Target reviews

As an executive you can count on a minimum of coming in an hour early and staying an hour late each day. That’s the minimum. It wasn’t uncommon for me or many OMs to stay 2 - 3 hours after shift catching up on the myriad of administrative requirements that kept emerging. These requirements were often under the guise of continuous improvement or safety so someone could make a name for themselves and get promoted. Only one shift is really great, 3 days of 12 hours each Sunday - Wednesday 6 am to 6 pm. The second best shift is Wednesday - Saturday 6 am to 4 pm. The rest of the shifts hours are varying degrees of bad meaning a poor work life balance. Poor communications among shifts and senior operations leadership. One shift will institute a change and not tell or coordinate with one of the next shifts so you come in and don’t know what’s going on or it will be in direct conflict a change another shifts exec team wants. That being said, Executives are empowered...to a fault. You can make changes, but many are of questionable or no value. Even at the Senior Operations Manager positions some want to make change to attach their name to a project just to show they are doing something regardless of the actual cost and value of the change. Operations Manager turnover is high. It’s a constant flow of new people being trained because the unreasonable workload to compensation. Knee jerk reactions to any potential safety incident be it real or imagined creating more work for all with little to no value. A lot of this stems from young OMs or SOMs (typically not young) trying to make a name for themselves to get promoted. Some of of the safety requirements/audits are check in the boxes to show safety is a concern but lead to no real change. Data is collected showing a safety or quality problem with a vendor for instance but nothing happens with the data other then the requirement for collection to continue. So why even do the work? But again, imagined or things that occur because of one TM or exec with no common sense or with very minimal risk seem to take a lot of time to “fix” or “mitigate” when there is little to no data to support it. You have to call into department meetings when you’re not on shift. Or if you’re on shift you will need to attend those or any one of the various team building or training meetings that often have little value and put you behind on what you need to be doing. The emphasis on continuous improvement is not focused and again results in SOMs and OMs often making questionable changes of little to no value in the effort to make a name for themselves. Work is constantly added to ones plate but very seldom is anything removed. There are simply not enough hours on your shift to get everything done that is asked or required without spending a disproportionate amount of time at work meaning a poor work life balance. Some team members will make almost as much or more than their Operations Manager with a little over time without the stress or amount of hours required of the OM. There’s very little advantage to being an Exec unless you stick around and can get one of the few senior spots. Often times a process is blamed when a TM or Exec are truly at fault for a safety incident. Sometimes it’s not the process, it’s the person or people involved.

Where do I start? Here’s some background... Like many, I was lured into accepting an Executive Team Leader position (Target's strange lingo for Assistant Store Manager) from a recruiting event on my university's campus. The trend at Target is to fill these positions with recent college grads (ages 21-24) rather than with older, experienced and more mature individuals. I already had a job at the time I interviewed for this position, but working for a much larger and well-known company seemed like a no-brainer to jump ship. Three weeks after my college graduation, I started "Business College" (Target's training program). The program consists of approximately 7 weeks of on-the-job training in a training store and 1 week of classroom training. The difference between myself and the other dozen hires that were in my "Business College" was I had nearly 7 years of retail experience, 5 of which was management experience. I worked full-time through college so I gained a ton of knowledge of the retail industry prior to starting with Target. This experience meant nothing to Target however. During my first few weeks into training at my assigned store, I spent time with different leaders learning Target's approach to retail. Most of my time was spent at the front end since my ETL assignment was "Guest Experience." Guest experience basically covers anything involving the front end, including guest service, Starbucks, Target Cafe, and cashiers. When I wasn't at the front end, I was occasionally stocking products from the backroom, maintaining the store, interacting with guests and getting to know the team. The one thing that isn't made clear to you upon hire is what your permanent store will be. I wasn't informed of my assigned store until about halfway through training. After my 8 weeks of training were up, I started at my permanent store. I once again had to go through the motions of working with the various leaders in that building to get a feel for them and how that store ran. I also had to get to know my new team. So... that's some background information. Now onto why I hated working for Target and you will too... - You will work a minimum of 50 hours per week. I have a very strong ethic, so the amount of hours didn't bother me at first. However, once you get into role, you will be working more like 55 hours per week at the minimum. Don’t expect a lunch break either. Target preaches of a work life balance, but you will not have any life outside of work. - The pay seems great on paper, but if you divide the salary based on your actual hours worked, it's not great at all. The salary for college recruits was $57000/yr when I was hired (this varies by market). Now do the math based on working 55 hours per week... the hourly rate isn't much. - Salary for ETL recruits off college campuses is non-negotiable... My 5 years of retail management experience meant nothing to Target. - Most of your time is spent doing busy work... walking the store and checking in on team members, interacting with guests, store maintenance, etc. ETLs are expected to be very hands-off. In other words, you aren't expected to become too task focused. While this makes sense to an extent, you can't just rely on team members to do all of the work. This is especially the case when payroll gets cut and the workload is increased. - Between 2 and 4 of your shifts each week will be what are called "Leader on Duty" shifts. This consists of stepping out of your work center and taking charge of the entire business. You will take calls (most of which are team members calling out), respond to team members or guests that need assistance and basically check in with everyone on the floor. As LOD, you can not perform any tasks in your work center. You are the go-to person. If it's an uneventful weekday, expect this to be the most tedious, dreadful and most unproductive day of your life. - TARGET DOES NOT EVALUATE YOU BASED ON YOUR PERFORMANCE. YOU ARE EVALUATED BASED ON HOW WELL YOU CAN SPEAK AND WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. You could be the best ETL ever but if the DTL (Lingo for district manager) comes in and you are unable to speak to the business as a whole (in others words, throw around some BS) or you don't have the look they want, you are viewed as a terrible leader. Most stores have 4-10 ETLs, each assigned to a different aspect of the store. In most cases, there is a communication barrier between ALL leaders so it is nearly impossible to know how every aspect of the business is performing. For example, since I was in charge of the front end, I didn't always know how the backroom team was performing. There's a reason why there is an ETL for backroom... This is a piss-poor way of evaluating a leader in a store of this nature. - If you get stuck in a store like I did, you will hate your job even more. I was placed in a store with an STL (store manager) who was in his 20s and LOVED drama in the store. He would sit in his office every minute of the day and never spent time on the floor. He would call ETLs into his office to speak poorly about other ETLs and team members. This created an extremely bad store culture and the more tenured and mature leaders would come to me to discuss how bad the store was. Granted I'm in my 20s, but I don't act like it. I'm not at work to make friends nor enemies... I'm there to work and collect my paycheck and that's it. I'm sure not all stores are this way, but since Target mostly hires managers that are in their 20s, I would expect it all over. This flows into my next point... - Target likes people who are overly bubbly and PHONY. If you are a more reserved kind of person that's serious about their work, this is not the place for you. If the DTL came in for a visit, you were expected to drop everything you were doing, run to wherever he/she was, and basically kiss their you know what. This is another reason why most ETLs hired are recent college grads... because they don't know any better and Target wants to mold them their way. The list goes on and on, but I think this will give you some insight on the position. I am happily no longer with Target and working for another retailer. Sorry for the long review, but I hope that if you're reading this, you don't make the same mistake I did...