August 23, 2013 - Knuckles
My Experience as a Cart Attendant
Hey there. I’ve been working at a Super Target as a Cart Attendant for roughly 16 months now. I’m writing this article to express my opinion on working for Target; particularly as a Cart Attendant. I’m not trying to be emotional and lash out and call Target crappy, but I’m sure a majority of my expressions will be negative. It won’t be solely about my responsibilities with my job, but also about my interactions with the upper management and guests. I’ll try and be as objective as possible.
So I started back in March, 2012. I applied and not even a week later I was called up about a position in Cart Attending. I accepted and was interviewed three times all in the same day. Freaking AWESOME. After the second interview, they said I was free to go home and they would call me about scheduling my final interview. Not 30 minutes after I got home, I got called up and they wanted me to come in as soon as possible. Lucky me. The STL interviewed me and I got the job. My offer was “Cart Attendant with the chance of moving to Electronics” since I expressed interest in Electronics (I’m a big computer and video game nerd). My first six months or so were fine. I felt good about my job. I was making decent cash, meeting new people, making new friends. In particular, I met a girl (a GSTL, who later became the team lead at Starbucks) who I grew to like a lot. We’ve become close friends since then, but that’s an entirely different matter. In short, I’m thankful for this job because of that reason alone, plus for the other friends I’ve made. I’ve learned that even if your job is totally awful, you can still meet cool people there, and you might as well find at least one good thing out of a horrible job. Before you think anything, I’m not saying my job is god awful and no one should do it.
Anyway, the holidays come around. Things get INSANE. The upper management decides to hire five extra cart attendants. There were already four when I got hired. One quit and another was fired. We definitely needed the extra attendants, but five more right off the bat? Regardless, I was the one who trained all five of them. There were a couple of days (on the weekend, mind you) where I was training two at once. I managed to get them all trained properly. I was glad that the managers thought I was good enough to train five team members, but not that they were all getting my precious hours.
Now, at first, I assumed at least two of the guys they hired were intended to be seasonal help, and would be laid off once the Holidays blew by, so I figured I’d just deal with the low hours until that time came. But I’ve come to realize that this wasn’t going to be the case. The two that got fired were fired well after the Holidays were gone. Pretty much RIGHT in to January, the store’s business plummets. We had six guys at once and we were all begging for hours (well, most of us at least, especially me). After they got fired, there were still four of us, and the hours were still pretty lousy. I was getting 24 a week at the most. Eventually, another guy got fired. This is where things get interesting.
I approached the GSE (ELT for Guest Services) about the hours for the cart attendants. It’s a pretty well-known fact that cart attendants get the scraps when it comes to payroll. I’m sure others are in the same boat, like cashiers. I brought up the idea of NOT hiring someone new to replace the recently-terminated cart attendant. The GSE simply replied “It’s required that we have at least four cart attendants at all times. Her reason was “coverage” in case one of us calls out. I countered with the fact that NONE of us had called out for the past 5 months. The two remaining guys I trained had zero call outs since they were hired. We were solid. Plus, having an extra guy means nothing if he doesn’t even want to fill in for a call out. I myself NEVER take cashier shifts since I despise cashiering to the point that extra hours aren’t worth the frustration.
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I'm a cashier and cart attendant. What do they do? They hire 6 guys as cart attendants now so I'm always stuck as cashier always now. I was hired as cashier anyway, doing it the most of course. But now I never am cart attendant. Pisses me off. I hate being cashier really cause I hate the way people don't talk when what they want, how they want it, they look away and talk to someone else the whole time and than say I wanted paper. You have to ask for it, the management has made it so I must use plastic unless you ask. Not my thing, it's CEOs rules of business. Yet they yell at me. Not my problem, I don't yell or argue, I just tell them, if you need to complain, go to target.com, go to bottom and file complaint email in to target hard quarters and try to make CEO change his way. Probably won't though. Overall, we are fucked on hours due to this douche bag rich fucker CEO Greg also.
At least your store had extra guys on call. My store only hires enough too get by. A few years back my store started to hire guys who liked to come in late or call in at least once a week. Those guys are gone now but still, Target then likes to call the reliable guys who acctually do things on their days off and beg or demand that they come in special