December 8, 2018 - season2813
Seasonal in November
My first time in retail in over 10 years was at Target. Never again. I got hired instantly because they were doing a hiring spree for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas – and clearly stated: No one is allowed to take off. I didn’t mind and took the job for some extra money. Everything started off great. I was Inbound/SRT. 4 AM on double truck days. 6 AM on single truck days. Often times, I could get a little “over time” (we all know there is no such thing), especially on double truck days. On single truck days, they were more stringent about what hours you could work and tried to send you home early.
Well, I had entered the truck one day and figured I’d help someone. I had no clue what I was really doing, but I had just been pushing the boxes from the truck to the line. The girl I was working with, with a manish complex, was loading all the boxes on to the conveyor belt. She got a little backed up and busy and was helping the manager lift some stuff on to a pallet, so I figured I’d just keep the line moving and grabbed a few boxes from the truck. “Fucking get away, I don’t need your fucking help. Get the fuck off my line” is what I heard. I was new, so I was like, “Why is this bitch being so nasty to me?”
Anyways, I now knew my place: don’t touch the stuff in the truck. Don’t go near her. Avoid her. Only grab boxes when she pushes them far enough for you to reach. So I get put on paper which was new to me. I had dropped off a few boxes in front of their appropriate places, when all of a sudden, the bitch comes to my area and says, “We don’t leave anything on the floor.” And I immediately reacted with, “Nope!”
Ever since that day was when the trouble started. A manager would put me on paper all the time. He wasn’t a nice guy at all, but knew how to delegate and get the job done. I’d say if there was anyone who was career at Target, it was this guy – must’ve been there at least 20 years. A bit overweight, no sense of humor at all, and a very dry and boring personality. I did not see him smile or laugh once in the time I worked there. I even tried making small talk with him once about how his Thanksgiving was and the answer was, “Okay” and he kept walking. He was the type of guy that Target loved – work, work, work, and then work some more! Want a reward? MORE WORK! That was this guy.
So everything is pretty much going okay my first month. I’m exhausted because this is my second job and getting off work at my other job at midnight and having to go to work at 4 AM in the morning was exhausting. But I’m just learning to live with it… needed the extra money. And I’m getting used to what seems to be my permanent area: paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, and the plasticwares and trashbags.
Then one day, slammed with a double truck, Corporate shows up. This is when everything changed for the worst. Corporate complained about my area being unfilled, as they kept letting me go early before I could do pulls, and he seemed to only let me do “priority pulls” and then send me on my way. A day after Corporate shows up, he’s micromanaging me like crazy, watching me, telling me I have to get things done by a certain time, so I think nothing of it, and just assume he’s doing this because he’s got to put on a show for Corporate.
A few days later, he calls me into the office and says I’m doing boxes too slow, by about 2-3 minutes. He asked why I was going slow. Anything I said he was writing down, “Well, I thought I had time to take a piss… maybe take a shit, I mean I only get 15 minutes…” or “I was helping guests find their stuff” Why does 5 minutes matter? So I said, “Well, I’ll try to do it faster, I’ll set a timer.” He said, “Well, if you can’t be faster, we’re not going to keep you on.” At this point, I thought to myself: “I have no intentions of staying if I have to put up with you, buddy.” Not for the money. Not for the hard labor. Not for the exhaustion. Not for the aches and pains. Not for the 4 AM. Not for the 6 AM. And definitely not staying at a place that has no appreciation or respect for their employees, let alone their seasonal workers. Definitely not for Target.
Next day, he comes over and tells me I’ve got 15 minutes to do 25 boxes. I was running and just throwing random shit on the shelves wherever I saw it empty, just to appease him. Probably didn’t go there, but he wasn’t giving me any time to put it anywhere. I managed to get all but 3 of them finished. He comes over and points to his watch and says, “You’re now almost 5 minutes over.. let’s go!” So I get that done, take my trash back, grab another flat and proceed to get that done. Mind you, I didn’t even bother to take my 15 minute break because I knew I didn’t even have the time he was giving me. He tells me I’ve got 20 minutes to do this one. As I’m doing it, I have customers approaching me, asking me where things are, and an old lady I decided to take her to the area she needed to be in. He comes back, asks me why I’m still working on the flat, and I explain to him that I needed to help a guest. I try to go grab my final flat, but he sent me home instead, despite being scheduled for another hour.
A few times he sent me home, despite knowing there were pulls in the back, then tell me I was behind the next day when I came in for my shift. He would come over to check on me, help me finish up, and tell me to go home. I’d ask him if I could go in the back and get any pulls and it was always a random answer: yes or no, depending on his mood. I really couldn’t work like this. I was trying to keep Target’s store full, but he was not allowing me to do my job.
After I’d get everything done, with him monitoring me towards the end of my workday, he’d constantly look at me with disapproval as if I were going too slow. I asked another team member if he was doing this to him, giving him time limits. He said he wasn’t.
During the last day, I got tired of him micromanaging me, timing me, telling me how slow I was. I knew it was the final straw when I was rushing so he wouldn’t say anything to me and I accidentally sliced my finger with the box cutter. I bled out on several boxes before I was able to stop the bleeding. I had stopped taking 15 minute breaks by then. I stopped peeing for my entire 4-6 hour shift just so I could manage to get my work done within the “time limit” he gave me. When I went to search Google for “time limits” at Target. I found nothing. Before I left, my final day, I said to him, “Thanks for showing me what it’s like to work at Target.”
I can only speculate that my first interaction with the girl, the manager, and Corporate stopping by caused him to get on my ass. Fortunately, Target was my second job, paying me about half of what I was making at my primary job, so I just didn’t really feel the need to be stressed over nothing, and called them up and told them I wasn’t coming back. I would’ve loved the hours as they were giving them to me, but I just couldn’t stand management at all, who was preventing me from doing the work I needed to do! I simply wanted to do what they hired me to do! Unload the truck, stock the shelves. And while it’s almost impossible to keep everything stocked, I was prevented from actually doing it due to feeling like I was being micromanaged. Sometimes I’d be working on a flat and I’d walk around the corner, nearly bumping into him, as I was grabbing more boxes to unpack, and there was my manager, just standing there, counting my boxes. It was insane. LET ME WORK DUDE!
I left Target before Christmas came.. so I’m sure they are now going to be busier than ever. Should’ve been nicer. I’m sure they’ll pull through. They didn’t care about me at all. I should’ve probably spoke up to HR, but no one in HR seemed to even give a shit about anything. There was no recognition about anything. They want you to upsell their store, but helping out customers goes completely unnoticed, and I barely had time to do it. And at the store I worked at, there was just no time to fix the shelf displays to make everything look neat and organized.
I worked at Target for a month… seasonal job, extra money, helping Target out to keep their shelves stocked during the holidays… but after going through all that, I’ll never work there again. I’m happy to have found this site. I know I’m not really a part of the Target family, as I only worked there for a month, but I’m really glad… it was only a month.
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Wow I’m glad your out. I thought sweatshops were illegal in America. I would have called the employee hotline on your supervisor even if I was quitting soon to help prevent it from happening to someone else and for payback as well.