April 23, 2015 - BIackGoId
My Target story as a Backroom Team Member
[ I originally posted this on a job site for people to see, but I’m putting this here cause it fits]
PLEASE READ BEFORE APPLYING TO TARGET, FOR THIS POSITION.
Right away, I’m gonna say this is not a woman’s job. I’ve only seen one female do this job and she quit after a couple months.
I’m writing this review not exactly to complain, but to help other people who may be in my position, or may end up in my position in the future.
Let’s start from the beginning, I applied for this position with the typical ‘macho’ mindset. “Backroom Team Member? For $9.50 an hour, all we have to do is stock products and carry boxes around? Not having to deal with the customers? Peace of cake!” I thought this would be fun. Wrong.
For one, $9.50 an hour may sound like a decent amount, considering how most other people working minimum wage jobs are pulling in like $7-$8 an hour, but it really isn’t.
This position, in particular, is set to work a very small amount of hours a day.
As Backroom Team Members, our job is to stock the store before it opens.(we rarely meet this goal, as we’re almost always short-handed on team members)
The typical schedule is from 4am to 8:45am, that’s almost 5 hours a day.
If you’re good, & I mean GOOD, they’ll throw you 3-4 days a week, that’s about $45 you make a day. Let’s say one week you score 3 days, then the next you have 4, $45 x 7 is $315 (before taxes). That’s about $300 you make every two weeks. Now if you’re a hard worker, or someone who’s been working a good while, you’re gonna know right away, that’s a small check.
But maybe you dont agree, just because you dont understand the labor you have to put into this job, which I’ll do my best to help you understand.
When I got called in for my interview/orientation, I got hired for this position along with like 5 other guys, after about two months, 4 of them quit.
The hours weren’t ever a problem for me, I wake up at 3am with no problem.
This job doesn’t effect my social life at all, I never miss out on anything because I work while everyone’s sleep pretty much. Only thing is you might have to go to bed slightly early just so you can get up in the morning with no problem. (10-11pm) I dont recommend sleep aids, because usually you can still feel them when you wake up and go to work, and they can hinder your performance. (yes, I just used the word ‘performance’ for a job. This is that kind of job)
When I first started working here I didn’t know what to do, or how to do anything. I would clock in and stand there and look around like okay, where do I go now? Everyone would break off in separate directions. Even though all of our job descriptions were the same, we were assigned to do different things. And being that I was still in training, they always tossed me in different area to see what I was best at. They had me unload the truck. (for the stronger, rougher guys who dont mind getting soaked in sweat for an hour) They had me on the line. (basically standing in one spot, throwing boxes on the correct pallets for an hour, mostly for the older, immobile guys)
& then, there was pallet-pulling, we are the guys who run around with pallet jacks, taking the pallets (usually stacked high with boxes) and pulling them to their designated areas. Like we’d take the snack pallet to the food section, toy pallet to the toy section, and then we’d take the individual boxes and bowl out the boxes to their correct aisle. (not as easy as it sounds) then we’d go back and do the same with another pallet for an hour until the truck was unloaded. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But being that we’re usually short handed on team members (we’d have 4 pallet pullers instead of 7) we usually fall behind on the truck and get yelled at the entire time. I guess when someone doesn’t show up to work, they expect us to over-exhaust ourselves in order to compensate for that missing team member. It makes a difference when 1 doesn’t show up, so it must be miserable when 3 people decide to sleep in and not come in. Right? Yup.
That’s stage 1 of my day, after the truck is done we have to go to our stations and work the boxes that we bowled out. (rip open the boxes & stock them) Also, all while getting yelled at. For what you may ask? Not much, they just expect us to wake up at 3am, with superhuman speed, for $9 bucks an hour.
That’s all, we just stock products, it just sounds so easy. But it hurts that it actually isn’t.
It’s not even the actual job you should worry about, it’s the management. We’re all grown men here, yet they talk to us like we’re 12 years old. They spy on us, breath down our necks, yell at us and criticize us for the smallest stuff, almost as if they feel like they pay us too much? I used to be the ‘yes, master!’ Type employee, they loved it. I was running and carrying three boxes at once, I took pride in my job. What happened?
I remembered that I only get paid 9 bucks an hour. I only make like $40 bucks a day.
I realized I was being a proud slave to this place. Don’t work here, dont apply here, dont let your kids or siblings apply here either. Not for this position.
We get the least amount of respect, out of anyone else. They don’t treat their day team like this. (the people you see working there during the day)
You see those guys walking around, smiling, full of energy, their shirts look clean and ironed. That’s the day team.
When you come in the store the second it opens (before 9am) and you see a couple of disgruntled, tired, slightly dirty looking team members who dont exactly look like they woke up on the right side of bed, that’ll be us. The backroom team members who have to wake up at 3am and do the dirty work.
We love it when the store opens, and the customers come pouring in, cause that’s when the management immediately cut off their lousy attitudes and start sucking up in front of the customers.
They yell at you for moving too slow, they yell at you for moving too fast (cause if you hurt yourself or someone else, that’s money outta their pocket, if you break something, that comes outta their pocket)
The pay is very lame, for the labor you’re putting in, in order to make it on your own, you HAVE to be getting some kind of income from somewhere else, i barely hit $1000 a month, who can live off that? Who? Seriously.
As for advancement, lol what?
There’s people who’ve been working here for 15-20 years, what do they do? Same stuff i do. Get yelled at while they stock the store. How much do they get paid? Same amount as me.
How do you even work here that long? How do you even work here for more than a year?
This whole ‘team member’ ‘teamwork’ bullshit, is bullshit. There is no ‘teamwork’ within the target ‘team members’. The only output of teamwork comes from my team (Backroom Team Members) I’m gonna go on a rant, cause no other position realizes how much we hate our jobs. The dayteam will come in and look at us like we’re crazy for looking so.. Disgruntled? Anyway, as a Backroom Team Member, we have one job. That is to wake up at 3am, unload big ass trucks, stock the floor, then go home. But no, they wanna milk every ounce of labor they can out of you before they let you out. How? Lemme tell you. We finish unloading the truck, we’ll stock the floor, then they’ll have us help OTHER team members, for example, softlines. They’ll have us go over and help them fold clothes and zone. What the fuck? Don’t they hire seperate people for that job? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have the softlines girls come over and help us unload the truck, or pallet-pull. (which they don’t) When we need help, we don’t get it, we just get yelled at more. But when other people in completely different sections need help, we gotta go help them. I REPEAT. When they finish their workload, they get to go home. But when we finish our workload, we have to go help them finish theirs as well before we can leave. I don’t mean to sound like a dick, I don’t mind lending a hand. It’s just the fact that we don’t get help in return is what pisses me off. Go-backs is another thing. We’ll finish all work mentioned above (including pFresh) & they STILL refuse to let us clock out. They have the nerve to have us do go-backs for the last 20 minutes, you kidding me? What the fuck do they have their day team do? Are you gonna have them stay at work late to get an early start at unloading the truck, so that our workload will be smaller? No. We literally have to dip into everyone’s workload. Black Friday, is a hell-hole. Why do they have the normal backroom team come in for Black Friday? What trucks are we unloading? I’ll tell you why they call in backroom team members, because they want people who can operate at those types of hours, work at a fast pace, and carry around heavy shit for long periods of time. How about the Day Team that’s there? Why don’t you wake them up at 7-8am so they can zone? Rather than having us do it for some dumbass reason. We fucking hate zoning.
The discount is a joke, it’s 10% off pretty much anything, but all that really does is beat down the tax. (helps when you’re buying alot of stuff at once though)
They remind you as often as they can, that you’re expendable, or Replaceable. They’ll yell at you and tell you “we can find someone to do better than that in less than a week”
Really? Watch him quit after a week
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Although I agree that working for Target is not the best, not even close, I have to disagree with the complaints about your job in regards to lifting heavy items. First off, this day in age, women are all about the equal pay. Equal pay for equal work and it sounds like you were earning your wages. The Target I was at, never had women do anything that required lifting anything heavy. Never unloaded a truck, never would lift furniture, complain that they had to handle plastics, etc. I transferred to another Target and it is the same situation. Everyone in each department should be able to do every aspect of their job, that includes sweating your ass off throwing a truck!
Consider yourself lucky though, you started off at $9.50, they started me off at $8.00 with 15+ years of experience.
The only reason the trucks are so huge is because they rely on a computer to tell them what they need. No STL has control over the items being brought into the store. They don't deplete their stock, only add to it and that makes it real hard to actually do the backroom work. On top of that, they have a pathetic planogram department, (not the people, the process).
Needing a degree to get any higher than a TL is just dumb. Anyone that can be reasonable with people and a desire to work hard, can be an ETL. Most of the time, the ETL's are just walking around making sure people are working. Good use of your expensive degree in Political Science or Biology!
There are so many things wrong with Target but I just don't have the time to type it all! Hope you leave Target ASAP and find a more rewarding position soon.
I have to put in my two cents by saying that if you have a college degree, work at target and are one of these culprits who belittle other employees in your workplace, you deserve the embarrassment of having your worthless degree reflected by target. You want to be a P.O.S. and think you will get something different in return, uh uh, you're deeply disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, I respect earning your degree rightfully so, but thinking that only by this consensus you are above everyone else, you're wrong. And I'm glad you're stuck working at target because you're what's wrong with this country's educational system.
I don't mean to hijack your post but it's ridiculous thinking about this, and how it's a common denominator around all target's. I guess I must be "fortunate" that my location isn't as bad as some of these other stories but then again target isn't my main source of income so for now it's whatever.
And now you're wrong.
The second I say "this job is only good if you're in college or something"
You just cancel out everything I say and assume I just think I deserve more because I go to college?
Wait, where did I say I even go to college? Your whole post is shit, because I dont go to college.
This is a shit job, college or not.
Literally the only reason I even included the word college is because the scheduling shouldn't get in anyone's way because its early morning, and its a good side job, like I stated in my post. But you'd know if you actually read it rather than beating away at your keyboard the second you decided to assume I was just some uppity ass college kid.
Although I agree with what you just said, the other poster whether relevant or not is an accurate assessment or Target and a college degree. There are a large amount of people at the Targets I have worked at that have one BS, two BS and even a masters. Paying that much for college to allow yourself to end up at Target and thinking that they know more than the experienced people. They get so many people that have never worked before, straight out of college, that feel like they are owed something and they don't care who they run over to get there. Target allows this behavior. But you are right, they jumped the gun and replied with something that doesn't fit your initial statement.
The 10% discount is only good if you're allowed to couple that with pricematching.
Did this guy seriously say not a woman's job?! I'm 5"3 125lbs and I worked as a backroom team member for four long years. I actually became the longest running team member in the backroom, I watched people come and go like a revolving door. While the job is strenuous and they will work you like a dog anyone can do it, it's actually an incredibly easy job. The pay and hours however suck, I was hired on full time but only saw 40 hours during Christmas/holiday season. The management is poor and they don't care about anyone.