Archived Can corporate just stop pretending that guest service is a priority anymore?

[talan123]

This may be because we had a bad night at my store, but somehow they managed to not schedule a backroom closer and no opener in electronics so the entire area was just left alone the entire day with the occasional person walking by. Dutifully, the backroom guys, until that afternoon, came by and did the auto pulls and they piled up until I got there.

So the only available LOD was gone because he had to do all of the backroom duties, I was unavailable to guests because apparently nobody ever set up a display of movies for Thor (including the new cases for the BD of EVERY NEW RELEASE) and I had about six hours to accomplish that and get MMB ready for a scan in the morning for research. Plus we beat our sales goal by ~10% and I had six time the number of questions as normal. Our AP guy's eventually decided to start helping us out with our auto-pulls because we were so maxed out .

The total available team members on the floor was two. Not two closers, just two people. That's not even enough for some team lifts.

How can we possible make helping the guest a priority if there is no way we can even communicate with them because we are so overwhelmed? It just seems that nobody cares about helping the guests nowadays. Even though it's expensive to constantly get people into the door to shop yet once they are in here, we just kind of wave them off with a "You are on your own..." attitude. Seasonal is such a disaster at all times because nobody spends anytime over there and thus nobody knows where anything is.

 

[TargetTeam]

Join the club! That has been happening more and more at my store.

 

[sjf10718]

It's possible to make it happens it's your store that's looks to be spending payroll on the wrong places ... Their are ultra low volume stores that are making it happend... But again it's either payroll being spend wrong or productivity is bad. Example we had that issue in our store where logistics team was spending so much of our payroll well it took my stl to come at 2 in the morning on a truck day to see why well hat he saw was lazy ness productivity very low and so much chit chat .. After that day she chew out the logistic tl and etl about that alot of ppl got fired and writing up and trust me now days my stl will come in early to ensured that anyone in logistics and backroom is working not slowly... But fast and accurate ... And she told all of us tl if we see anyone not being productive to send them Hm... Hours are right around this month but it's still possible to make it happend if best practice is being follow for store operations...

 

[sjf10718]

Tight * around this month ...

 

[GlobalTargetTM]

I went through my old Target today... it's a C volume store. I saw 3 cashiers, a GSTL, 1 guest service and that's it. I walked/shopped the whole store. Front end was backed up and they called for backup, heard nothing on the walkies the entire time, not even a reply, then the GS person came over. Everyone looked burnt out/pissed off.

The store was busy as always, but before I left I noticed fewer and fewer people coming in/being scheduled, and them not replacing anyone. Maybe Targets new direction will involve shifting the remaining focus from service to productivity/lower prices like Walmart. After all that's pretty much where it is now anyway. Who's kidding who.

 

[Guest Attendant]

Last few times I've been at my target there had been long lines for the checklanes. Not as bad as Walmart (my walmart has like 26 lanes compared to the 14 at target. 10 being "normal lanes") but getting there.

 

[b72pkdPhv]

So the only available LOD was gone because he had to do all of the backroom duties, I was unavailable to guests because apparently nobody ever set up a display of movies for Thor (including the new cases for the BD of EVERY NEW RELEASE) and I had about six hours to accomplish that and get MMB ready for a scan in the morning for research. Plus we beat our sales goal by ~10% and I had six time the number of questions as normal. Our AP guy's eventually decided to start helping us out with our auto-pulls because we were so maxed out .

I want to be the worst kind of devils advocate and suggest that you are, perhaps, complaining in the wrong manner. When a CEO sees something like this, HIS retarded mind will think "From the sounds of it you got all of the work done with a fourth of your usual staff. Maybe we should do this more often to save money." It really does remind me of the manager from Retail Comic.

I, too, have noticed the amount of cashier's declining rapidly over this past year. The LOD's are very frank with me, and the generated schedules from corporate computers are consistently reducing cashier hours even though the holiday season is approaching. What they are doing, instead, are pulling more people from the sales floor that went to sales floor to AVOID CASHIERING. The end result is absolutely devastating for scores: Red. All red. And then the district manager has a tissy fit because of our red cashier scores, while simultaneously cutting more cashier hours. AAAAAAAAGH *pulls hair out*

 

[dutifulTM]

Our store keeps hiring on new cashiers while giving older cashiers less hours. :|

Kind of pisses me off, but I'll be honest in that it bugs me more to see our scores constantly drop... especially for checkout speed. =_= I mean, it's a given but... bah.

 

[Barcode]

Stores with low sales get low payroll :/

We are green on pretty much all of our service scores, except we hired new cashiers so Checkout went down to yellow

 

[b72pkdPhv]

Yeah, see, this is why I am an absolute Demon to the new people. I enforce best practice like it's the word of God simply because, to do anything less, creates a steamroll effect and the whole store goes down. I don't give the new people any quarter, and I often get hated by the new people for this. My scores are still green, and my payroll is awesome, so ask if I give a ************.

If you can get backed up, or at least hand-waved, by your managers...always try enforcing best practice. Even if it gets you the title of "strictest employee in the store".

 

[Barcode]

Theres a way of enforcing BP without having to be an ass Of course it depends on whether the person has a positive attitude or not.... There are the occasional negative employees that we've had, and even if I'm friendly on informing them about best practice, they blow me off

So far, the vast majority of our new folks are exceptionally pleasant people

 

[dek067]

we close with 1 salesfloor person friday night. we're a c volume. 2 cashiers, operator, lod, electronics for a friday night. pathetic.

our store is productive, our scores are good. our hours are drastically cut from last year, and we are running an increase over LY sales. i dread 4th quarter to the point i am going to ask for less days. we'll see how that goes lol

 

[RedDog]

At this point payroll is so low we do not even have a sales floor staff outside of one person in electronics who is off setting end caps half a store away and the fitting room who also is all of softlines. Guest service? Nope those days are long gone.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

That happens more often now.. But we do have 1 person outside of p-fresh, usually me doing my stuff too.

 

[Razorback]

So the store I work in isn't the only one with payroll issues..

My ETLs keep telling us payroll is bad because sales is bad, but how can we be expected to increase sales when Salesfloor TMs are very scarce and Flow Team's hours are being cut so product doesn't get restocked quickly enough. Because of this, I try my damnest to help guests whenever possible. But we're (instocks) understaffed (and have been for months), we are not able to focus on accuracy when scanning outs/research which creates another host of issues.. AP having to go back and change incorrect counts, backroom pulling stuff that isn't needed which costs flow/salesfloor time wasted by trying to stock said pulls, backroom having to restock products, etc.

Lets not forget Flow is also understaffed and under time constraints so they can't afford to make sure they are stocking accurately, this further complicates Instock team's job.

I just don't understand how this equation is supposed to work out positively.

While all of this is going on, ETL-AP wants one month out of the year to be green on his reports so he can get his superiors off his back (I applaud his efforts and I'll try my best to help him out, but at this point I think hes way in over his head tbh)

I'd like to know what corporate is doing with the money, because it isn't going into payroll.

 

[TargetTeam]

They snipped hrs really bad for next week and the following week and they wonder why we have back-ups :crazy: For example some people got 8 hrs for the entire week. Ouch!

 

[b72pkdPhv]

Okay, I am just about to dance up and down screaming and yelling at the management in my store. I logged in to the PDA and looked at the "huddle notes" while logged in as...I think team lead, it might have been ETL. You can log in as practically anything but STL just by using your workbench password. In the huddle notes, I saw something like 200 excess (that is, unused) hours _for the week_ combined with an increased profit of 15% (rounded numbers). So not only have we dropped hours store wide, which has consistently lead to a HUGE cashier shortage, but our profits are up too.

The store manager is basically squeezing this goddamn place dry, and then blaming us for how horrible the guest surveys are. Do these jerks get a bonus based on how many extra payroll hours they have or something?!

 

[Rarejem]

Short answer - yes.

 

[DotWarner]

It's also true that stores bank hours throughout the year so they have more during the 4th quarter. Yes, they should have enough hands on deck throughout the year, but stores do so much business during the 4th quarter that maybe your store's leadership team thinks it's best to save those hours for then. Is it best practice? Probably not, but neither is a lot of stuff that happens at stores.

 

[b72pkdPhv]

There is no such thing as "banking hours". The hour surplus or negative only applies for a given amount of hours for the /month/ (at least, so the ETL tells me), which means any surplus or negative does not count for your next months allotment. Also, I recall the hour distribution in the 4th quarter, we typically have more than enough given to us regardless. This sort of "hour hoarding" makes no sense to me unless someone is profiting from it by actively killing the store.

 

[Rarejem]

There is no such thing as "banking hours". The hour surplus or negative only applies for a given amount of hours for the /month/ (at least, so the ETL tells me), which means any surplus or negative does not count for your next months allotment. Also, I recall the hour distribution in the 4th quarter, we typically have more than enough given to us regardless. This sort of "hour hoarding" makes no sense to me unless someone is profiting from it by actively killing the store.

Apparently you and your ETL are new to Target. Banking hours has been SOP since I started over 10 years ago.

 

[b72pkdPhv]

Pardon me for not being a "veteran of Target", as if that were a badge of honor. Explain to me how you can "bank" on something that is RESET every month?

 

[invictustaylor]

Pardon me for not being a "veteran of Target", as if that were a badge of honor. Explain to me how you can "bank" on something that is RESET every month?

I don't know, everytime I sneak around the conference room after teamlead meetings, they have an hours maintained year to date score...

 

[DotWarner]

There is no such thing as "banking hours". The hour surplus or negative only applies for a given amount of hours for the /month/ (at least, so the ETL tells me), which means any surplus or negative does not count for your next months allotment. Also, I recall the hour distribution in the 4th quarter, we typically have more than enough given to us regardless. This sort of "hour hoarding" makes no sense to me unless someone is profiting from it by actively killing the store.

It didn't make sense to me but ETLs would point out that we needed to save hours for 4th quarter. Granted, I left Target right around the time the economy went in the toilet, so maybe things have changed and this has been discontinued. Based on what's been said in the other replies leads me to believe this is not so, at least at some stores. Yes, it's a big corporation, but that doesn't necessarily mean all stores are run the same.

 

[GlobalTargetTM]

It didn't make sense to me but ETLs would point out that we needed to save hours for 4th quarter. Granted, I left Target right around the time the economy went in the toilet, so maybe things have changed and this has been discontinued. Based on what's been said in the other replies leads me to believe this is not so, at least at some stores. Yes, it's a big corporation, but that doesn't necessarily mean all stores are run the same.

Last I heard this practice was discontinued. I'm not sure if it's company wide, but it was district wide in my district. ETLs got scored by using as close to 100% of their hours without going over during every given week. This resulted in hours being set based on sales from the previous year, leaving us short handed during Easter week, or any other holiday that fell into a different week this year. My department seemed to go back and forth between being the main focus on hours and being horribly understaffed. This has since transitioned to the dark ages everyone goes through now where there isn't any staffing at all lol.