Absolutely NO ONE answering phones for 1 and a half hours

Then why did you apply for a position that involves answering the phone?


I don't get y'all. Everyone acts like answering the phone is the hardest thing ever done. You don't believe in customer service? You don't think you should be assisting guests who are wanting to spend money and making sure you won't be a waste of their time before spending money? What the fuck is the super hard mental anguish of answering the phones?

For those who plan on leaving Target someday, what the hell are you going to do when you have a multi-line phone at your elbow and it is ringing while you are engaged in other work and job description is do both at the same time?

Answering phones is easy. Yeah, it takes a couple of minutes and yeah, everyone is overworked, but it's an easy task. The only hard part of the task is getting someone in the right area to take the call, and if everyone is doing their damned primary job of helping guests, then getting someone in the area on the phone should be easy. Everything else about a phone call isn't all that of a problem.
Yep job did not include answering phones when I was hired. Nope I don't want to do my job if it involves answering phones.
 
I thought the zebras could only log in to 4 departments at a time? I’ve often signed in to BR, GM, Guest Services, and Leadership on the weekends.
 
Look, for my experience, it was only a couple of months of being at Target that every single shift for two or three months would be FRO, then I'd get a single non FRO shift, and then I was back to exclusive FRO. Got a new ETL a few months before I left, my schedule was crazy for about a month, and then more often than not I was carrying the phone. I guess they liked my phone skills, it certainly wasn't my fitting room organization skills.

So I've been there. I've been in the trenches. I carried the phone more in those 2 1/2 years than most people in the old softlines.

And it ain't a big fucking deal. They have a million questions, transfer. They have a million questions and the other person is busy, tell them to call back. They have simple return questions, just answer them. They want a high demand item, no we don't have it/yeah we have a couple but we can't hold it, I suggest you come in quickly before they are gone.

Not that hard. And again personal experience, I preferred it to when I had to handle a call while simultaneously typing a 50 page legal contract. That last is a brain twister and hope attention to detail and multi-tasking prevents errors. Talking about a toaster while having a non-verbal exchange through smiles with a physical guest waiting for help is nothing. And there's a lovely little button called "hold". Whether you genuinely need them to hold, whether you are just tired of the blah blah for a second and want to bang the phone hard before picking the line back up with a smile, they aren't going to know. You can put them on hold until you can get the need met (whether theirs or yours). You can put them on hold while you help the guest in your face.

Phones are not a big deal. They are nowhere near as big of a deal as people make them out to be. I have some hearing loss, I struggle to hear people on the phone, and even with that, it's not a big deal.
You are a rare one. Every member of Softlines/Style at my store absolutely hated answering the phone. And from what I've seen and heard, every other department feels the same. It was all my team and I could do to stop ourselves from dancing in front of Guest Services singing "In your face! In your face!" in our best Peter Griffin imitation when they moved the console up there. Still warms my heart just thinking about it. 😁
 
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