Want to know how bad things are?

There's a big difference between how my store used to look when I was just a guest compared to how it looks now, but I can't really say how big because now I'm looking at it through a TM's eyes. I wonder what a guest's first impression is when they walk in on any given day.

I know I've told this story before, but one day years ago before I was hired I walked in on a Tuesday morning and was pretty surprised at the condition of the store - I think nearly every aisle had stuff on the floor, and there were carts of merchandise strewn about. It usually never looked that way. I even texted on of my sisters and asked what the hell was going on with Target, they look a mess!

When I was hired I was told that things had been bad but that they were trying to turn it around. This was before Modernization. I don't know if it was just my store or if it was company-wide. But after I was hired we took a good turn and things were on track again. Then Modernization hit and things got bumpy again but we eventually settled in and thing got good. Then the pandemic hit. I'm not sure we have fully recovered from everything that brought with it.

I don't think this current downturn can be attributed to Modernization or its failure. I think it has to do with payroll cuts, lack of structure with regard to teams and who owns what, and a shift in priorities. Top dog is FF, followed by truck and front end. Zoning the floor and reshop are at the bottom of the barrel.

Surprisingly they do seem to care about the condition of the fitting room area more than they used to so they don't let that get too bad.

But lack of people to actually do the work is really the biggest issue. You can only push people to work harder to a certain extent. One or two people are just not going to get the same results as four or five.
 
We didn’t get even one new hire this time for our department .We have only me for the whole market and one tm each for cooler, freezer and produce who hardly help finish dry . If I’m off one day next day is like a double truck for me . My TL would push may be 1 or half of a uboat that too not everyday . Every now and then some TMs from other dept would push few vehicles leaving more work for me to fix things . But I do appreciate them for helping . I feel so tired and angry everyday now . 😕
 
happygoth said:
You can only push people to work harder to a certain extent. One or two people are just not going to get the same results as four or five.
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Nonsense, you can get it done! Good job team! Orange you glad it's Friday???

Listen, we really need you to move faster. The lines are really long right now and I know you know how important it is for the guest experience that they don't have to wait too long. Look at this chart, our scores are (whatever), we want them to be (too high). You can do it!
 
Howdy fellow Red Shirts,
I work in a district with 4 stores in a 40 mile radius. The ongoing store "changes" are happening at all three.
The changes are that the Metrics are what is driving ALL of the store's operations.
Forget Guest Experience. doesn't matter. How are the OPU numbers?
The lines are long because of hours being cut?(yet a select number of TLs and TMs get overtime?). Not sorry gotta keep the register metrics going.
Imo it boils down to making the store "green" in the Metrics at the expense of all else. So Target lets the stores rot just as long as the numbers look good.
Oh and everything stops if there is a visit. Clean that, wrap and put up in the steel those pallets, make it look...well un-realistic.

After the visit? Back to business as usual.
Forget Routines
Forget Sales
Forget stocking and pricing.
Just hit the numbers.

It is perfect for my current SD. They love to hang out in their office and have no problem sacrificing hours for a visit. Hours can be cut by 8+ a week but if a visit is coming up hours magically appear, even the bad word Overtime.
Oddly enough once past the visit the story is "well we don't have enough hours so there is nothing we can do"

I also think that by letting SD's basically pick their ETLs and TLs it has led to kind of in-breeding.
At my store there are two sets of expectations, one for the leaders and a much stricter set for the TMs.
The chickens are coming home to roost but the TMs are the ones who suffer.
One store in my district has 10 wrapped pallets of softlines up in the steel and just sitting there. Not being worked. They also have a container at the side of receiving that is nothing but casepacks of softlines!
As you can guess finding softline items for opu is a real time consumer.
They are just not addressing some major issues.
But oh they tried mighty hard to clean things up for.....a AP visit

What a shocker that call-outs and turnover are very high at all the stores. At one store on a Friday, this year, they had 26 call-offs. On Saturday? 30 call-offs.
At another store two TMs (both trainers) quit on the spot within a month.
Two of the stores have had 3-5 team leads quit this year!

A Etl i worked with walked in, gave his keys to the SD, said he quit and just left. He had run remodels, never called out and was really good with his crew and peers.

Anywhoo just figured i would send this out to say that things are bad, bad, bad in my district and no signs of getting better.

In two of these stores the SDs are pretty bad. The lack of skill dealing with a large staff is really hurting the company at least in my district.
It seems to me that Target the company has either degraded at a very quick rate(cascading systemic collapse?), or are trying to use metrics to meet some requirement.
Either way it is not a good time to be a TM in my district.
Sigh.
Why do you think we wear red?
 
I think for our store the "old guard" that is employees who have been there for ages are the only reason things aren't worse. Cashiers come and go but a lot of the truck team has been around since the store opened 20 years ago. There's virtually no one with that up front.

Cashiers tend to last a while, but we've been losing people lately. Lots of call outs.

I'm told that corporate said "we weren't writing enough people up" and that's why they're cracking down on EVERYTHING now. The thumbscrews keep tightening. Fulfillment is king. Cashiers are pulled for FF which means floor people are pulled for cashiering. I've even seen TLs and ETLs man registers or do FF.

How much longer can this go on?
 
I have no problem with the use of metrics to run things.

However if you don't every explain to them to TMs what these metrics are you might as well not bother.

I also love how my TL will just show me something scribbled on a piece a paper.

I am sorry but you have the data in the system so SHOW IT TO ME.

A perfect example is when my TL said the ETL pulled 40 to 50 DCPIs before my shift recently because he was told by the ETL that they did it.

If I don't see it in MyDay it wasn't done.
 
When I quit, (I had been there 10 years and had worked there 10 years before returning) I was making the same as the starters, lost my health insurance ( found out about it on the news before they told us) and couldn't get any hours. Was kind of amusing when the STL called me to his office to beg me to stay. Target has been going down hill for a very long time, frankly I always was surprised that its taken so long to crash.
 
DevilsinHell said:
Howdy fellow Red Shirts,
I work in a district with 4 stores in a 40 mile radius. The ongoing store "changes" are happening at all three.
The changes are that the Metrics are what is driving ALL of the store's operations.
Forget Guest Experience. doesn't matter. How are the OPU numbers?
The lines are long because of hours being cut?(yet a select number of TLs and TMs get overtime?). Not sorry gotta keep the register metrics going.
Imo it boils down to making the store "green" in the Metrics at the expense of all else. So Target lets the stores rot just as long as the numbers look good.
Oh and everything stops if there is a visit. Clean that, wrap and put up in the steel those pallets, make it look...well un-realistic.

After the visit? Back to business as usual.
Forget Routines
Forget Sales
Forget stocking and pricing.
Just hit the numbers.

It is perfect for my current SD. They love to hang out in their office and have no problem sacrificing hours for a visit. Hours can be cut by 8+ a week but if a visit is coming up hours magically appear, even the bad word Overtime.
Oddly enough once past the visit the story is "well we don't have enough hours so there is nothing we can do"

I also think that by letting SD's basically pick their ETLs and TLs it has led to kind of in-breeding.
At my store there are two sets of expectations, one for the leaders and a much stricter set for the TMs.
The chickens are coming home to roost but the TMs are the ones who suffer.
One store in my district has 10 wrapped pallets of softlines up in the steel and just sitting there. Not being worked. They also have a container at the side of receiving that is nothing but casepacks of softlines!
As you can guess finding softline items for opu is a real time consumer.
They are just not addressing some major issues.
But oh they tried mighty hard to clean things up for.....a AP visit

What a shocker that call-outs and turnover are very high at all the stores. At one store on a Friday, this year, they had 26 call-offs. On Saturday? 30 call-offs.
At another store two TMs (both trainers) quit on the spot within a month.
Two of the stores have had 3-5 team leads quit this year!

A Etl i worked with walked in, gave his keys to the SD, said he quit and just left. He had run remodels, never called out and was really good with his crew and peers.

Anywhoo just figured i would send this out to say that things are bad, bad, bad in my district and no signs of getting better.

In two of these stores the SDs are pretty bad. The lack of skill dealing with a large staff is really hurting the company at least in my district.
It seems to me that Target the company has either degraded at a very quick rate(cascading systemic collapse?), or are trying to use metrics to meet some requirement.
Either way it is not a good time to be a TM in my district.
Sigh.
Why do you think we wear red?
Click to expand...
ASANTS

Sorry you're in a shitty store.
 
At my store they are dumping everything on afternoons yet not scheduling TMs to do the work.

They tell me that the truck push gets preference over everything.

Fine but don't BS me and tell say the truck is SO HUGE every time that they can't possibly do any of the pulls.

Our dairy sits for days which greatly affects OPU because it isn't broken down onto U-Boats before being pushed.

Funny thing is the dairy person went back to school so I can't imagine whom is doing it this weekend.
 
Wow. Interesting thread. A few years ago, before modernization, I was thinking along these lines. Happened that I was the person sorting the hard lines repacks - this was when it all came in black repack boxes and I sorted bedding, kitchen, sporting goods, pets, etc. Soft lines was kept separate as were OTC/personal care/beauty (once upon a time, I sorted those both those categories of repacks too).
Anyway, I was noticing that product that once came in whole cases was now coming in repacks and some of the product that came in repacks already was still coming but in noticeably smaller quantities. I read that as not a good sign.
What made things pick up again at my store, I think, was Fulfillment. A lot of our total sales figures come from online orders.
We have a mostly stable team for unload and GM, as well as overall leadership, but it's hard to see what a newer TL does exactly. And our HR ETL is not universally well-liked. Grocery team is pretty steady and we have a couple of long-term cashiers. Our SD will pick FF orders or jump on a lane if needed.
The areas that struggle are Style, Beauty, Closing, maybe Tech - and it shows. Those areas are often a mess. Pulls for everywhere do get done later in the day but often don't get pushed until the next day. There are enough call-offs, usually front end and younger GM TMs, that I hardly ever get razzed for staying past my scheduled out time as long as I don't go into OT.
My own personal morale is not great. Don't know about most other TMs, but the ones I do know about, theirs isn't great either. The DBO model worked really well for the most part at my store. That it's mostly been undone hasn't made things better for some of us.
 
The tech guy at our store I don't think gets to do tech as often as he'd prefer. I've seen him doing FF and he's called up for carts and stuff too. Shocked he hasn't quit.

We're starting to lose people up front, the younger folks aren't afraid to just leave. Callouts have been a lot more frequent, too. I don't know why I've ever been worried about calling out, the rate some of these guys do and then face no consequences.

Our HR ETL isn't well liked either...or the last one...or the one before that. I think they choose the worst on purpose.

I'm not sure about the rest of the store...but the front end gets more and more and more pushed on them all the time. However much you do it never feels like enough. No candy tm, no bullseye tm, they just peel off cashiers. With bullseye the TL will usually do it.
 
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flow4areasonuno said:
The tech guy at our store I don't think gets to do tech as often as he'd prefer. I've seen him doing FF and he's called up for carts and stuff too. Shocked he hasn't quit.

We're starting to lose people up front, the younger folks aren't afraid to just leave. Callouts have been a lot more frequent, too. I don't know why I've ever been worried about calling out, the rate some of these guys do and then face no consequences.

Our HR ETL isn't well liked either...or the last one...or the one before that. I think they choose the worst on purpose.

I'm not sure about the rest of the store...but the front end gets more and more and more pushed on them all the time. However much you do it never feels like enough. No candy tm, no bullseye tm, they just peel off cashiers. With bullseye the TL will usually do it.
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They fired one of tech guys knowing another was another leaving for school soon.

Supposedly the replacement is a minor that can't work late or come in early.
 
How expired must food be before it is removed from the salesfloor? Also is trying to donate ten days past expiration dairy a good thing?
 
balthrop said:
How expired must food be before it is removed from the salesfloor? Also is trying to donate ten days past expiration dairy a good thing?
Click to expand...
Expired by any amount should be removed. Nothing on the floor should be past date. Closest is meat which you can sell day-of, but should be marked down.
And personally, I didn't donate expired dairy. Composted everything.
 
I got my lunch break an hour late today because of one TL's insistence on sending our next person in to GS

You could tell by the schedule they were planning to do it.

We had one GS opener at 8, and then nobody else until 3. Cashiers had a few more people but they were yanked at every opportunity. The second TL seemed surprised the first yanked the incoming person to GS. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

I got a "chat" about "your frustration with our decisions" and funny how a bunch of us were told that breaks go with the flow of business. Yeah, and is it the flow of business to steal so many people no one can get their damn break on time?
 
idkwhattodo said:
We also pull cashiers to help in fulfillment. Style and GM rarely back up either. At my store, the S&E ETL oversees fulfillment as well, so the other ETLs make her pull “her team” before they’ll let their team hop in. My Wait time at Checkout has been red the last 2 weeks because of it. Our front end is also responsible for pushing reshop… even though we are always running with a skeleton crew up front. Most days as the S&E TL I’m in batches, on register, covering DU or GS, or literally assisting in any other area of the store that needs help. I’m just a glorified TM.

Morale is so bad at my store because all the TMs are asked to do way too much with no help or support. Most days I’m actively in OPU batches while verifying INF and trying to run the front end and answering calls. I’ll end my night in priority pulls because the closing experts are overwhelmed and get no support. I pretty much run around like a chicken with my head cut off all shift.
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If only people knew how bad us cart attendants got fucked over, Had to do more than anyone up front, My last few months before quitting they trained me to help unload the trucks that came in and also helped the clothing department soemtimes after closing. Not worth $15 an hour when only a few people have to do more while they fuck over people with scheduling. I don’t miss working for that shit company. Managers don’t care and neither does corporate.
 

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