August 7, 2017 - WorstJobEver2012
Still the same horrible company
Stumbled across this site tonight and read so many similar stories of how this horrible company has wronged people that I had to sign up and add my own.
I worked for target from 2002 till 2012. I managed to last 10 years in the “culture” and I still to this day do not know how. I was an original member of the start-up crew at the T-587 Distribution center in Galesburg Michigan and when I first landed a job with Target, I thought I’d won the job lottery. It didn’t take long to find out how seriously wrong I was.
Target scoped out a location in southern Michigan to better serve their stores up here in the mitten state. The promised jobs in an area of our state that had been hit HARD with unemployment and underemployment. there were over 8,000 applicants for the initial workforce when we started up and the line stretched around the building as far as the eyes could see. Things were great at first. Everyone thought that they had scored a job with a company that actually cared about people. We heard them tell us that every day! after the first year however we all at different times found out that that was just the canned “culture” spewing from the talking heads that passed for leadership. Little by little the ugly started to surface. Our initial general manager was reassigned because he was too nice to the people under him. Evidently he was not producing the results that were expected from him and his pleasant attitude and concern for people were getting in the way of that. each subsequent replacement (we had 4 in the ten years I was there) turned out to be more of psychopath every time.
People would go through the management ranks in that distribution center like chit though a goose. We found out later that our DC 587 had been designated as a “Training DC” for Target and as such, the makeup of management was constantly fluid. There was never a clear vision of what we were supposed to do or accomplish as “teammates” because there were never individuals in management long enough to form or implement one. We referred to whatever came from upstairs as “The Flavor Of The Month” because it was always changing. In the 10 years I worked there both as a teammate on the floor and in building support roles, I had no less than 62 different supervisors. Some of them were not even there long enough to learn my name, but they were all given the authority to rate my performance. One of them even went so far as to call me in for a review and tell me how unsatisfactory he felt my performance was only to find out he was talking to the completely wrong employee when he nearly forced me to sign the “coaching” paperwork at the end of the review. No apology or anything was ever given (of course).
Later as the years progressed, we found that those of us who had been there for a while (5+ years) were being singled out one-by-one by management because financially as a group we were making more than Target was comfortable paying in that DC. It was leaked that when the building was opened, Target got huge tax breaks for building on what was going to be land used for a landfill and that in the initial hiring process they also got incentives for hiring people who were already unemployed thereby taking the burden off the state for those who may have been drawing unemployment. As these breaks and incentives ran out, the core group of initial hires were proving to be too expensive to keep on the books. So production standards were increasingly ramped up and unequally applied to the workforce. Good people were forced out for 98% percent to standard performance while other who were more recent hires were kept for performance that might not even break the mid 80’s. Target had also underestimated how long the initial core of first-hires would stay at T587. The had planned for attrition that just didn’t happen. It was blatant and no secret and there was nothing we could do. Since I left in 2012, I have heard from the very few left on the inside that I still know that now the DC has gone so far as to contract with staffing services to fill positions. Easier to hire and fire, cheaper and you don’t have to provide any benefits I guess.
The whole time all of this was going on downstairs, the management upstairs (GL’s and SGL’s) were busy self-congratulating themselves on how great a job they were doing. Some of the people brought in for those positions were the worst kind of human trash I’ve ever seen. From narcissists, to mentally unhinged, to control freaks, to sex addicts. They were all represented well there. the worst was a married male GL who was actively turning a blind eye to grossly sub-par performance on the part of one of his female subordinates for time spent alone with her with the office door closed – if you know what I mean. It was an open secret for years. Imagine that in the ethical, moral and “family friendly” organization of Target! Another GL had managed to get Target to set aside damaged goods for a charity he was secretly affiliated with and was using his position to have undamaged electronics and other high-dollar items marked as damaged and added to the haul that he would then fence online outside of work. His co-workers upstairs knew about it and never said a word. In fact, when he was finally found out I actually sensed that some of them were jealous that they had not figured out a scam like that themselves first.
Ultimately they got around to me and one day after openly expressing my disgust at how Target actively refused to refer to holidays by their Christian names such as Christmas and Easter but rather “winter holiday” and “spring holiday” the wheels were set in motion for me. Unloading container after container of “winter trees” was particularly insulting every year. Ultimately I was walked out for “conduct in opposition to the success of the company” whatever that means. I went out to breakfast, got my thoughts together and thanked God I was no longer there. Two weeks later I was working somewhere else and have never looked back. My advice to anyone working there who is dealing with any of the kinds of things I’ve talked about in MY experience is to get out quick. I kept hoping the place would come around and be the kind of organization they portray themselves to be on the outside, but it never happened. I wasted so much of my life working for such an evil, and horrible organization and I regret it to this day. Anyone can do better than to work for Target.
Thanks for reading this to the end and Good Luck to anyone on the inside and welcome back to sanity and reality to those of us on the outside!
R.F.P. T587 employee 2002-2012.
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Great post until the part about "after openly expressing my disgust at how Target actively refused to refer to holidays by their Christian names such as Christmas and Easter but rather “winter holiday” and “spring holiday.”" Come on........ Who cares what they call it. Not everyone is a Christian....
Absolutely right. Perhaps I should have used the terms, "Historically Accepted" or something along those lines. Easter has been called Easter since the 7th century and Christmas has been called Christmas since the 10th century. I see no reason to stop doing so now. The reason I used "Christian Names" to define them in my post is because that is what Target, and for that matter, you as well seem to be afraid of - the fact that those holidays have a religious background. So get over it Snowflake. I'm sure every calendar that Target sells this year with have them listed as such as well. They will make money off of what they are afraid to call by name.