July 1, 2013 - Lalien
Cart Attendant Hell
Most people will probably see this as an angry ex-employee that’s mad because he got fired. But this one is just for the archives, it doesn’t really matter if anybody reads this or not. This is for my own closure.
Being a Cart Attendant at Target has made me feel the more insignificant and unappreciated than I have ever had in my whole life. It is one of the worst jobs in a retail position but it also happens to be the one of most important jobs. It’s like the big toe on the human body, it’s such a small, and insignificant piece. And you feel as if you would be the same off if you cut it off, but then if you tried to walk or even stand, you would fall to the ground. As a college student with no work experience, I wasn’t expecting anything much better, and I was willing to accept that, but a little bit of slack would have gone a long way for me.
My duties were:
– Getting Carts
– Cleaning the restrooms
– Cleaning spills
– Taking out the trash
– Doing carryouts
– Gathering hangers
– Making sure the bags were stocked
– Helping guests
– Taking the salvage items from the service desk to the back room
– Hopping on the cash register when backed up
Most of my co-workers cringed at the thought of doing my job. In fact, I was applauded for being out there and doing my job. During the summer, a woman walked up to me, gave me $10 and said, “This is how I met my fiancee, he worked out here and this is where I met him. I know this job sucks, but hang in there.” There were some days where I couldn’t walk by the end of my shift, because I was too tired or chafing too badly. However, I never complained about how the job was too hard, and maybe I needed to be moved. Never. Sometimes I would ask for a little bit more slack, but bitching and complaining? No. I actually liked the challenge it gave me. But remember how much one person can handle. We are human, after all.
One day, the manager of the store asked me if there were any carts outside. And I said, that I didn’t know, the cart area was bursting at the seams with carts, so I figured that there would be a handful. And he said, “I pay you to do only one thing, and that’s to get carts. And you can’t even tell me if there are any out there?!” On a side note, a few weeks earlier, he had me dig through the trash for this lady’s keys. Did he pay me for that as well? It’s really saying something when the manager belittles your position and makes you feel smaller than you actually are.
Looking back on it, it’s sort of amazing, how much work I was able to do for the last 8 months. And what kind of extreme conditions I would have to overcome to do my job. Sometimes the carts were so hot, that you would get a small burn on your skin, sometimes it was so cold that the cart would stick to you and other times it was absolutely storming! And that’s just something that I never thought my manager was able to understand. Somedays the carts would go as fast as I brought them in, and I would be out there all day to keep up and wouldn’t be able to do any of my other duties. It was just a big giant lose-lose situation, so you had to weigh your priorities so you could see which tasks you could go without doing that you could get in the least trouble without doing.
My tasks weren’t limited to only my own. Some days the lines at the checklanes get so backed up that I have to help up there. And god forbid that a customer has to wait in line! And sometimes, the person in charge up there decides to have me help up there for awhile, while I watch all of my carts and duties slip away from me. This would be perfectly alright with me, I don’t mind helping out my team, but when I get yelled at for it? Hell no. I can’t pick up everybody’s slack while maintaining my own duties. Sometimes they have to realize that this is ONE man handling all of these responsibilities.
I must admit, I was given several warnings to get better. And everytime I stepped it up. I was given an evaluation period in September, and by the end of that month, they were going to tell me if I get fired or not. This time around, I even got numerous compliments. Nobody ever voiced any concerns. It’s mid October, and I think that I’m in the clear, and maybe that I finally earned my spot in this company and a new guy came in, and I was given the absolute honor of training him. Words cannot express how honored I felt. But it turns out that I was training my own replacement. October 30, 2012, I was fired. Apparently, I didn’t improve significantly enough, and they had to let me go. I just wonder why they didn’t fire me sooner when the evaluation period was for September? They used me, had me run around the parking lot and the store for hours on end, so hard that I was mentally exhausted all of the time from work just to fire me in the end. I wanted to keep my job, so that I could finally give my girlfriend a great xmas when she comes down to visit from Ohio. But now I’m left scratching my head and looking for a job. But it’s a bittersweet feeling, even if I had a full 24 hours until my next shift, I just felt like crying. The thought of entering that place made me sick, and I still get a little woozy when I see khaki and red.
Do you want to work for a company like this? You tell me.
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I must say that you're analysis of the Cart Attendant job and how the people that work it is spot on. I'm a Cart Attendant and get little if any respect from "guests" or my immediate supervisors, who change more often than I'd like. Thankfully for me some of my supervisors are nice enough to not fire me, yet. But there attitude is such that I wouldn't be suprised if it came to that.
Honestly, you don't sound that angry. You sound like someone that had let the system fuck him into submission and not try to fight back.
I share your pain, I really do, because I too was a cart guy. When I worked for them, I made the bosses lives very unpleasant for them. Since they were disrespectful to me, it was only fair they got the same in return, especially since they were just complete fucking morons. And the customers weren't any better. Some of them I wanted to fucking pummel until I was covered in their blood, because they crossed me in some way: threats, running the stop sign when I'm crossing the road, honking their horns to get my attention...fuck, even one nasty cunt tried to pull the race card on me, and I'm mixed race.
I had the sense to quit before the shit really came down. That, and I had another job to fall back on (though that one sucks, too, but to a lesser extent).
I feel you on almost everything you said, you hit the nail on the head with how the cart attendents get treated and what the position is.