needed to print some labels for a specific pog, because you know, half the label strips had no price on them. So I printed the price accuracy labels which .... printed the header only. I thought, fuck it. If Corp can't send label strips with prices on them, I don't care to attempt to fix it more than once.
 
unknown said:
The other day I needed to print some labels for a specific pog, because you know, half the label strips had no price on them. So I printed the price accuracy labels which .... printed the header only. I thought, fuck it. If Corp can't send label strips with prices on them, I don't care to attempt to fix it more than once.
Click to expand...
We don't even get labels for most areas in softlines anymore...
 
If it goes without saying, we should keep all of our passive-aggressive hostilities at a minimum. No one will listen(if anybody is listening) if you're snarking a corporate HQ over the internet. Take the time to explain why and how you feel about a bad process or issues with a store or stores, and talk.

That said, I agree the visit mentality alongside weird last-minute district-wide process changes have been sudden and ill-advised. My department was rendered virtually destroyed by an old Senior ETL-Food when she made us take more time out of the morning to break down 10+ FDC pallets since she didn't want any pallets out on the floor. We were understaffed as usual already and it took us an extra thirty to forty minutes to break down full pallets between 2-3 people. That time also includes making room on the line in the stockroom to break down pallets which was almost always impossible until 11am when Flow team began to clear and vehicles were moved and cleared.

She left, and things were OK for four weeks, and then this weekend came. Big changes to our process, again, except from district-led advisers supposedly. Absolutely zero shopping carts are to be used by team members in FDC for cardboard, no more than three vehicles on the floor at a time, break down every single pallet again, and a few other misc things my team leader glazed over lightly.

All of that, on top of under-staffing issues, horrible PA management(I hate this kid with a passion), and quarter four traffic, what gives? Our ETL-Food was able to prove that the new process our old Sr.ETL put us under was an awful idea, and then we go back to it for a few weeks and then get attacked with the Sr. ETL's process + even worse. Our flow team was still putting pallets out on the floor, using carts, but my team working the FDC load can't do any of that and we're limited to how many vehicles we can have outside.

I know it's not directly corporate's fault, mostly district-led changes, but I mean, it's not good. It may also be the fact my Sr. ETL left to go work for the Grocery Director of Target. My entire team left at 12:30pm today since they all work at 4am and I was left with two pallets to work all by myself. It sucked, it really did. I can't imagine this next week is going to be any better, and going into Christmas is probably going to suck. I'm at wits end with Target. I feel like I am underpaid and overworked and it's not even my fault. Our hardlines team is overpaid and under-worked most of the time(No offense to my store's hardlines team), and no one will volunteer to help my department because it's cold and a lot of work. Every time a new TM comes over to help from Hardlines they ask me "This is what you do every day? This is a lot." and I say "yeah, and I'm paid the same as you."

I really like working with the people I work with, my leaders, and the rest of the store, but it's beginning to get to the point where work isn't satisfying anymore, nothing ever gets done, we got suddenly converted to an even worse process, and I feel like no one is listening to my department. Our only champion is our ETL-Food, he's been such a big help and he's the only one that seems to really care. The only time I've ever seen my STL help my struggling department is when our district Frozen Dairy Team Leader was visiting... of course lol.
 
I HATE THIS.

Not in an I'm annoyed and I hate change kind of way... in the way where I'm sad for my store.... and I'm worried about Target as a company... and we all just feel so powerless.

My store's upper management (ETLs and STL) are going to be completely gone heading into black Friday. They've only managed to replace one of those positions so far (that I know of... I'm sure there will be a couple more new faces throughout the week).

And now that everyone is a dedicated stocker, it's hard not to be painfully aware how much of pricing & presentation's workload has gone undone for weeks. Our backroom is finally walk-able (yay!) but the shelves are jam-packed full with products that can't go out because we're around 100 salesplanners behind and hardly any of our dedicated stockers have ever seen, much less set, a POG.

Despite all my frustrations with modernization, I'm open-minded enough to admit it's possible this "own every task for your area" model could bring about some small benefits storewide. BUT, the time to eliminate Plano and Pricing is NOT when 60% of the people on the floor have been there less than a month. Even when you hire clever, hardworking, eager workers - there's no way to get them up to speed in time for all this Q4 madness... and definitely not when the TLs and STLs who would need to organize their training are only barely keeping things together.

But hey, guests have a plethora of empty shopping carts to use (even though they can't get them down aisles filled with truck push from hours ago) and everyone is an "expert" in their own area (...except for all those days when a dozen call-outs leads to everyone getting shuffled around...) and that's what's important right?

Thanks Regional and District offices for helping push our store into the future! Can you image if we tried to skate through Q4 so embarrassingly outdated?
 
It was a nice idea but......

First I would like to say I apriciate the person or people that came up with this. Not for their grasp on reality but for their ambition and willingness to never give up. For their realization that all they needed to do was drastically raise their expectation of leadership and team members while at the same time staying with old payroll guidelines. Sure Target raised their starting pay, but who didn’t?

This is Viper in a nut shell, or at least the basic concept. Does it have advantages? Of course it does. Does it have disadvantages? Absolutely!

It’s a far more complicated process. The term “expert” is thrown around in every conversation. What does it take to make an “expert”? Time and training by a better “expert”. It’s very beneficial to know a lot about other processes and how they relate. The fact is none of us are experts at everything and for years we counted on people and teams to be experts at what they did and it worked both ways. When something was off you knew what it was off and it could be addressed. Now it’s clear as mud.

Operationally there is so much room to fail. It’s the kind of fail that sneaks in, or a process your told to ignore for now that blows up when you have no time to deal with it.

It would be nice to know that some corporate genius is working away at solving these little yet large problems while the rest of us are told to go by the book and get done what we can but “get it all done”.

In a world where crap rolls down hill. These are my rants from close to the bottom of that hill.
 
Overnight process is more efficient than trying to push while the store is open. Period. Corporate seems to think that more TMs on the floor translates into more guest service, but when those “extra” TMs are pressured into finishing the push, the guests not only get less service, they get more frustration because there are TMs available, but they aren’t helping them. Add that to the fact that guests can hardly get down the aisles because of all the u-boats blocking the way, Spot is not providing a positive guest experience. If Corporate thinks different, they haven’t been paying attention or making undercover visits to stores. Guests can’t add to their basket size if they can’t get to what they want or can’t get their cart down the aisles. The store should be guest-ready at opening. Guests deserve that much consideration at least, and if they don’t get it at Spot they will go where they will. Who wants to shop in a store that looks worse than a Kmart having a store closing sale? That’s what Modernization has done for Target.🙄
 
Now we're being told cashiers are going to start running reshop from their lanes to the floor. Which, to my front end mind, makes more work for an already-stretched floor. (I have some who could do this, no problem. Others would take 30 minutes just to put it in the wrong spot, looking awful--mostly thinking of folded items here.) Oh, and more upset guests because that's one less person behind a register when there's barely anyone up front to start with.

I'm all for expanding horizons, but as this was explained to me, it isn't team- or guest-friendly It's certainly not floor-TM friendly if they're going to have to clean up after the cashiers on top of everything else they already do.

If you're doing something similar in your store, how's that going (if you feel comfortable answering)?
 
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We tried having our cashiers run our own reshop. It did not go well. Too many of our cashiers at the time simply did not know where things actually belong, we didn't have enough MyDevices or walkies for everyone and our Indymes were down too frequently. And some of them decided that "reshop" was code for "take a break and wander", and since they didn't have walkies, they didn't hear us calling for them to come back. I think it lasted about a month before we reverted to having all reshop go through Guest Service.

We do still have cashiers run reshop when the lanes are slower. Everyone gets a chance to learn it, but the GSTLs/GSAs gravitate towards the TMs who have proven themselves to be efficient and effective at the task. I typically spend a minimum of an hour per shift on the floor rather than on a checklane as a result.
 
After a full year of SCO, losing good regular customers to competitor grocery store that doesn't have sco, I can safely share....

Guests are mad. They dont mind sco now for small baskets but really get mad when there's only one cashier.

I dont care how much we engage, offer to cashier at eco, they are still mad.

This is ruining our ability to offer good service.
 
Guests want their Tar-zhay back. Many feel they've lost it, between the tons of unpushed product all over the floor and having to stand in line (often assisted by floor TMs who keep getting called for backup, meaning they can't push that product on the floor. This, Corporate, is called a vicious circle, in case you needed clarification).
 
Lmao I love visiting targets around the area and seeing grocery shelves empty becaus scanning outs was pushed so hard, but the department has never had the hours to do them. All 6 of the stores I’ve looked at while passing through has had bare shelves, especially in dairy/deli. I’d get in shouting matches with my ETL over how unrealistic it was to expect us to come clean every day with the department completely scanned on the 240 hrs/wk I was given for my department. Her responses were just made to make it sound like I wasn’t doing enough and that my team wasn’t working quick enough. Bitch, we’re moving a couple thousand units a day, only a few points under soft lines that is stacked, with nearly double the hours??????? If you can’t spend more than 3% of your gross sales on labor, you’re can’t expect perfection. There’s gotta be a compromise somewhere. I’m going off on a tangent and I left target because this way of thinking regarding payroll and cost cutting is sick.

Profits will be up because people are spending more, not because target is revolutionizing success in the retail industry.
 
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