Archived Do you guys remember your first day working at Target?

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antivibe

Salesfloor TL
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Nov 2, 2012
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or first week.

I realized that I'm approaching my first year at Target. It got me thinking about my first week of work.

My training consisted of "here read this cashier manual and follow the exercises". "done? awesome! now shadow Cottonelle". "Now go on lane 12".

I was hired as an Electronics TM and that training was "here are the keys, item search, walkie, and you're responsible for electronics, toys, sporting goods, home improvement, automotive, and entertainment. You're closing by yourself, good luck!" No one mentioned call buttons, phone calls, or reshop.
My ETLs were pretty pissed off when I missed call buttons, didn't answer phone calls, and saw the amount of reshop I accumulated.

How was your experience?
 
I was hired as a seasonal cashier. A single trainer trained four of us at once. We were given the manual to read on our own, then the trainer showed us how to do everything on the register. After she was done demonstrating, we were placed with veteran cashiers whom we would observe. It was very busy for a weekday, so it wasn't long before the GSTL has all of us on registers ourselves. I was lucky enough to be on express, so the cashier that I observed was right there if I had a question.
 
I remember when I was a seasonal cashier at my old store, the person who set up my register so I could go through the training booklet messed it up. Instead of being in training mode, my register was "live", so everything went through as a normal transaction. We didn't catch it until I tried using the fake check and / or fake ID.
 
I was hired as a seasonal cashier as well. I honestly can't remember much because I probably was oblivious to everything around me but the guest I was helping. Like a meager grunt! Before I knew it 90 days were up and I was asked to stay. Didn't think I would be with Target this long and enjoy it as much as I do sometimes.
 
My first day wasn't even at my real store since we were a new store being set up. A group of about 6 of us did our cashier training at a sister store about 20 minutes away. After about a half hour training/watching a veteran cashier we were all on a check lane by ourselves. Funny thing was, that was the day we had a major ice storm and we were packed with people buying flashlights, bread and milk, etc.. in anticipation of the storm. My 20 minute drive home that day ended up taking me 2 hours on a sheet of solid ice the whole way.

I remember for about the first three months after my store opened feeling like just when I thought I knew what to do I would be proved wrong every time. Training was really lacking on the whole.
 
I remember being on flow and they pulled me aside and showed me how to read a box label and a shelf label, gave me a blade and pointed me to an aisle. When we were unloading the truck, the TM who was training me couldn't speak English very well but somehow I managed to figure it out. I also remember I missed one of the breaks because no one let me know when to go so I had to spend time alone in the break room.
 
I was trained on the register with a trainer from 8am-10am in which I rang up a whole 4 guests. Didn't really learn much since most people paid with cash. Then I was sent to hardlines for the rest of my shift to learn about stocking CAFs and zoning.
 
I started in my store about a month before we opened. My first day was orientation at a hotel (since the store we weren't allowed in the store yet. My second day I was sent down to another Target. Gave me the Teller manual and told me to read it. Then put me on a register with a guy who used to work at Walmart and spent most of the time complaining about how Target did things as opposed to Walmart. Then they stuck me on a register for the rest of my shift which was 8 hrs. After that I didn't get on a register again for the rest of the month. It was all doing setup.
 
I got hired on as a cashier at a High Volume store. My training started out with the robot CD-Roms. Then I shadowed a veteran cashier for about an hour on the old DOS prompt POS. It was nerve racking at first but it got easier.
 
My 2-year anniversary is on the 20th of this month and I vividly remember my first few weeks. My first day I spent a lot of time wondering why I on earth I wanted to work at 4am. I also quickly realized that other than my TL, I was the only girl, and I sure as hell couldn't lift even 20lbs at the time.
 
i JUST found out when i was talking to my old ETL, he said that he honestly thought i was going to steal something by the way i looked (f**ked up right?), so on my first day of flow, he didnt throw me in the truck like he sent all the new hires, he instead put me in electronics and had my trainers keep a close eye on me...but its all good, i ended up being his top flow team performer anyways!
 
i JUST found out when i was talking to my old ETL, he said that he honestly thought i was going to steal something by the way i looked (f**ked up right?), so on my first day of flow, he didnt throw me in the truck like he sent all the new hires, he instead put me in electronics and had my trainers keep a close eye on me...but its all good, i ended up being his top flow team performer anyways!
At my stores, if you want to steal something you steal it from Food Ave. no joke. I had about 5 TMs and 2 TLs that got terminated for stealing food and supplies from FA.
 
Yeah, the one theft at our store that I know all the details about came from Food Ave. And then people were making themselves food and not paying for it and now we have security cameras back there! lol!

My first day was four hours on the register. I spent the first while reading the manual (VERY carefully) and then using the register in test mode, and then I worked with our most veteran cashier. I remember that it was only four hours but by the end I was so wiped that I felt like I had been utterly beaten with a two-by-four.
 
I remember when I was getting register trained the person they wanted to have train me was on break. So they stuck me with a random cashier who had an old lady come through her line with an entire shopping cart of one-spot items. she had her constantly ring things up, and take them off. this transaction - no joke - took about 30 minutes (at least it felt like it). i don't remember how much she bought but there was a half of cart of reshop from that one guest. the cashier didn't really know how to handle it, so it really had no benefit other than avoid the lanes and the crazy guests. then of course the cashier who was supposed to train me came back and it went much as above (shadow a couple transactions, then you're on your own).
 
At orientation they asked for a volunteer to pick up a 7am-11am sales floor shift the next day (why a sales floor shift was starting at 7am, I never did figure out). When I showed up at 7am, it took me a good five minutes to find the doorbell (nobody had told me about it). They handed me an LRT (already logged in and in NOP), told me I'd be in charge of the back half of the store (sports/auto/hardware, toys, seasonal) and gave me a cart of reshop to work out. No training whatsoever. I left at 11am and came back the next day for my first cart attendant shift, only to find out that they thought I had job abandoned by walking out, because I hadn't told anyone I was leaving (it was the end of my shift--why would I have to tell someone I was leaving?). That store had some serious communication issues.

My second day consisted of a two-hour crash course in how to be a cart attendant from an older Australian guy I could barely understand, followed by four hours of trying to handle carts all on my own because he had to leave (this was on December 20 or 21, something like that--it was a weekday, but still super busy), capped off by two hours of verbal abuse from the closing cart attendant (who was a 16 year old high school kid, of course) about how much work I had left for him.

My third day consisted of 7 hours of carts and an hour of cashier training.

My fourth day was December 26, and was spent entirely at the Service Desk. Yes, with only an hour of cashier training and no SD training at all, they put me back there on Dec. 26. To be fair, this was 11 years ago when stores actually had payroll, so I was one of four or five people there at any given time, but it was still crazy.
 
"See this box?
Stack it on this pallet so it doesn't fall over.
You're not doing that fast enough.
See this label on the box?
That'll tell you where the stuff in it goes, now throw the box somewhere in the aisle close to that.
You're not doing that fast enough.
Now take all the stuff out of the boxes in this aisle and put them on the shelf.
You're really, really not doing that fast enough.



So I'm the Signing Specialist now.
 
Halloween Sunday....the first time they scheduled me outside of my availability. Loved the young lady who trained me. Got off from Target and went to teach my 4th and 5th grade Sunday School class. It was a long day
 
Like a week into working at Target I ended up in my ETL's office and he asked me why I waited till an hour before the end of my shift to take my lunch. I just sort of looked at him. Didn't get what the big deal was. I told him that they told me that any time I had a shift of five hours or more I had to take a forty-five minute lunch. The light came on and he asked if they also told me that I was supposed to do so BEFORE my fifth hour? LOL! Um.... no, they missed that part. :p pffft! Sometimes training is good and sometimes it misses by a mile.
 
I started out on overnight flow. I got put at the middle of the line where furniture got pulled off. i just got told to take off everything that had that number on it. after the truck was done i got put in chemicals. I think they were testing me because when that was done they told me to do repacks with no PDA. This was how it went for about a month and then they moved me to the front of the line. Baby hard lines at the front of the line was hell. I got kept in those other push routines for a good long time. I learned to hate the saying "push with your eyes" stupid line. It just meant you were not getting a PDA to make it quicker and easier.

No longer on overnights or flow. Those days seem like a lifetime ago. I already earned a qbert looking tote bag to celebrate my 5th year. My 6th year anniversary was not even mentioned at huddle. I wonder what amazing "gift" I will get for my 7th if any at all?
 
My first day was pretty much spent learning the "basics" of pharmacy (I had ZERO experience) and all about HIPAA and how to ring out a guest, search for them in the computer, etc. By the end of the first week I was filling scripts, putting the order away, and knew how to search the doctor queue, add a "new guest", search for new insurance, enter new scripts, process escripts, and split bill a claim.

In comparison, the techs we've had since me have pretty much done nothing but work the registers the first few weeks, and "maybe" fill a few scripts here and there. Our most recent hire has been there a few months and basically can't do much more than that or fill a script. Even when we show him MULTIPLE times how to do other things, he just doesn't seem to "get it" (or even WANT to, which irritates me more than simply not knowing how to do stuff). :dash2:
 
I was hired as an instocks team member the week before Black Friday. I remember my first day at the bullseye I spent learning how to back stock in the back room and how to pull batches. The next day I just did go-backs and zone.

I was off for a few days and came back to work on black friday, having NO idea what to do (having usually avoided black friday like the plague). I remember my TL at the time said, "just stand here and pray you don't get knocked over and then get the guests whatever they want." (So glad that TL got fired she was an idiot)

As many of you know Instocks doesn't do a whole lot of their actual task during the holiday season so it wasn't until mid January that I finally started doing what an instocks team member was supposed to do. *sigh* 4 years later and I'm now a GSA, so I do my darndest to make sure any new team members I help train don't have the same experiences many of us had.
 
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