I also work at a Canadian store and the issues are endless. I think for starters since they bought the leases from Zellers they didn't want the properties sitting their empty for several years. They were too concerned that Walmart would scoop them up. Target Canada expanded too fast. There are cities with multiple stores that really should have only had 1 until the demand picked up. Because Target didn't buy Zellers they had no access to sales data from the locations they purchased. Therefore for the first few months we were forecast to do $150,000 in sales on a Wednesday while only bringing in $30,000. It was kind of comical hearing at huddle "Well we only missed our goal by $120,000. Lets do better today." The number one complaint is that our shelves our empty. In-line that is so true. Why half the products on the POGs are still there I don't know because after a year they still haven't come in yet. When we do get products we sometimes only have 1 or 2. At the same time we have too much of other products that we can't seem to get rid of. My store in particular is a ghost town. There are more TLs on the floor than there are TMs and there's more staff in the store than there are guests. Their expectations of us have gone through the roof as has the workload. How can I do reshop and done all of hardlines while being the only team member in hardlines. Oh and you want me to set 4 endcaps too and then when I don't do all of that stuff you tell me you'll have to pick up my slack. Guests expected our prices to be that of the US and they weren't. They also expected our products to be similar of the US and they aren't. I can't tell you how many times I've heard guests say that we're nothing more than a glorified Zellers. It seems like the more Target Canada expands the worse our problems get and we keep having Gregg and Tony (Target Canada president) say it will get better. They think if they keep expanding and throw money at the problem its going to get better and yet its only going to get worse. It may be a little to early to call the Canadian expansion a dud but something drastic needs to happen.
