May 1, 2015 - Tarshitcankissmylilywhiteass
Saying Target isn’t evil doesn’t make it any less evil – My story as a flow team member
This is my story as a flow team member at Tarshit. I’m not here to piss all over everything Target because I give credit where credit is due. I also won’t pretend that my experience compares to a lot of posters on this site because I realize many have it far worse than me and I don’t want to trivialize the experiences of others. I’m just bitter because my first job ended up being shit.
To start off the job itself isn’t terrible. It’s a lot of physical labor and you’ll be very sore at the end of your first few shifts but you get used to it and at the end of the day it’s what you signed up for so you can’t really complain about that. I was perfectly fine with the pay as well. It was $8.75/hr, which was 75 cents more than most of the other jobs I was looking at. At 12 hours (actually more since I stayed longer a lot) a week it was perfect for a guy in college just looking for some spending money. My coworkers were cool and friendly and I never had any issues with the costumers either, but maybe that was just a function of the kind of people who shop weekday mornings. Helping them was actually one of the more enjoyable aspects of the job. I was even down with the barbecues and events they did. I can see why these might be insulting to people who make a living from the job and would be much more motivated by earning a living wage but for someone in college just in it for a few hundred dollars a month to spend it was a fun break from work and a free meal. This is where the good in Tarshit ends.
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way I’m going to rant about what ultimately ruined it for me. The management is rotten to the core and its the root of all evil in Tarshit. What it ultimately boils down to is their management has no fucking clue what the hourly workers go through because they’ve never been in that position, which is why the expectations for the stock boys are so unreasonably high. According to other posters here they hire the ETLs straight out of college without regard to the type degree. I’m not 100% sure if that was the case in my store but the bitch certainly fit the bill. She was a couple years older than me at most and clearly had no ability to understand that the performance standards she pulled out of her ass were completely unworkable in reality. They had this one box per minute rule in stocking shelves. For those of you who don’t/didn’t stock shelves let me just go over what that entails. You take the box off the pallet and you carry/push/drag it to the shelf, you cut it open and stock the shelf, putting any leftovers in back stock. You’re expected to do this in one minute for each box. If you’re doing this for a 3 pound box that belongs an isle down this is doable. A 50 pound box that needs to be taken halfway across the store this is impossible. And they actually count the boxes to calculate the time it should take you and you get bitched out if you don’t make this ridiculous standard. This is the ETL. The TL was much better and more understanding if you couldn’t make it, I suspect because she actually helps do the work. The other thing is the people who are in charge of scheduling, payroll, IT, and basically everything else have no clue what they’re doing and nothing works. The special names target has for everything sounds stupid, but once you see the reality it’s just angering. Customers are guests, employees are team members, stock boys are the flow team and assistant manager is the executive team leader (overpaid babysitter is more like it).
So here’s the story of how I was eventually driven to quit. It started off great. Management and coworkers alike were friendly and helpful. That was just a facade for management it would turn out. But anyway, my first week or two went great. I actually stayed 3.5 hours after my shift ended on my first day, and I stayed late probably 80%-90% of the time to show I was dedicated and get more money in my paycheck. They had this big barbecue for all the workers too which was cool. Like I said, if you need to make a living from this then yeah it’s insulting and they should be giving you a raise as a reward instead of this but for someone working retail for side money it seemed pretty cool.


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They didn't dare call quebecers guests but instead decided to call them clients apparently.
As a cashier, I can completely sympathize.
My GSTLs, and even my ETL were pretty cool, friendly people when I was hired. But of course they're all gone now, replaced by a bunch of corporate tools and glorified babysitters. My coworkers are still supportive and we all have a good sense of comradary and all but their morale is so low it's not even funny.
My ETL expects guests to wait in line no longer than eight seconds. EIGHT. SECONDS.
Anyone who's ever cashiered in their lives knows that this is a damn near impossible standard, especially when there's two other people in line and they both have full carts. Sometimes people just have to fucking wait.
I'm about ready to quit, honestly, but the job market in my area is so piss poor I've got nowhere else to go.