Target reviews

If you are a student and want to work part time in a non-seasonal position, forget about it. The hours are good during winter months, but once spring and summer comes you will be lucky to get even 5-10 hours a week unless you are a manager or a full-time worker. This might only be with my position (Backroom Team Member), but I've asked other part time students working at my Target and they all have the same problem with varying degree's (cashiers and sales floor tends to get slightly more hours though). Training is horrible, at best. They tell you the bare minimum to get the job done, and feel dissatisfied with you when you don't do it at the levels they wish out of you. I also have absolutely no idea what much of the "lingo" is around the store as it's never explained to me and I was never given an orientation book. Unless you are a manager, you won't have any idea how the "system" works in the store and how things work. Most of the time the only way I can work is if I ask exactly what I am told to do because they never train on how the store itself operates, as a backroom employee. As someone who likes to take initive, this frustrates me greatly. Management frequently side-steps issues or questions you have in regards to your job, because they just don't want to deal with it at the time. Be prepared to be left in the dark with a lot of things. Due to so many people working, especailly as a backroom employee, work at Target is highly impersonal and you'll find it hard to work with people on a daily basis that you legitimatly look forward to working with. Raises are so low they might as well not exist. It's an extremely fast-paced atmosphere. You are frequently expected to seemingly impossible numbers of tasks in a short time. For example official "rule" with zoning an isle and placing things in the right place is about a minute per isle, which leaves no time to actually put things in the right place if you don't know exactly where they go, clean up the isle if there is a mess, properly position all items so they are in the front and noticable, organizing the section, and replacing missing items/price tags.

Leadership, working conditions and hours, chaotic working environment, very cliquie upper management, work and jobs in general are very "in the trenches", My store team leader was highly unethical, lied to the district manager often out of fear of his job. It seems like everyone is afraid for their jobs and your position is in constant threat, or at least that is how the District Team Leader in North Los Angeles ran their district. The leaders promote cut-throat competitiveness amongst peers which places everyone on edge, no one is truly willing to help as if they deem you a competitive threat. Its every man for themselves and just hang on for dear life. Many of the companies troubles do not need to be and the culture does not need to be the way it is, if there was leadership actually supporting the company's values and not just paying lipservice. In the retail locations, much like other competitors the store support is slim. I am not sure how such a profitable company cannot afford to staff their stores. Visits are everything, it seems that there is a visit almost every week, making priorities change, but not in a productive or business effieicnt/healthy manner. There are often conflicing messages and misaligned priorities. Store leaders end up investing all of their payroll into visits then sacraficing customer service at the end of the week, just to save face on the visits. As an HR leader I spent alot of time throwing away trash and clearning the trash compactor, or walking aroung collecitng reshop merchandise, I decided to leave to advance my career and it worked!