Corporate Dear Corporate...

Dear corporate - This shit early morning is failing hard. There is no backroom team in my store. The bulk girl pulls both plastics pulls and the paper pull every day while struggling to finish pushing ALL the bulk. My store keeps losing people at the rate that the hiring event didn't even matter, we lost more people the last month to the point we're actually negative hiring for the year.
 
SnowWhiteOfAnA said:
To be fair, we think they were working on performancing her out but have to put it on hold for...a certain reason. It's a common enough reason, but I'm worried that if I say the reason, someone might figure out who my STL is and I won't stay anonymous on here. Only time will tell, I guess?

Anyway, I'm too stubborn to leave just yet, so if she is performanced out, I will be trying to get my former TMs to come back. Especially if I'm made a TL.
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Yes, time will tell. Fingers crossed for you. At least you have hope!😁
 
fraction said:
I agree! The only thing different at our store from what you said is we used to only have 2 people sorting and got done before 10am, now we have 2-6 people at once and it started piling up so bad, even at 6 TM, we can't get it finished and are lucky if we get today's softlines from the truck done. Since our store is a pilot store, the apparel super sort doesnt really benefit anyone at our store. The sorting process is considered hardlines because we are handling the truck so none of the HLTM (besides me who was hired as an Apparel TM but got moved to hardlines and another TM who used to do the apparel sort before the modernization changes) that got "nominated" to do this know anything about apparel. Basically, I had to train many HLTM for weeks because they have not even been on the soft lines side of the store other than shortcutting through the fitting room. Our back room is smaller than most, and since our softlines repacks, metro racks, and Z-Bars have lined up cluttering about half of our entire backroom it ends up hindering everyone..and i mean everyone. It's not just us or the flow team who can't properly get things done because of all the repacks that we have no space for; it effects the apparel team when they need fitting room zbars but all of the ones in the store are being used for the sort -that most likely will be backstock. The SFS team has it bad also, when they need an article (or multiple) of clothing for OPU and they have to basically go on a safari through the repacks until their RFID finally finds it. It effects every HLTM
when they need to push a U-boat or vehicle and can't get through because of our "mess." They don't want us to put the full Zbars or Metros on the floor. They don't want us to put the empty ones out either. The apparel TMs can't push them because they have other projects, manning the FR, reshop calls, helping guests and zones to complete. Bringing it back to the OP topic, if i could talk to the corporate, id ask them to please spend a morning either observing or maybe completing one of the tasks they assign us, or really anyone in the store, and seeing how difficult it is for us and try to find a working solution eventually. We are willing to try new things and we did but this isn't working out for us. Sometimes, the ideas and policies work in theory but don't work when the circumstance becomes reality.
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We were fine at first with just the two of us, but our backroom, even though it's a bit small, wasn't bad. Now it's a pit and it's keeping us from coming clean and it's even spilling onto the salesfloor, which got the PMT and the APTL in trouble when they had visits on the same day 😑 and I felt so bad (and responsible) because I'm a flow vet. We 1) need our extra trailer, 2) need a few more backroom TMs to keep backstock caught up, 3) more TMs scheduled at the same time (we had NO ONE in softlines from 9:30-11p on a FRIDAY NIGHT this week) and 4) a dedicated Fitting Room Attendant.
 
Dear corporate, I'm new but since it's obvious that none of you have ever worked retail at the store level before, I'll be nice and explain how it's supposed to work. It's not really difficult, but it seems you need to learn a few things. The number one thing is that you want product on the shelves in the right place so that when CUSTOMERS come into the store they will be able to find it and buy it. The key feature is that the product needs to be on the shelf when the customer is there to buy it. It does no good if the product is sitting on a vehicle in the back when the customer arrives. If the shelf is empty for something the customer wants and you don't know where it is because it just came off a truck, that's a lost sale. You've failed in your primary goal as a retailer.

To accomplish this primary goal retailers have a group of EMPLOYEES generally known as "stockers." Most of them work before the store opens. Their job is to work before the store opens and fill the shelves. They are experts at knowing where everything goes and how the shelves should look. They aren't half-ass trained people who throw shit up everywhere. Ever noticed when you go to the grocery store, a real one not a Target one, everything is in the right place and looking nice? Yeah, that's the stockers. A few stockers work while the store is open to fill holes on the shelves when necessary. They take only what they need to the floor and work as quickly as possible. They aren't there to help customers other than pointing them in the right direction. You have other employees to help customers.

You are failing at the primary goal of retail. But, let's talk about those other employees. This is where Target differentiates itself. It's your corner of the retail industry. You offer better customer service. This is why customers shop at your store despite your slightly higher prices than other stores. Or as one customer put it to me today after I helped her find a scooter, took it down from the shelf for her, carried that heavy son of a bitch to the front, opened up a cashier lane to check her out, and then took it out to her car in 30 degree weather while wearing a T-shirt "Why is Target the only place where when you ask someone for help they are actually helpful?" Because that's Target's niche: better customer service than the other guys. To make sure that those customers keep coming back it would be a good idea to have employees who are trained in providing the service and making sure the shelves still look nice. See, ordinarily, I wouldn't have been able to help that customer. I would have been stocking. But, one of your half-ass trained inbounds employees thought it would be a good idea to stock a coffee maker on the floor, which I came across, because he couldn't care less and couldn't think of anything else to do with it. (It was a simple solution. Another coffee maker had been overstocked leaving no room for the one on the floor. So, I put everything in order and was taking the overstock to the backroom when I came across the customer. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have and the customer would have been left to wander on her own.)

Anyway, long story short, dear corporate, you are failing at the primary goal of retail and doing a poor job of maintaining your niche in the market. Reconsider what you are doing before its too late to reverse course and regain customer loyalty.
 
The meetings they have with generic speak about how things should be done is laughable. Having district get down and work with us a couple days a month would not kill them and would give at least the group manager get an idea since the district TL got down in the dirt with us and experienced a real day in retail. Walking around and watching us doesn't really give you the feel when we all just smile and nod and say we're doing good. Asking us goal times and sales goals that we already memorized. K bud like this is the weakest test ever.
 
We need more hours so we can have "at least" monthly meetings. We could all benefit from learning strategies and getting everyone on the same page. Many of us do things very well individually, but we rarely have time to share or learn from each other. The meetings could also include extra time for anyone wanting to be trained in new departments. If this was offered team members could eventually be trained in every department. The more we know the better we could be at our jobs.
 
LN246 said:
Dear Corporate,

Please move HR TMs into a higher pay grade than Cashiers and actually give us the payroll (and yes, a little OT as necessary for HR SR TLs) to properly onboard dozens of Seasonal TMs on top of our normal Q4 workload. You’re losing a lot of the best people in this position to higher paying jobs with more realistic workloads.

PS- Workday didn’t decrease the workload, it made it worse. Also, HRBPs need better training and more in store experience to be better at their jobs. I’ve seen some amazing APBPs, but not one HR on that level who knows much at all.
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Yes! This.

And...

Dear Corporate,

Continuing from what my fellow HR colleague said above.

HRTM pay is ridiculously low. You could literally get another HR/office job almost anywhere else and get paid more to do less. In fact, another employer actually laughed at how low your pay rate was before offering one of my former HR coworkers a much better starting pay rate with full-time hours, benefits, and perks.

Workday is a nightmare for HR. All of the things that could have been easily done in the past by submitting one request form in HR Zone now requires a million steps to do in Workday. The worst is when Workday delegates only some of the steps to STL/ETLs. It should be either all or nothing. They are not getting their part done in a timely matter and holding up the processes which is very frustrating. Workday is like the modernization for HR; you believed that it will improve the processes but it just complicated everything instead.

Is it your goal to screw up the entire store? If yes, then congrats Corporate, you are on-track to doing so! You have managed to make backroom, sales floor, and HR processes worse than before!
 
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Far from newbie said:
Do you

Spend your time finding solutions instead of complaining. Do your part to fix it. Change is hard but there must be a way to make it work. Different is not always wrong.
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All machines need oil to work. Deny lubrication to moving parts and the machine breaks. There's no way to "make things work" when the parts are seized up because the oil level got too low. In a business the oil is hours. Too little hours, the "machine" will break instead of working around frozen parts.
 
Dear Corporate-

When stores bump up the base pay, please consider giving an additional increase to team members already making above it. Performance reviews mean nothing if you bring seasonal team members up to the same level as team members who have been here for years.

If I was originally making 40 cents above the base pay, I want to make 40 cents above the new base pay.
 
Dear Corporate,

Why do you have market team starting the earliest at 7am and that's the PA. And everybody else for market gets in at 8am or 9am. Your dollars are sitting on the pallet. Can you please have me start at 5am going forward so I can properly fill the floor and that way guests can walk into a filled pfresh. And by the way, Modernization does NOT work! Keep it to the express stores and that's it!
 
Piggybacking off of calimero...

Dear Corporate,
30 minute goal times are absolutely ridiculous. If I get a big order, like I did today, for 56 DPCIS...you want me to pull that in 30 minutes?! There's absolutely no way. I'm tired of my LOD calling me asking if I'm okay because I'm goal approaching and then miss goal because I can't pull it that fast...ESPECIALLY when I've been training seasonal TMs left and right...I cannot go that fast and expect them to follow. My trainee this morning admitted he had a panic attack in the parking lot because he was dreading getting in trouble for missed goal times. I know you want us to be fast and work efficiently but this is just cruel.
 
dannyy315 said:
Dear Corporate-

When stores bump up the base pay, please consider giving an additional increase to team members already making above it. Performance reviews mean nothing if you bring seasonal team members up to the same level as team members who have been here for years.

If I was originally making 40 cents above the base pay, I want to make 40 cents above the new base pay.
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I've been with the company over four years and incoming A&A seasonal team members are making more than I do.
 
I had to finally create an account here after lurking since 2014. I've been with Target since then as a Flow Team member and this new process sucks! They say they care about the "guests", I call the customers out of spite because that's what they really are (and that's how they're being treated). It's nearly impossible for them to shop!

Trying to push toys on a Sunday afternoon is nigh impossible. You have kids and parents zipping in and out of the aisles, while I'm standing there looking goofy trying to push a 7 foot tall U-Boat. It's frustrating for all parties, customers and employees.

I don't even feel safe in the backroom anymore. If a fire broke out, half of us back there would die (not joking). All because Target is getting greedy, and trying to make everyone do everything. We literally have to shimmy around the backroom, like we're Indiana Jones squeezing between two rocks.

Then you have our store leader barking down our neck for silly stuff (took away cages for trash and can't use carts, he would rather see cardboard strewn around the store) while ignoring that his store is a total mess. Seems like all the leads at the store are drones who only care about their own jobs, and none of them can admit that the new process is pure insanity.

I get it--they have to eat. I blame HQ more than them for not allowing them to say, "Yeah, this isn't working in our store." The one size fits all approach needs to die.
 
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KindaOverIt said:
I had to finally create an account here after lurking since 2014. I've been with Target since then as a Flow Team member and this new process sucks! They say they care about the "guests", I call the customers out of spite because that's what they really are (and that's how they're being treated). It's nearly impossible for them to shop!

Trying to push toys on a Sunday afternoon is nigh impossible. You have kids and parents zipping in and out of the aisles, while I'm standing there looking goofy trying to push a 7 foot tall U-Boat. It's frustrating for all parties, customers and employees.

I don't even feel safe in the backroom anymore. If a fire broke out, half of us back there would die (not joking). All because Target is getting greedy, and trying to make everyone do everything. We literally have to shimmy around the backroom, like we're Indian Jones squeezing between two rocks.

Then you have our store leader barking down our neck for silly stuff while ignoring that his store is a total mess. Seems like all the leads at the store are drones who only care about their own jobs, and none of them can admit that the new process is pure insanity.

I get it--they have to eat. I blame HQ more than them for not allowing them to say, "Yeah, this isn't working in our store." The one size fits all approach needs to die.
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Do we work at the same store? This is how it is here. Thank god for worker’s compensation in case I actually get hurt climbing around all those boxes...
 
dannyy315 said:
Do we work at the same store? This is how it is here. Thank god for worker’s compensation in case I actually get hurt climbing around all those boxes...
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I've been reading some stuff on here and this doesn't seem too out there (meaning it sounds like other stores are having the same issue with the backroom). But I'm in Ohio, probably shouldn't reveal that, but who cares at this point? Everything I'm saying is said in ear shot of all our team leads lol. Almost everyone walks around with a look of pure contempt on their faces here :)
 
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Dear Corporate,
Running a chain of department stores is not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. If you design different store layouts for different sales environments (urban, mall anchor, stand alone near the 'burbs), why in the world would you think that modernization would work the same everywhere? Our unload line is so cramped that I think a job requirement for being on unload must be to be slender. (Ok, one of the guys is larger, but he's in a spot where he doesn't have to squeeze between u-boats.)
Why do you try to force round pegs into square holes? We have TMs who have been back room or truck for years, and they're great at it. Fast, accurate, work clean. Now they're being pushed into jobs they aren't so well suited for, and they didn't hire in for or want. And others who don't really like pushing the truck don't care if they put the 23-oz bottles where the 16-oz ones go, but we're pushing truck all day, well past the early morning hours the truck TMs hired in for.
Sincerely, a veteran flow TM who still likes those early hours.
 

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