February 28, 2015 - Drihten
Here is why ETLS all suck.
Hi- I am a former ETL, and I would like to explain to you all why we all suck at our jobs.
First off, you are all correct- the company loves to hire 22- 23 year olds fresh out of school, because they are young and bright eyed and dont know anything else. As for me, I have ten years of experience in retail management and merchandising, with a degree in English (yes indeed, Target WILL hire anyone with ANY degree). AS soon as I was hired, I was told that none of that mattered or was applicable to my job. An ETL works at least 10 hours a day, often 12 and 13 because again, theyre 22 years old. The company does not look too kindly on people with kids. Oh, and you will NEVER be promoted to ETL, degree or not. Sorry. No matter how good you are at your job or know the processes inside and out, the company just doesn’t believe in that.
That said, the biggest problem is that we ETLS are not trained, at all, whatsoever. At no point does anybody tell us what our job description IS, aside from a hugely nebulous, “manage your team”. For training, they dump us into a training store with a trainer that may or may not know how to do their own job. And you guessed it, most of the time they dont. Most of us in training just get put to work on basic jobs that the store is too understaffed to fill- for me personally, I was front end, and spent six weeks pushing cafs. Not learning the register, or the hugely complicated return policies that I was supposed to be training others on. I spent six weeks ashing when I was going to learn this stuff, and was constantly reminded that I was not hired for an “office job”, and that “We will get to that soon”.
Side note: Guess what an ETL DOES need to know? How to do a schedule, read profit reports and check task lists. These three things NEVER come up in training.
At any rate, we all seem stupid because we get to our home store and are forced to learn the basics from our team. And as you all have stated, its very hard for an ETL to seem competent when they have to flip on their light so a GSA can show them how to process a WIC check. So we fumble, and try to act competent, and wander around because we really have no idea what to do, because the rest of the team is going about their day and we know that whatever we jump into, we are going to slow down the process and fuck things up.
And finally, we spend a crazy, sick, STUPID amount of time on the phone with tech support trying to get our piece of shit, useless registers working. Target thought it would be a great idea to open up a bunch of call centers in India, so when something here breaks, we can call them and spend forty minutes explaining to them whats broken, and yes we did turn it off and turn it on again. If you think your pay is low, try arguing with a “manager” in India who refuses to send a tech out to fix 12 of your 16 registers because it would cost the company too much, and theyre probably just down because of “updates”. What updates? They dont know, but its always “updates”.


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Ahh this would explain a lot. You mentioned you're a former ETL. Is it because you finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel and went elsewhere or what? I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen registers just fail, and the TLs act like just rebooting it is going to do something... LOL! After witnessing how awful the registers' software and such is, I'm not the least bit surprised Target's system was hacked and millions of people's information was stolen. What is sickening is that the company doesn't give a rat's ass to send people to fix it, or better yet hire people to UPDATE the god damned fucking system before another hacking incident takes place. At this rate, Tarshit is going to become the next Kmart if not Circuit City.
apparently tarshit was told about the incoming hack but incompetence or arrogance, I don't know which, ignored the alerts and carried on with what they were doing. They had all the preventive measures in play but there's no point if they aren't going to listen to the warnings of incoming intruders.
One day I decided to read the terms and conditions of the Target Red Card. Funny enough, the security portion of the agreement states "18. NO SECURITY — Your Account is unsecured. We are not taking a security interest in any property in connection with your Account." It blows my mind that people sign up for the credit red card without reading the terms and conditions first. May be if people read this part of the agreement they would've thought twice about it. Tarshit clearly does not care about the security of the card holders' data by them not listening to the warnings AND with what is said in the security portion of the terms and conditions.
they only started to care when they had the feds breathing down their back. That's why the canadian version is a hell lot better since it's a co-branded mastercard. RBC still has full control of the card and takes care of everything.
Their solution to the data breach is mind boggling. I'm surprised visa and mastercard aren't suing their asses
Wow! If that doesn't clearly spell out corporate incompetence... I don't know what would. Hiring a person without a training plan shows complete lack of judgment on their part. Their entire business model is not sustainable... Or maybe it is since there never
Is a shortage of desperate people looking for work.
I was thinking that I know 2 out of say 20 ETLs who were promoted from within. Also I really feel sorry for you. My store is a training store also and at least the ETL-GE training tries to cover cashiering, Guest Service, even Photo.
But I'm not surprised to be at a better location that most.
I have gotten a retail management degree from a college myself and I showed my Target manager. She said oh ok. Than nothing happened ever since. It was just oh ok like oh ok whatever yeah not gonna do nothing for you. It didn't either. I was 22 when I started in Target but I never got leader of any kind. Yet these women and guys who are new from 3 years ago that came after me start as cashiers also and than they get promoted to be leader of guest services counter and step ins when GSTL break or call in. WTF? Why not me? I been there 6 years and have college degree of retail management! WTF is wrong with this company? They are pure shit on the face of this earth.
Yep. I'm in a similar situation where I have an AS in business and a military background and their reaction is basically "meh". Got to love this VIBE shit. Time to abandon ship and kick back with an ice cold one while watching this company crash and burn.