August 13, 2015 - snakeman5001

My experience at Target

On June 14, I started working at Target at the Hilldale Shopping Center in Madison, Wisconsin. I am originally from Iowa but I have an aunt who lives in Madison, and I needed the extra money for college so I moved to Madison for the summer. I was hired on the spot during my interview to work in the Cafe, due to my food retail experience in working in campus dining. Things didn’t go so well from the start when I barely got a few days of training. There was someone else to train me to close the Cafe, but she apparently was “sick”. So I ended up learning how to close by myself, which I thought I did pretty well. Then there were the tasks. I had a lot of tasks to do. For those who have worked in the Cafe, you know. But for those who didn’t, I had to restock food, stock the backroom, clean the Coke Freestyle and Icee machine, restock the condiments, wash dishes, etc. These may not seem a lot, but when you are constantly getting guests coming up to you and you’re trying to work on stuff that takes a while, it can get very frustrating. This was a job that should’ve had two people working together, not one.

Now what about the team members? Since there was a Starbucks right next to the Cafe, I mostly got along with the Starbucks people. They were awesome! They were great people to talk to, and if I helped out with their dishes and stocking I got a free drink. Now there were two people at Starbucks I didn’t like as much. The first was the team leader that interviewed me. Once I started working, she was real bitchy towards me and the other Cafe members but she was real nice towards the Starbucks. She soon got promoted to working HR, but she was still bitchy. The second person was a bit better; she became the new team leader who replaced the bitchy one. Sure she was still a little stern, but she was fair to both Starbucks and the Cafe.

Now how about my experience with guests? Honestly, I barely got any. Since the Starbucks was right next to the Cafe, more people would go to Starbucks. I mean, would you rather have a hot dog or a latte when you shopped? Most of the time, people would come and get an Icee or a pop. Sometimes when the lanes were swamped, I would get guests sent to me by the GSA or GSTLs to ring up their stuff. That wasn’t bad, but something told me that the GSA and GSTL people weren’t always aware about what I could and couldn’t ring up. There were a few people I had to turn away because I could ring up everything except the alcohol they were buying as Cafe can’t ring up alcohol. I think the worst customer experience I had was with this old lady. I was cleaning up stuff from the last person who ordered something. From the corner of my eye, I could see this old lady coming up to the Cafe. I was getting pretty close to finishing up until the old lady cleared her throat to get my attention. She was snooty and bitchy the whole time I was taking her order, and when I told her to have a nice day, she just said “Yep” like she was some stuck-up person.

Overall, I didn’t like my work experience at Target. The worst would have to be the employees picking favorites and dumb employees in general. The guests were nice, some were very talkative but that was only if I even got guests. My last day is the 24th and I don’t plan on transferring to the Target in the city where my college is. Target is a great place to shop at, but it certainly isn’t a great place to work.

Likes(9)Dislikes(2)

Employee Experience / TargetSucks