MEGATHREAD 2018-2019 Store Modernization Megathread

[OPINION] How do you feel about these changes?

  • I like them.

  • I dislike them.


Results are only viewable after voting.
This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

You have mentioned putting a lot thought and planning to get your team's process to roll smoothly. Also, you have DBOs getting 4-5 days (all in the SAME week) @ 7-8 hours per shift. I see a lot of others posting here that they're getting more along the lines of 12, possibly up to 20 hours a week.

I can't imagine how people can do everything they're expected to do unless they have a very tiny 'business' to run.

I see only a handful of people in my store getting 35+ hours. Many are not even hitting 20.

Maybe once the new process gets set up and rolling...? Sometimes you have to spend money to make (or save) money. My store is starting to put some modernization pieces in place, but no actual roll out...at least leadership hasn't announced anything to staff yet.

Guess I'll hold on for the ride.
 
Last edited:
Good or bad process, anything will succeed if you throw enough money at it. It just won't be profitable.

That's just the thing, the initial outlay would be higher but it would actually be profitable in the long run. 4 am start time for everyone, get mostly clean by the time guests come in, get more sales. Even at $15 an hour I find it hard to believe that I'd be making more money off Target than they make off of my labor.

This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

This is apparently the best kept secret in retail, forbidden from all mention and distributed clandestinely as samizdat printed on the cheapest toilet paper. Many former leaders have been caught smuggling it between stores and were sentenced to death by firing squad.

Does anyone else's store have the problem where the Zebras absolutely will not work? I've tried nearly 20 different devices and they all keep getting stuck in the fucking endless loading loop before switching to the red exclamation point in a circle.

I can't *do* anything.

dOgGoNe iT sOmEtHiNg WeNt WrOnG
 
This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

Has anyone been saying the new process WON'T work with adequate staffing? Because, of course it would work. Of course having dedicated TMs working in the same area repeatedly will make things go more quickly. That's something I've always been shocked Target hasn't done since day one.
When Timmy spends every shift working on something different, or a different area, every day is going to be like he's new on the job.

The problem is we all KNOW by now that hours aren't going to get better. Our leaders have told us as much.
And you can't keep TMs around that can fulfill the basic requirements for success when they're going to work 15-20 hours a week tops, 5 days a week in the middle of the day. There's no one that can support themselves or their life on that, or if there is, it's the kind of person who either doesn't really need a job or who doesn't take things seriously.

Someone at HQ FINALLY had a good idea about making the in store process more efficient, and then someone much higher than him heard "efficient" and took it to the "how much payroll can we cut?" extreme, with no concern for how this would impact the process itself.
 
That's just the thing, the initial outlay would be higher but it would actually be profitable in the long run. 4 am start time for everyone, get mostly clean by the time guests come in, get more sales. Even at $15 an hour I find it hard to believe that I'd be making more money off Target than they make off of my labor.



This is apparently the best kept secret in retail, forbidden from all mention and distributed clandestinely as samizdat printed on the cheapest toilet paper. Many former leaders have been caught smuggling it between stores and were sentenced to death by firing squad.



dOgGoNe iT sOmEtHiNg WeNt WrOnG

Not even the CSC thing for me
 
Half of ceiling lights stay on. Spotlights, cosmetics, any gondola lighting, TVs all shut off. But it is correct that half the ceiling lights stay on. Arming the store has nothing to do with lighting. They don’t automatically kick in when the first person arrives. The spotlights kick on at 6am. Everything else when the store opens.
We can agree to disagree. I can just speak for my store. I have been doing this MANY years and we shut off the lights when we leave at night. No it doesn’t have anything to do with arming the store but the option to turn off the lights is on the alarm panel at my store and gets done at the same time as arming the building. Like another poster said- 15 minutes after that the store goes completely dark. We have just a few lights on and the lights are on but dimmed between the inner doors and outer doors. When the opening LOD walks in the lights kick on to the 50% or so until 8am. I have been the opening LOD many times to see this as well as have come in with my exec at 2am and they’ve kicked back on when we walked in. Of course maybe store’s alarm panels aren’t the same or their districts don’t have them turn off the lights at night but ours does.
 
Softlines buries half our backroom from freight not touched to repacks of backstock to Z racks of push and repush. It's a shit show!

It's really not their fault either. They have no hours too. Plus the BOGO on swim made SFS/OPU hell yesterday. I got EXTREMELY lucky that I found all of the swimwear I was looking for, but it was a mess. The carts keep multiplying. I joked to my ETL that all of softlines should be empty with the amount of freight and reshop we have. Plus we keep getting more.

I really think OPU should get a break on scores for softlines because you cannot bust into all the repacks and go through all the Z's in the amount of time you have. I tried my darndest to not INF anything yesterday, but I had to 5 times because trying to get through all the freight was nearly impossible in 30 minutes. (And yes, I had the RFID gun and it was working like a champ, but it still didn't help me find a couple items.) One of the TMs over there did help me find one of the more hidden items.

(I'm hoping I did well enough so I can pick up more flex shifts...that's really my jam. I'm fairly good at finding things. I want to ask to be moved to flex instead of market, but our market team is going to kick major butt and I'm excited for that, too. Maybe I'll just dabble in flex.
)
I'm gonna just say it...e2e can work. The shills are right on this one point. HOWEVER. Absolutely everybody needs to have and stay 8 hours in order for it to work, and I mean 8 hours every single day like "I don't even need to look at my schedule" regular. Otherwise it's just a recipe for an instant, explosive dumpster fire that kills anybody who tries to put it out.

I keep saying this...hours. Hours are needed to make this work. How do you "own" your area when you get 1 or 2 shifts a week of 4 hours each? It just doesn't work. Target is like its own ecosystem - everything relies on each other to run well (minus the pharmacy). If softlines is a dumpster fire, that affects flex for finding items and hardlines because the backroom is clogged. If hardlines doesn't get pushed, it also clogs the backroom and makes it more difficult for flex. BOTH make guest service difficult if a guest comes in and the item they want is on a uboat, not located, and we can't find it...we can't make that sale. ALL OF IT affects sales. While I think doing the OPU/SFS/Drive Up is beneficial and will drive sales, it doesn't work if you can't find the items because there was no one to push it or backstock it, or mark it down.

How are they going to allow time for presentation? I was setting endcaps during Q4 and four endcaps took me almost seven hours, and I KNEW what I was doing. Joe Newbie who started alongside me had no idea how that works. It also took Joe Newbie four months to get wave trained. If we don't allow time for training, how can one own an area but not get the resets done? (I have a feeling POG team isn't going to entirely go away. Are we really going to be expected to reset whole aisles?)

This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

I love that you guys are getting that. I'm glad it's working for you...really! It gives me hope that this could work. I just don't understand why it seems like no one else is getting hours. This process can work...if we have the hours for it.
 
Has anyone been saying the new process WON'T work with adequate staffing? Because, of course it would work. Of course having dedicated TMs working in the same area repeatedly will make things go more quickly. That's something I've always been shocked Target hasn't done since day one.
When Timmy spends every shift working on something different, or a different area, every day is going to be like he's new on the job.

The problem is we all KNOW by now that hours aren't going to get better. Our leaders have told us as much.
And you can't keep TMs around that can fulfill the basic requirements for success when they're going to work 15-20 hours a week tops, 5 days a week in the middle of the day. There's no one that can support themselves or their life on that, or if there is, it's the kind of person who either doesn't really need a job or who doesn't take things seriously.

Someone at HQ FINALLY had a good idea about making the in store process more efficient, and then someone much higher than him heard "efficient" and took it to the "how much payroll can we cut?" extreme, with no concern for how this would impact the process itself.
And they haven't figured out paying more for experience and high performance matters in retaining your best employees. Instead of this $15/hr PR circlejerk, they should be giving raises that aren't erased by pay bumps to Timmy so he doesn't bail when he finds out he makes less than his trainees do.
 
And they haven't figured out paying more for experience and high performance matters in retaining your best employees. Instead of this $15/hr PR circlejerk, they should be giving raises that aren't erased by pay bumps to Timmy so he doesn't bail when he finds out he makes less than his trainees do.

And on top of that, the yearly raises are pointless with the continued ones we're getting. At my store they give you the yearly raise, THEN push you to 12, or whatever.
 
The $15/hour thing absolutely is for PR reasons, and not at all to attract a better staff.
I have a hard time holding in the laughs when our leadership starts talking about how hard they're going to be on employees making $15 and force them to "earn" that wage.
Like the only people we're going to attract and retain with that wage aren't the ones that are too stupid to realize $15/hr doesn't mean anything when you're getting a couple of 4 hour shifts a week.
And raises in general don't mean a damn thing when your paycheck goes down afterwards due to massively cut hours.
 
It's funny how giving 40 hours to humans remains the top-tier option even now in the Age of Automation, the sooner they figure this out and resign themselves to paying me that bread, the better we'll all be
 
At my store, on paper it reflects 4 hours scheduled but truck team members stay longer than their scheduled shift. So that's where the hours are going. That's the workcenter that is overspent each week, each month. At the end of each month other workcenters have to cut shifts just to make the store payroll for the month. Currently at my store (no offense to other stores) it's the truck team against everyone else. There is a big segregation going on and it's going to get even uglier!
Not at my store either. Truck TMs are getting shifts so short that no break is taken (my state requires a 15-minute paid break if a shift is at least 4 hours long) and they're told to leave at scheduled out-time. Yes, some days some truck TMs are staying longer because the truck was excessively large for certain areas, but that's not the norm and it's definitely not true for everyone.
 
That's just the thing, the initial outlay would be higher but it would actually be profitable in the long run. 4 am start time for everyone, get mostly clean by the time guests come in, get more sales. Even at $15 an hour I find it hard to believe that I'd be making more money off Target than they make off of my labor.
Wow, so much this. I'd absolutely LOVE to start at 4 am, get my area mostly pushed and cleaned up before the store gets busy. (I'm part of unload so I don't even start pushing until after the store opens unless it's a small truck.) When the whole "own your area" thing gets going, it'd allow time to do all the other stuff. I really do like assisting guests, but some things are just so much easier and faster when guests aren't in the way. Get the stuff on the shelves so guest can buy it!
 


Like Humble said nothing is certain yet but more to come after April 1st. For now there are plenty of rollout pages in those two threads
 
Back
Top