Archived Be Bold!

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So today one of our Senior TL's found out via an email from the Logistics ELT the he was to put together a desk and a bookcase that had been set aside for a guest. The previous day the ELT had a Bold moment, and told a guest if she bought the two pieces he would arrange to have a team member put the two pieces of furniture together for her, free of charge. So now we are in the furniture building business. Unfortunately it was also his LOD shift, so it took him most of the day to build the two pieces. He would screw in a screw and get called away for 40 mins, put in another screw, get called away for 20 minutes, etc., etc.Yikes!
How do you ensure that a piece of furniture is 100% built correctly when you can't even put two screws in at the same time? Would this Log ETL also sell display car seats and strollers if the situation arose? Ugh.
 
So today one of our Senior TL's found out via an email from the Logistics ELT the he was to put together a desk and a bookcase that had been set aside for a guest. The previous day the ELT had a Bold moment, and told a guest if she bought the two pieces he would arrange to have a team member put the two pieces of furniture together for her, free of charge. So now we are in the furniture building business. Unfortunately it was also his LOD shift, so it took him most of the day to build the two pieces. He would screw in a screw and get called away for 40 mins, put in another screw, get called away for 20 minutes, etc., etc.Yikes!
How do you ensure that a piece of furniture is 100% built correctly when you can't even put two screws in at the same time? Would this Log ETL also sell display car seats and strollers if the situation arose? Ugh.

We can't sell or donate any of the displays, even to employees, and I know I built them just fine (in one sitting mind you.)
So WTH is this ETL thinking?
 
We have sold displays in the past. I have a coffee table that was a display on a focal. I've always been told that displays (like most of the furniture) get donated to battered women's shelters, and that's what I've told guests who ask to buy the displays. They seem happy with that answer. As bike builder, Target takes a liability risk every time I build a bike, and I never received any training, just learned on the job.

As a side note: I believe there is an opportunity for target to offer assembly on furniture & make some extra $. Say $15 more for assembly. I've had tons of guests as if they can pay someone to assemble the item they're purchasing.
 
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Has to do with their insurance coverage and whether there's any fine print in the purchase. If they decided to roll out assembly services at select stores, drew up a contract or policy defining liability and insured themselves against it they'd be perfectly reasonable to do so. Plenty of furniture stores offer in-home assembly and pre-assembled pieces. In Target's case though this is basically the wild west, so that ETL is probably opening up the store/corp/that TM to a lot of liability that won't be covered by their insurance.
 
I pity the cart attendant who has to help a guest jam a pre-assembled desk or entertainment center into their Toyota Echo.

facepalm.gif
 
So GSA told me the other day GSA's are no longer allowed to hop on AT ALL -- this was pretty much SOP at my bigger Super Target, but really seems to screw Pfresh stores... :/
 
I'll be pretty surprised if that ever makes it to my store. Would be both handy and a pain in the ass.
 
Guess I'll see if there's anything in my e-mail or anything like that tomorrow night.
 
Yep, we got that directive last week. Problem is that the salesfloor generally ignores calls for back ups from the GSAs. And the LOD may or may not support us in calling it out, but it's never fast enough...making for a lot of guests staring at me and making comments, asking where our self check out is and debating about abandoning their carts.

Great fun, I tell you.
 
F---- corporate. If there are many guests. I jump on a lane. Our store is too small and we dont have enough sales floor coverage to handle back up.
 
Today I had a guest who was adamant that the Xbox Live 12 month card came free with the purchase of Forza 5 for xbox one. The ad clearly shows that the Xbox card is free with the purchase of an Xbox One console(which comes with the Forza game).But of course the ad description on the 3x3 sign says "free with purchase of xbox one forza"(instead of xbox one forza bundle), which means the ad team at corporate messed up. I showed the flyer to the guest but he wasn't placated, so i called the GSTL over and he overrode a $60 target coupon. Now I completely understand wanting to get back guest loyalty but there is a limit. Also I have worked in electronics for 5 years and I know my regular guests pretty well. This particular guest wasn't one of them. We never had his business before so why are we bending over backwards and losing money for his satisfaction? I think there should be some kind of guidelines for being bold, however 90% of the time we should just do whatever the guest thinks. It's far easier and it gets the guest on with their day and gets me back to zoning or helping other guests. At the end of the day the money isn't coming out of our(team members) pockets.
 
TBH in that case someone at corporate signing done goofed on their wording (which is a far too common occurence) and the guest called them on it. That kind of stuff doesn't really get to me other than shaking my head at the silliness of it and getting on with my day. It's the cases where TLs and up tend to do ridiculous unwarranted things to placate guests that tend to get my blood up. Especially when the guests are clearly not on the level.
 
Guests will play stupid in order to get free crap. They will do whatever it takes to make sure they spend the least amount of money.
 
Yep, we got that directive last week. Problem is that the salesfloor generally ignores calls for back ups from the GSAs. And the LOD may or may not support us in calling it out, but it's never fast enough...making for a lot of guests staring at me and making comments, asking where our self check out is and debating about abandoning their carts.

Great fun, I tell you.

Document when your leadership doesn't back you up, and just continue to hop on anyway if they don't respond.

All you have to say is "LOD there are no responses I am hopping on, I need you to watch the lanes or have someone come backup", you might piss them off if they're really that ignorant of checkout wait, but they can't get you in trouble for it.
 
I wish all stores would be on the same boat with all this Be Bold Stuff. Seems each store is deciding for themselves what the limits will be. At our store there seems to be no limits, I only found this out recently, when our DTL came to walk the store, asked a team member "If you had a guest who wanted to pay $100 for a $1000 TV what would you do?" The team member responded "I wouldnt do it, thats not within reason." The DTL's response was...."Do it." I about fell over! And this came from a DTL, but after reading other posts, like the 10 to 30 percent post, which I feel is reasonable to make a guest happy, I realized Spot has not made it a cut and dry to all stores what it means to BE BOLD. Again, such inconsistancies company wide.
Then I would be like "I'm going to break. I need to buy a TV!!!!"
 
Yep, we got that directive last week. Problem is that the salesfloor generally ignores calls for back ups from the GSAs. And the LOD may or may not support us in calling it out, but it's never fast enough...making for a lot of guests staring at me and making comments, asking where our self check out is and debating about abandoning their carts.

Great fun, I tell you.

Document when your leadership doesn't back you up, and just continue to hop on anyway if they don't respond.

All you have to say is "LOD there are no responses I am hopping on, I need you to watch the lanes or have someone come backup", you might piss them off if they're really that ignorant of checkout wait, but they can't get you in trouble for it.

And I spent most of the night on back up last night under my STL's directive anyway due to the scheduling glitch and the week before a holiday madness.

I've gotten to where I've started taking a page out of the indyme voice's book. If I have to make multiple requests, I simply say, "team, I need back up at the front lanes, this is the second request." It makes it a bit more obvious I'm being ignored.
 
And I spent most of the night on back up last night under my STL's directive anyway due to the scheduling glitch and the week before a holiday madness.

I've gotten to where I've started taking a page out of the indyme voice's book. If I have to make multiple requests, I simply say, "team, I need back up at the front lanes, this is the second request." It makes it a bit more obvious I'm being ignored.


What about assigning certain people to backup for each hour throughout the day.
That way at least you're guaranteed those people will show up.

They did that at my old store, usually one floor person (one hardline, than a softline, than switch) with a TL as the step up after that.
 
And I spent most of the night on back up last night under my STL's directive anyway due to the scheduling glitch and the week before a holiday madness.

I've gotten to where I've started taking a page out of the indyme voice's book. If I have to make multiple requests, I simply say, "team, I need back up at the front lanes, this is the second request." It makes it a bit more obvious I'm being ignored.


What about assigning certain people to backup for each hour throughout the day.
That way at least you're guaranteed those people will show up.

They did that at my old store, usually one floor person (one hardline, than a softline, than switch) with a TL as the step up after that.

Generally they want softlines responding because there is heavier coverage there. But depending on who is in there and their mood, that may or may not happen.
 
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