Just curious why they have to question why you handed it to them. It should be you that lets them know what it's for. I say this because (as a guest) before I knew we get a gift card for spending a certain amount of money, a cashier randomly gave me the gift card while ringing me up. I never use coupons or anything like that so I didn't know why she was giving me anything.Naturally, I asked her why and she told me. I figured it could only be applied to a future transaction but I asked just to be sure. She gave it to me in the middle of ringing me up, why wouldn't I feel like I could use it on my total for this transaction. Not everyone knows what is going on. It doesn't mean they are idiots. Please don't assume, just let people know what you are giving them and keep working. I don't think it takes much to say what it's for.
This next long piece of post is not directed towards you specifically:
Sorry if this comes off salty, I just read way too many other posts and rants about how stupid guests are but some of the responses the tm's say they gave the guests make me question if it's really the guest that is the issue. I have worked serving people most of my life so I know what it's like to be confronted with a horrible experience. I know some people are rude as all hell. Nothing you do can make them happy. But those customers are few and far between. If a tm is noticing multiple bad issues with guests, they might need to check what or how they are doing things and tweak it to make their service better.
What I know as a customer myself is that really good customer service can be hard to find. I have always really liked Target, but to be honest I have never had a really great customer service experience at Target. I have at Walmart, but not Target...and that's really sad. It's usually pretty average, which is fine, Ill take it because I like all the stuff Target has. And it's usually a clean place. I have had really bad cashiers at Target. As a guest I've heard tm's talking negatively about other tm's and Target in general. Super unprofessional. It doesn't matter that we don't get paid well , if you sign up to work in retail, you are signing up to give a proper customer service experience. This helps sales, sales helps you get your paycheck. If you can't stand people, guests, customers, idiots then don't work in a human heavy line of work.
I will weigh in as a person of middle age who never once worked retail/fast food prior to last year.
As a customer, even as an 18 year old on my own for the first time, I always knew read the damn labels. Don't assume something is necessarily in the proper place, read the label near it and determine if it's the proper thing. Most places put the UPC on the label. Target puts the last 6 numbers of the UPC on the label. Either way, easy to match up and verify if the right thing is in the right place. If there's a sale, I knew to read the fine print to make sure what I was looking at would match the sale.
Beyond that, I knew that "please" and "thank you" went a long way. And I also knew, as an introvert, it's hard to slap a smile on your face all day long when in the public eye. So I was forgiving of overhearing an employee bitch about a problem customer. I didn't mind a meh employee as long as I got the help that was needed. We're all human. And even introverts gotta eat, and I'm not the only one on the planet, so some people are simply less "I'm your new buddy!" and more coolly competent.
So yeah, I don't have any sympathy for the idiots who don't freaking read the labels and signs and act like the information was not available in an easy-to-learn format. If as a naive 18 year old I knew how to make sure that I was matching up a gallon of milk to the right price, if as a 20 year old sleep deprived new mother I could figure out best deals on diapers and baby food,
if as a 14 year old on a church trip to Canada I could figure out their labels well enough to price what I wanted and figure out the exchange rate to boot, then there isn't a single customer out there who is literate that gets a pass on not reading and just assuming when it comes to purchasing items. There is absolutely no excuse. Especially since I was doing all that when there were no cell phones so no one (other than those with the geeky calculator watches) had a calculator to do the math for them. And I know I'm not anything special, I'm not overly smart or overly worldly or overly educated or overly anything, so I don't have special skills to do this, I have the same mental tools at my disposal that
every other person on the planet has.
And I sure as heck don't have any kind thoughts to those who think that retail workers should be lobotomized to always be perfect and smiling. If prior to retail work I could empathize with someone whose professional life is always on display and not get any level of upset unless given downright shitty service or no service, then I think the rest of the world can too. If prior to retail work I made it a practice to go to the manager when I felt someone was doing a good job because I recognized that "good" did not equal "stellar" but should still be recognized (I scared the hell out of a few dozen servers and managers before I realized I should specify I wasn't planning on complaining), then I think that other people should be able to see the same. If I can look at my last non-customer service job with a critical eye and see how there were days I felt great and went well above and beyond, days that I did what was expected and not a lot more, days that I bitched my heart out to sympathetic coworkers, and bad days that I totally failed expectations, then I think I can totally forgive a retail worker for having those same exact type of days.
And as far as the gift cards specifically, #1 if given immediately they don't get forgotten by the end of the transaction, #2 if given immediately the guest can't reasonably claim they didn't get it if the guest took possession of it prior to loss.
