- Joined
- Jan 8, 2021
- Messages
- 601
My 5-year anny came and went without a word from my leaders a few weeks ago. I've been thinking about how I've seen things go downhill steadily, breaking at times only to recover just enough to give us hope.
I'm a Fulfillment lead and when my team is picking in a store that has a green backroom and freight done on time, we are right up there with the best in the group. Like during that magic month after inventory when everything is buttery smooth.
My former store director scapegoated my team, filling one entire wall of her office with nit-picky metrics and names of my TMs. Passive-aggressive, leaving me lodged right there under the bus as its wheels spun. She talked shit about them all the time. That hurt, a lot. I didn't do anything about it except try to fairly push my team toward excellence, or at least improvement and corrective action in only the worst cases, like I felt I should. The reason I was a little bitch about it is that my SD was vengeful, and I overheard things I definitely wasn't supposed to hear, enough to make me not cross her. I was pushed by both the SD and my former ETL to motivate by fear, which I refused to do. It's kind of lucky I kept my job come to think of it. I suppose deep down they understood that losing me would hurt the business badly for quite a while. Not to say I'm amazing, but I'm definitely not replacement-level.
Anyway, as often happens, the Fulfillment team are black sheep. This sometimes happens to style, to market, to the front end, hell everyone except inbound/gm to be honest. But I'm out of the loop on everything. Planning meeting? Sorry, my business is about to collapse, I'm picking red batches. The communication is a wreck. I'll come in to close the store, and I feel like the proper thing to do is to sit down and discuss the plan and what has happened that day. You know, a basic handoff. My handoff is a couple of sentences before I have to jump into an OPU until closers arrive, or on really bad days I make a dash to the packing station to get Ship From Store done. Or maybe I just say fuck it and start loading up a boat with priorities because at 3pm we're 16%.
Some of the things I used to do that I now refuse to do: Write the schedule, order supplies, hire, approve availability and time off - mostly the things you do under your boss's password. I was good at doing those but I have to give them up, it's too much to do.
I asked in a thread recently how leadership hours are accounted for in other stores and it seems like after a lot of observing, when my hours are in the Fulfillment coverage bucket, I. Can. Not. Lead. I can't do it, pick and lead at the same time, even if it's Ship From Store where there's no time limit.
My team needs a leader who is always available to hunt that INF, to fix that backroom error, and address any of the dozen crazy mysteries that pop up every day. I need to be identifying and removing roadblocks, coaching and training, coordinating breaks so my team isn't treated like slaves, and I need to be almost never picking batches.
If my store were green and mean, yeah maybe I could afford to spend more time showing up the kids and making them chase down my UPH and INF numbers for fabulous prizes from Starbucks or whatever. It's not though.
So anyhow, we all know the insanity that is Target, how we've turned our back on our guests and our team members (as a company). We've lost what made us different and now there is nothing stopping us from being squeezed out of the industry, we're cooked.
But in the meantime, I think I'll just say fuck it - since it's fucked - and I'm just going to give it one last go, on my terms, and very aggressively run things the way I want to. I can't make my store work right, and the loss of my productivity is going to be a bitch, and it will lead to more backups and more complaining, but this is kind of the last stand I think.
Have you been through a similar moment? How did it go for you?
I'm a Fulfillment lead and when my team is picking in a store that has a green backroom and freight done on time, we are right up there with the best in the group. Like during that magic month after inventory when everything is buttery smooth.
My former store director scapegoated my team, filling one entire wall of her office with nit-picky metrics and names of my TMs. Passive-aggressive, leaving me lodged right there under the bus as its wheels spun. She talked shit about them all the time. That hurt, a lot. I didn't do anything about it except try to fairly push my team toward excellence, or at least improvement and corrective action in only the worst cases, like I felt I should. The reason I was a little bitch about it is that my SD was vengeful, and I overheard things I definitely wasn't supposed to hear, enough to make me not cross her. I was pushed by both the SD and my former ETL to motivate by fear, which I refused to do. It's kind of lucky I kept my job come to think of it. I suppose deep down they understood that losing me would hurt the business badly for quite a while. Not to say I'm amazing, but I'm definitely not replacement-level.
Anyway, as often happens, the Fulfillment team are black sheep. This sometimes happens to style, to market, to the front end, hell everyone except inbound/gm to be honest. But I'm out of the loop on everything. Planning meeting? Sorry, my business is about to collapse, I'm picking red batches. The communication is a wreck. I'll come in to close the store, and I feel like the proper thing to do is to sit down and discuss the plan and what has happened that day. You know, a basic handoff. My handoff is a couple of sentences before I have to jump into an OPU until closers arrive, or on really bad days I make a dash to the packing station to get Ship From Store done. Or maybe I just say fuck it and start loading up a boat with priorities because at 3pm we're 16%.
Some of the things I used to do that I now refuse to do: Write the schedule, order supplies, hire, approve availability and time off - mostly the things you do under your boss's password. I was good at doing those but I have to give them up, it's too much to do.
I asked in a thread recently how leadership hours are accounted for in other stores and it seems like after a lot of observing, when my hours are in the Fulfillment coverage bucket, I. Can. Not. Lead. I can't do it, pick and lead at the same time, even if it's Ship From Store where there's no time limit.
My team needs a leader who is always available to hunt that INF, to fix that backroom error, and address any of the dozen crazy mysteries that pop up every day. I need to be identifying and removing roadblocks, coaching and training, coordinating breaks so my team isn't treated like slaves, and I need to be almost never picking batches.
If my store were green and mean, yeah maybe I could afford to spend more time showing up the kids and making them chase down my UPH and INF numbers for fabulous prizes from Starbucks or whatever. It's not though.
So anyhow, we all know the insanity that is Target, how we've turned our back on our guests and our team members (as a company). We've lost what made us different and now there is nothing stopping us from being squeezed out of the industry, we're cooked.
But in the meantime, I think I'll just say fuck it - since it's fucked - and I'm just going to give it one last go, on my terms, and very aggressively run things the way I want to. I can't make my store work right, and the loss of my productivity is going to be a bitch, and it will lead to more backups and more complaining, but this is kind of the last stand I think.
Have you been through a similar moment? How did it go for you?
