Archived Target is getting ridiculous!!!

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(Not to mention that the store open on Thanksgiving) This so-called company-wide "Power Hour" is a horrible horrible idea!

What I am getting is, instead of just scheduling more Sales Floor team members, ENOUGH in every department, some fool in Target HQ thinks it's a great idea to mandatory every employee in the store (Even those who usually does not necessarily directly dealing with guests) to come out to the SF to waste an hour on helping the guest.

What a JOKE of an idea!

Whoever came up with this stupid idea, clearly has NO understanding or concept with how MUCH WORK these other employees (Planogram, Backroom, Pricing) has to still to be done. Ugh! Let me give you a hint, sometimes 600 hours of WORK weekly!!!

The heads at HQ thinks us people have nothing else to do, that we just looking for something to do?

That's not even close to be the case. In fact, we have A TONS of work, and the Power Hour idea just hurt our performance! Cuz that's 1 whole hour every day that we will never get back, that should be used on our PRIMARY work task!


I am telling you, watch, these Plano, pricing, backroom people WILL get worse on work performance, and you have this "Power Hour" thing to thank.

Just don't give me a lame review that says "You were doing MUCH better last year, this year you can't get things done on time"... cuz I will say it's because of this stupid Power Hour idea.

I think I am right, cuz you just watch the report on work performance for these areas, I guarantee you it's going down, and certain people will not get their job done, but in the past, that wasn't a problem. Disregarding heavy work load per these work area is NOT a good, better idea whatsoever! What happens when these work not get done, due to Power Hour?
 
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I hate the power hour. It also does a horrible job of backing up breaks. "Oh, you've been here two hours? Now you have to wait another hour for your break because we just announced power hour!" Argh.
 
I hate it when this company come up with stupid not-well-thought-out ideas all the time, that just create MORE problems! Some of these people in HQ clearly doesn't work on the floor doing these things and has NO FRIGGING idea how long or how much work it takes. Argh!
 
Or a more sensible one - Plano, pricing, backroom only do it when we are done with our workload hours for the week! Otherwise, only SF TM and TLs.
 
I told my TL theres no way I can do it. When asked what I thought about it.

They didn't argue, and honestly since that day I haven't seen it called upon yet at my store since then. hah.

(I work in Market, usually by myself) :'(

We are 9/75 in our District for GE also.
 
Our pricing scores are already suffering because of this. Our ULV store is not even busy at noon or 1 when our supposed peak hour is some days! We are annoying the guests more than anything.
 
I would really like to see how much money is actually save by having task teams work during store hours VS having them in before the store opens and the impact on sales. The thing is you get so much more done when the store is closed which in turn utilizes less payroll. What is saved would help pay for people to staff the store during business hours. Our processes are all suffering by trying to cram it all in. How many of our instock processes are actually working as they should? How many of our planograms are set, pulled, filled, signed and back stocked in the same day? We are overwhelming the guests with the power hour bs. I will personally walk out of a store if I am badgered in this way. The process teams are complaining that they cannot get their jobs done. The push back its that the guests are our jobs. Great in theory but not in practice. What these task teams do is to provide the best possible scenario to help drive sales.. They need to be able to do this without putting service in the mix. We have had it shoved down our throats that clean stores, in stocks, prices and service drive sales. We have eliminated the 3 of those2. Zones are now "good enough". The only time the store is actually clean is on an announced visit (Holiday Readiness) If it takes you a week to get ready, then your store is not clean enough. Instocks in most stores are scanned at a hit and miss level. Not enough equipment to make sure all locations are filled. And we have delegated to service as an add on task. You need to evolve as a retailer, I get that. But the people in charge have clearly not worked in a store for a long long time. They have not had the pleasure of trying to "make it work". Power Hour is nothing more than a big fat bandaid trying to contain a big fat problem.
 
Apparently we're supposed to "vibe gum and snacks into our guests carts" during checkout now, as the front end's way of participating in power hour. Like that's a really cute idea, ETL-GE, but no. Just no. It's bad enough that we have to push redcards so aggressively, but we aren't going to start pushing candy and gum.

"Were you saving 5% with a REDcard at all today? That's wonderful; since you're saving 5%, have you thought about picking out some candy or gum from my check lane? It's not on sale, and there's no promotion or anything, but it's always nice to have. Not interested? Have you thought about an iTunes gift card at all? Those aren't on sale either, but they're conveniently located at every check lane just for you. Buy one. With your REDcard. Please."

...It's one thing to engage and educate a guest on the benefits of a red card if they're using a debit card/check anyway, but to add the idea of pushing random sh*t into guests carts on top of that? How are we supposed to be friendly when we spend the entire transaction talking their ears off as a desperate attempt to sell a dollar pack of gum.
 
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It's like trying to fix a break in a water dam with a piece of gum. Harassing every guest in the store for an hour straight isn't going to make up for the fact that for the other 13 hours of the day we are severely understaffed and unable to provide REAL guest service because of it. There would be no need for Power Hour if we had an appropriate amount of sales floor coverage in the first place. Hey, there's an idea!
 
Apparently we're supposed to "vibe gum and snacks into our guests carts" during checkout now, as the front end's way of participating in power hour. Like that's a really cute idea, ETL-GE, but no. Just no. It's bad enough that we have to push redcards so aggressively, but we aren't going to start pushing candy and gum.

"Were you saving 5% with a REDcard at all today? That's wonderful; since you're saving 5%, have you thought about picking out some candy or gum from my check lane? It's not on sale, and there's no promotion or anything, but it's always nice to have. Not interested? Have you thought about an iTunes gift card at all? Those aren't on sale either, but they're conveniently located at every check lane just for you. Buy one. With your REDcard. Please."

...It's one thing to engage and educate a guest on the benefits of a red card if they're using a debit card/check anyway, but to add the idea of pushing random sh*t into guests carts on top of that? How are we supposed to be friendly when we spend the entire transaction talking their ears off as a desperate attempt to sell a dollar pack of gum.

I'm just waiting for the day some poor clerk tries to vibe some helicopter parent with kids on gum and gets a half hour reaming because "their precious little snowflake would never touch processed sugar".
Seriously does Spot think this stuff through?
 
I had a seek to understand conversation with my ETL-GE because we got backed up in breaks, and I HAD to go on my lunch (I had to cover Food Ave's break, SDesk's break, the cashier's break, while cleaning the bathrooms, pretending to be a CA, and finishing up cash office). Apparetnly I needed to "plan my day better."

Next day, my second cashier that comes in at 12:00 called off. My first cashier was going to stay later... But they called someone else to come in and DURING POWER HOUR they sent the FIRST cashier home to "save" payroll.

You yell at us for taking a 30-minute lunch, but you send a cashier home? I was mad. We had to call for code so many times!
 
I had a seek to understand conversation with my ETL-GE because we got backed up in breaks, and I HAD to go on my lunch (I had to cover Food Ave's break, SDesk's break, the cashier's break, while cleaning the bathrooms, pretending to be a CA, and finishing up cash office). Apparetnly I needed to "plan my day better."

Next day, my second cashier that comes in at 12:00 called off. My first cashier was going to stay later... But they called someone else to come in and DURING POWER HOUR they sent the FIRST cashier home to "save" payroll.

You yell at us for taking a 30-minute lunch, but you send a cashier home? I was mad. We had to call for code so many times!

I'm curious, if you take your daily schedule to your ETL-GE for a 'seek to understand' opportunity.
Explain that you really want to plain out your day better but you could use some of their genius.
Then every time they try to do something you go "No Sorry" and give the reason why that move is impossible.
After about an hour or so of that maybe they will cut you some slack...

Or decide you're being insubordinate.
It could go either way.
 
I hope the Target HQ reads these comments, and get rid of this absurd program or at least revise it to make sure people get their PRIMARY work (100-600+ hours a week!!!) done first, before go out their way help guests nonstop for an hour and resulting in NOT getting the primary work done! :/
 
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I would really like to see how much money is actually save by having task teams work during store hours VS having them in before the store opens and the impact on sales. The thing is you get so much more done when the store is closed which in turn utilizes less payroll. What is saved would help pay for people to staff the store during business hours. Our processes are all suffering by trying to cram it all in. How many of our instock processes are actually working as they should? How many of our planograms are set, pulled, filled, signed and back stocked in the same day? We are overwhelming the guests with the power hour bs. I will personally walk out of a store if I am badgered in this way. The process teams are complaining that they cannot get their jobs done. The push back its that the guests are our jobs. Great in theory but not in practice. What these task teams do is to provide the best possible scenario to help drive sales.. They need to be able to do this without putting service in the mix. We have had it shoved down our throats that clean stores, in stocks, prices and service drive sales. We have eliminated the 3 of those2. Zones are now "good enough". The only time the store is actually clean is on an announced visit (Holiday Readiness) If it takes you a week to get ready, then your store is not clean enough. Instocks in most stores are scanned at a hit and miss level. Not enough equipment to make sure all locations are filled. And we have delegated to service as an add on task. You need to evolve as a retailer, I get that. But the people in charge have clearly not worked in a store for a long long time. They have not had the pleasure of trying to "make it work". Power Hour is nothing more than a big fat bandaid trying to contain a big fat problem.

They just trying to use us Plano, Pricing, Flow TMs act as SF TMs, while cutting SF workforce/payroll. They pretty much ignores that we already have so much WORK of our own, ALL the time!
 
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I am not worried about hours anymore. There is always work to do, at my store if you worked there long enough it shouldn't be hard to see. I will be happy to just do those work that are intelligently thought-out. And having pride doing it. But I can NOT stand work that is considered dumb/waste of time, don't want to do them anyway! I feel dumb myself for doing these.

I am NOT a sheep, I question if the work I do makes sense or not. Sadly, nowdays, a lot of new ideas don't make sense.
 
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I feel like part of the poor perception of power hour is the execution of the leadership teams in many stores. The purpose of power hour isn't to go around and ask all the guests CIHYFS four different times. It is much better to talk to just a few guests, but have a meaningful interaction with them, than twenty or thirty. You should start with CIHYFS but work out to "Well what did you come in for today", "Let me walk you to it", "Are you going to use your REDcard/Cartwheel for this?", "Well, it is just this..."

It honestly will probably go away some day. The issue is that SO many stores are extremely bad at the vibe when it comes to this expectation. I can do a secret shop at a store and see people asking CIHYFS a ton, but that does not make a green vibe visit.
 
I feel like part of the poor perception of power hour is the execution of the leadership teams in many stores. The purpose of power hour isn't to go around and ask all the guests CIHYFS four different times. It is much better to talk to just a few guests, but have a meaningful interaction with them, than twenty or thirty. You should start with CIHYFS but work out to "Well what did you come in for today", "Let me walk you to it", "Are you going to use your REDcard/Cartwheel for this?", "Well, it is just this..."

It honestly will probably go away some day. The issue is that SO many stores are extremely bad at the vibe when it comes to this expectation. I can do a secret shop at a store and see people asking CIHYFS a ton, but that does not make a green vibe visit.

This is the kinda stuff I had to do at Macy's. Also a reason I hate shopping at Macy's. It feels fake because I know they're working on a commission (or a sales goal in some macy's depts) or doing it because they have to. Personally, when I shop, I don't want to be approached with manipulation tactics. That's what the vibe is. Let's call a spade a spade, here. However, if I need help, I'd like for there to be employees spread throughout the store enough that I don't have to walk to the other side of the store, or out of the dept I'm in just to find help. Or if I look lost, and I don't notice you, by all means, offer to help me. I don't have problems with making suggestions to people. I'm practically a spokesperson for the Boppy at this point. But I don't force them into conversations.

My stl went on some district field trip where they went to a bunch of stores like office depot, best buy, etc etc. He said there was no one offering to help him in any of the stores they went to. I wanted to respond "wasn't it nice!?" I said no such thing, of course.
 
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