August 17, 2014 - thorproject
One Year In…
I have been lurking around this site for a few months and agree with the general sentiment — Target is a piss poor company. The sad part about it is that there are a lot of good people who work hard for Target with little or no recognition. Those are the people (who care) that keep Target going — not the idiots that are on top.
I’m coming up on my first year in Target, however, I’m not a newbie to retail or to management. And at least at my store, I can truly say that things are so bad — it’s like going to work on the Titanic as it goes down on a daily basis. If I cited every issue that I’ve seen in my Target, this would probably turn into a book — but alas I’ll just do a few tidbits:
- Management incompetence: My Target has had four STLs in the short time that I’ve been there. Out of the four, only one had the competence to run the store properly. And as a result of her management, the store was run properly (zoning, re-shop, instocks, flow, etc). Contrast this with the latest STL — who I call the bringer of chaos — the store is an utter disaster. Why? Because the former STL treated people like they had brains and allowed them to do their jobs within the proper infrastructure. The latter STL is a “you gotta do it my way,” micro manager type — which is an idiotic approach for any type of work that requires team work — retail or otherwise. For instance, I almost told him to shut up the other day when he hopped on me about pulling product forward while doing a frantic 4×4, reshop, whatever we we’re trying to do. This was because everything was in chaos (about the worst I’ve seen it) and nothing was getting done. And amidst all of this chaos — you want to tell me something about zoning? Nope, talk to me when you start running the store right…
- Equipment failures: I’m a long term IT guy and never have I seen a company with such a poor handle on technology. For instance, the Pharmacy department went for a FULL month without a working register. They had to walk guests up to the front of the store to ring them up. WTH? On a daily basis (as a member of the instocks team) I have to hunt around for a PDA to do my job. In one instance, it took two hours to get a PDA — that then started malfunctioning. Again WTH? Oh and don’t even get me started on broken registers, constant software failures, etc. Not good, particularly when it is in conjunction with the aforementioned STL chaos…
- Guests get away with everything: Why allow guests to get away with things like buying unlimited loads of product so that they can get the gift cards and return the product later? Why allow returns on products, where the guests clearly caused damage to or used the product? Why allow guests to use 100 or more coupons when you know it causes problems? Why allow guests to put their kids on the bottom of shopping carts? Particularly, when their kids get injured, they immediately turn around and sue you. Again WTH?
Anyway that’s my short and to the point observation of my first year at Target. BTW, I’m only at Target because of the need for additional income. I’m working on my own business and do have feelers out for other opportunities — but for now this is what I have to deal with…
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shitty managers is why tarshit is losing money
I don't really agree with that... there are def poor managers that impede good results but how much of that is a result of poor senior leadership giving ambiguous direction and systemic issues that aren't controllable within the stores. There's lots of times I feel terrible for the poorer performing STLs (and ETLs) as there is soooo much beyond their ability to effect. That said, store leadership that is disrespectful is inexcusable.
if you think one month is bad without a register for the pharmacy how about 3-4 months without one? Last time I went into target and looked at their pharmacy area they still didn't have a register and until you mentioned that thing about the pharmacy having a register, I thought it was a target thing and target pharmacies don't have registers. don't know if they have one yet. Haven't been there ever since april
Yeah, I do agree that a lot of Target's issues are from upper management. Which, upper management issues are not just Target's alone. I'm a firm believer that CEOs who screw up companies or cause big time losses should be fired out right. That being said, people like Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan/Chase) should not allowed remain on jobs or people like Gregg Steinhafel should not allowed to walk away with 61 million (and "I'm sorry I screwed up"). Anyway, getting back to my store's STL (the bringer of chaos) -- which in the case of my store -- he definitely is the issue. Our DTL (Lord Vader) happens to be a direct and to the point guy. Aside from him wanting to be treated like Lord Vader -- he does know what he's doing -- I give him that much. For instance, I and another TM became inadvertently caught up in a DTL visit where we both overheard him telling the STL to stop pulling people off of critical processes like pricing and instocks for other tasks. He also told the STL that the store would suffer if he continued to pull people in this manner. The STL, then kissed the DTL's butt and told him he would change his ways -- but the next day -- things went back to normal. So again, in this case it is def the STL who is the problem.
Yeah, I've heard of some reports of Target pharmacies going as long as a few months with out operating registers. In the case of my Target, something went wrong with the new pharmacy software and it hard crashed BOTH registers that they had.
I thought they were saving money and just deleted another register from the old zellers layout to make it different from zellers. Except the pharmacy is kinda located in the exact same location. Reason I thought it was normal was because they deleted the mall entrance checkouts and replaced them with self checkout machines.
Why does Target still exist?