I'm a new fitting room operator (and new to Target). Have to say I am shocked at the rudeness of the Softlines TMs to each other and to me. I have only had three shifts so far, but already I have heard two of them talking behind the back of a third one. The team lead is very curt and tells me to do things but doesn't explain why she is asking me to do things differently than in the training. If I ask questions she seems offended.
The TMs know that I am new, but two of them have already yelled at me. One for not getting the jewelry key when I opened (didn't know I was supposed to). Another is obsessed about the right hanging procedure and if I make a mistake like putting it on the hanger in the wrong direction, she will refuse to take it out of the FR for reshop and just throw it back in my cart to do over. I am pretty intelligent and good at being organized so this isn't me not understanding, it's just trying to get into a routine.
The TL was pushing me to get all the carts emptied and hung or sorted into bins. That is fine, but the question is, not everything is obvious whether it is men's, women's or what. Having never been given time to walk the floor or see what we have in stock, it is a guessing game what item goes in the bin marked "gondola" versus what goes in infants or accessories. But, asking questions seems frowned upon. I cannot imagine why there isn't a sign with the DCPI numbers so I can look to see which department things belong to. Then if I get it wrong, they make me do it over.
I really felt like crying and considered quitting yesterday. During my previous shift, I had spent a long time hanging & sorting clearance items in the FR into the 30-50-70% categories. Only to later find out that in my store, all the clearance is hung together in one big mess (no separate percentage). Since I had wasted about an hour with a pointless task, and since we were short on the category separators to divide mens, boys, etc. I asked the TL if could re-label the clearance separators into the ones we needed. She said yes and I did (this helped me keep things straight to avoid the yelling TM) but yesterday I saw that someone destroyed the signs I made, now we are back to having these separate clearance category dividers that no one uses. Now what is going to happen the next time a new person is thrown in there with no training? Probably they will waste time too.
There is a big sign in the FR saying that all rewrap is to be done by the FR operator every single day, yet there is a stack of rewrap 3 feet high, no kidding, and I was told not to do it.
The absolute worst part is being told to reshop things on the floor, when I do not know where anything is. And it is difficult to learn when they have changed the floor around three times in the month I have been there. It seems crazy to me, to send me on the floor to randomly reshop things without having an orientation to the floor plan in the first place. I can waste 15 minutes wandering around trying to find the right location, it seems like a very unrealistic and inefficient system. Then they tell you just hang in anywhere if you can't find it. The amount of rework involved seems insane. Then later it needs to be zoned.
I can't understand either, why guest services doesn't have a rolling rack for returned or reshop clothes already on hangers. They just throw everything single thing, even baby food and shoes, into a cart along with clothes on hangers. Then the clothes fall off the hangers and the shoe boxes get opened and the baby food leaks.... Empty hangers are never sorted into categories according to size tags. You are just supposed to grab the right size one and always replace the size label to match the garment, every single time....
I can think of a bazillion ways to make this more efficient and fast, but as I said, the attitudes of people aren't positive and I don't know if I can stand it long enough to hope that I can eventually influence the process, if such a thing is possible. The pointlessness might kill my soul in the meantime. Is this a normal for a Target or is it just my store?
