October 28, 2014 - formerlover

Target used to be a great place to work…

Target was my first job 15 years ago; I was 16 when I was hired.  Minimum wage was $5 something, Target started at $6.00, $0.25 raise after you passed your first 90 days.  If you were kept past 90 days you started accruing paid time off, had reasonable health coverage options as PT, and were eligible for cost of living increases plus your performance increase.  I was hired for hardlines and had plenty of training: a day of onboarding (general policies, store orientation, safety videos) and two weeks of peer training.  I had a designated trainer who I shadowed for all my shifts, with the exception of 1 cashier shift where I shadowed someone else to learn the registers for back up.  Once I started college, I could take educational leaves and know my job was still there every summer, winter, and spring break.  My STL trusted me and knew me by name, my ETL was great and really cared, and all my TLs were at least competent and fair if not more.  I was there just shy of 5 calendar years, but it was ~3.5 yrs “work time (what counts for performance increases)” when you took out my leaves.  I started at $6.00, and by the time I left was up to $9.45 just from increases, no promotion (at a time when minimum wage was up to $6.40).  I truly loved my job.

Unfortunately, Target, like most companies, followed the lowest common denominator when it came to employees in order to save cash and be competitive.  The sad thing is, I watched it all start to happen: there would be a new “change in employee policy” every time I came back from school.  The first thing to go was paid time off – Anything already accrued stayed banked and could be used, but you couldn’t earn any more.  Then the insurance changed (I didn’t need it at the time, so I didn’t think too hard about it).  Then you started to see personnel changes: new hires weren’t getting the same level of training, the “level 2” position was all but eliminated (not quite TLs, but were paid more to have specialized knowledge of a particular area: HBA, Electronics, Lawn and Garden, jewelry), newer TLs and ETLs had a different mindset.  I was somewhat isolated in my area at my store.  I was in high demand whenever I returned from school because I had been trained and crossed trained for things they just weren’t training anymore and leaving it to the TL. “My” ETL transferred to softlines – I picked up lots of shifts there my last return before leaving for good.

The perfect example of what was changing in the company was my last performance review:  I got a ton of Red Cards, best on the sales floor other than 1 guy who always worked electronics.  This was back when you got 20% off your first purchase, so it wasn’t hard to get them if someone with a full enough cart walked by and you bothered to ask. The performance review was based on the last 12 months “worked”.  For me, this was really a little more than 2 years on a calendar because of the educational leaves.  The ETL in charge of the review had known me for maybe a week (she started while I was on leave).  Most of the review she let one of the TLs who  knew me fill out, but she had “final say” on all reviews.  One of the points they grade you on is Red Cards, so she pulled a report from the system that showed Red Cards for the past 12 calendar months. I was pretty low on that report since I had worked maybe 5 of those months, so I was given the lowest score possible for that section. I tried to point out that wasn’t the right range due to my leave, but she basically told me to get over it and the review was already submitted.  I missed the highest $ amount raise by 1 point.

I only left because I was moving to my college town year round.  I tried to transfer, but between botched paperwork, and maternity leave from our HR TL and “we’re not sure we have an immediate opening”  I ending up finding another job with the company I’m still with today.  My brother is a TL at Target and my sister is a cashier at Target, so I’m not totally out of the loop on today’s target 🙂  I don’t hate Target, it was a great job (12-15 years ago), but today’s Target is not the same employer I worked for.  In retrospect, I’m glad my transfer got botched.

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