Archived How safe do you feel????

How safe do you feel closing in your store with the reduced hours and payroll?

  • I feel absolutely safe. No worries here!

    Votes: 17 39.5%
  • I feel safe, but would like a few more team members to stay with us.

    Votes: 11 25.6%
  • I don't feel safe, but I also don't feel unsafe.

    Votes: 4 9.3%
  • I would like AP to stay each night with the team.

    Votes: 8 18.6%
  • I would prefer a police unit be in our store at nights until we leave.

    Votes: 3 7.0%

  • Total voters
    43
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GangulonCyst

You want more hours?
Joined
Jun 8, 2011
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92
How safe do you feel at work? With the reduced payroll and guest centered scheduling brought to us via MyTime, how safe do you feel when you close the store??? Personally I am surprised there have not been more attempts to rob a Target at closing. With many stores closing with 5-9 team members(including leadership - I think most McDonald's close with as many as us!), and considering the size of the stores, it would be easy to overpower so few team members. Those of us who work in the shady parts of town have it even worse. MyTime has reduced closing staff to bring more TM's on during the day when "the bulk of our guests shop", but 2 to 3 TM's can not zone the entire store from a day's sales and have everything zoned to perfection. This is why we now do the 4x4 walks in the mornings(DUH!) I know corporate reads this site, and would like them to get the pulse of how we as TM's feel about our safety. Thanks for your responses!!!
 
We usually have TPS close with us and they stay until the 11:30 team leaves. Sadly, we have a large homeless population that "lives" near the store and some of them are kinda sketchy. I think we've trespassed most of them, but that doesn't stop them from hanging around the grocery store at the end of the plaza.
 
I agree! I don't work nights but I've been in there right at closing. It's like a ghost town! Creepy and quiet. There are many places to hide. 1 LOD can't check and recheck the entire store repeatedly! For me, I'd be nervous as hell.
 
My store is in a decent enough area, but right now the closing team (leaves at ~10:30) is the closing GSA and the LOD. Nobody else. Everyone on the salesfloor is out by 10 at latest, AP is usually out by 9:30 if it's one of the few days our TPS works, otherwise 5:00 PM. Store closes at 10 PM. (Subtract an hour from everything on Sundays obviously)
 
My store was ULV and regularly closed with as few as 4 team members at closing even before my time. Additionally, our LOd would usually let people go so it was just the GSA and LOD leaving together.

Didn't bother me, even though we did have a lot of people hang around the mall
 
We're still on Max. Kinda worries me what carnage will ensue when we switch over.

I think part of the issue is we're the last store in our strip mall to close, and by 10:30 all but like...3 of the lights outside are turned off. Unless you park in the handicap spaces only 1 spot or so in the TM parking area is actually well lit.

Not as much a risk for me, but there are nights where it's another GSA who's pushing 70, hard of hearing and all of 5'5" and 120 lbs closing with an LOD who's 5'4" and 110 lbs...
 
I wish AP would stay with us. The lights are turned off in our parking lot & it's spooky & dark. Last year someone was robbed at gunpoint I'm our parking lot.
 
We recently had a lot of vehicles in our parking lot get broken into, most of them overnight in the TM parking lot. It got to the point where the PD was watching the TM lot and closely watching anyone not in red and khaki. I don't think anyone got caught, but the activity did stop.
It is always unsettling when the parking lot lights go out before we get out. If they can't be bothered to schedule more people, the least they can do is ensure that the lot is well-lit when we get out.
 
Sometimes it's not even oh we may get robbed or something like that but we get unruly youth or drunks in our lot. One time a group in a car just hot wheeled it right up to our gsa collecting the last of the carts and if they weren't almost about to hit her, they were cat calling and yelling at her. So it can be unsettling.
 
Guests are starting to notice this. A guy picked up on this in my area and started coming in an hour before close and stealing cosmetics and clothing at several of the stores in my district. Most of the PMRs I get are in electronics at night shortly before close because people have realized that we are more understaffed at night than any other time and figure they have a better chance of getting away with more expensive items. Several of my store's display tablets were stolen one night because there was a newbie in electronics who spent most of his shift in toys.
 
My store is nestled in a nice low crime middle class area. The last major thing to happen nearby is that someone broke into the toy store down the street and stole a bunch of iPads and Nintendo DSIs. That was almost five years ago.

However I did work at a store on the other side of town for a couple of months to help with their pfresh remodel. Shady contractors aside, I would have liked more of an AP prescience there. Team members cars were getting broken into all the time there. (Including mine)
 
Our neighborhood has issues sometimes, but it doesn't really bother me that it's me and the LOD after close. And sometimes the LOD stays after me and I walk out on my own. I like to think they watch me go to my car, but I'm sure they don't.
 
There was a stabbing in the Walmart right across the street from my store. Other than that, fairly safe even though everybody makes jokes about how the area is ghetto.
 
For the most part I feel pretty safe, but we did have an incident recently with an..interesting guest, and another guest who was leaving called the police and asked them to come out and make sure we made it out of the building okay because the guy wouldn't leave the lot. Otherwise, I don't really give it much thought.
 
Our store is in a very safe neighborhood and is considered very low risk. Even if we don't have AP with us until close, which we usually don't, we're also very high volume so there's currently a lot of closing TMs. We're still under MAX though, with the switch to MyTime within the month. I suspect it will lower our closing TM hours for sure but not so heavily that we will feel unsafe in this particular neighborhood.
 
How safe do I feel in the store in reference to getting robbed? Pretty safe - If someone wants the money in my drawer, I am not going to be a hero. I will open the drawer up and hand it over. When I worked at another big box store many years ago, we were told to do that. I'm not going to risk getting shot over the cash in the register.
How safe do I feel about walking out to my car at night after the store is closed? It depends on where my car is parked. If I am, what I think, is far away from the door, I will ask someone from overnight to stand at the door and watch me until I am in the car and I have turned on my lights..No one has ever had a problem doing that for me.

Also our local police are usually in the front of the parking lot or in the store parking lot across the street after closing.
 
If you don't feel safe then you should defiantly talk to your APL or ETL-AP. It's part of our job to make sure that any and all TM's feel safe and secure. We are supposed to have a good working relationship with Local LEO's. I know one of the first things I did was set up a thing with the Sheriff's department to have a deputy swing by around closing. Someone is there every night for about a half a hour or more. I usually requisition then a soda and sandwich and invite them in to let them know TM's and become part of our "Team".

If your AP division isn't holding up to the Safe and Secure standard. Make sure they are called on it. We may have a ton of reports and still have to watch/make apprehensions, but we are still security in every sense of the word.
 
I wish AP would stay with us. The lights are turned off in our parking lot & it's spooky & dark. Last year someone was robbed at gunpoint I'm our parking lot.

They're required to have lights on in team member parking at all times. That's a non-negotiable one. Talk to somebody about that, they need to have lights on.
 
Who would I talk to? Everyone from the STL down knows the lights go off. They are supposed to watch us go to our cars if one or two of us leave before the group does. Some really do watch, some don't.
 
I wish AP would stay with us. The lights are turned off in our parking lot & it's spooky & dark. Last year someone was robbed at gunpoint I'm our parking lot.
I know the store I used to be at had to get special permission from the township to have a select amount of lights on after a certain point. Stupid crazy rules

They're required to have lights on in team member parking at all times. That's a non-negotiable one. Talk to somebody about that, they need to have lights on.
 
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