I’d say GSTL (due to having the largest team under you, including GSAs which are a leadership role+being the face of the front end and dealing with the most difficult guests), Food TL and Logistics/Flow TL as well given the high turnover and if you have a shitty ETL or no ETL and an STL who is out to get to you.
Softlines TL and Starbucks TL will always be the easiest as well as HRTL in my opinion.
Honestly.. Flexible Fullfilment,Beauty,Electronics TL seem pretty unnecessary me (I’ve heard of Hardlines TL who just focus on beauty or electronics and I’m like why?)
Are you from a low volume store? Those are hard positions at my store.
GSTL, ours have it easy. Ordering bags, dropping candy batches and making some other team pull it, and babysitting the cashiers. Their main struggle is finding the time to do coachings lol. They got smart and became super strict and coaching for everything, so now everyone is afraid of getting coached and so there’s now less coachings.
Starbucks TL: needs to be someone who knows Starbucks in and out, it’s a position for a Starbucks TM who has leadership qualities, not a position for a leader who’s needed or being moved to another role to fill a gap. If you have someone who’s in it to win it and knows their stuff, it tends to come together. If only we could get Starbucks hiring to happen lol.
Presentation has it easy at mine, they get all their payroll and we don’t ever pull their team to do other stuff.
Flex TL I wouldn’t say has it hard, it’s their own fault their team sucks and they don’t hold them accountable and they make shitty hiring decisions. 1500 a day doesn’t help though lol.
Electronics TL, has toys and entertainment as well, and with the importance of guest service and selling goals with accessory attach rates and service replacement plans being additional metrics, and requiring open to close coverage, and street dated launches; not what I’d call unnecessary.
Beauty TL? Yeah fuck that noise; give it to electronics to handle the selling and service piece and have hardlines cover the logistics aspect of it.
HRTL? Scheduling that includes 120+ different TMs every given day, seasonal hiring, and retention and hours cutting the rest of the year, I’d say it’s not too bad but not easy.
Flow TL is unnecessary. In fact, it isn’t in the new ops model anymore since all of their team ends up falling under...
Hardlines TL. SHOULD be the easiest. Small flexible and global team, reshop and push and help guests and zoning is what the team worries about.
What I actually end up doing at my high volume store is be the only sales floor coverage when I open. So task lists, filling outs, covering gstl breaks, helping guests, backing up, plus all the other standard TL stuff. But also every hour I’m being hounded about piling up reshop. Kill me.
Softlines TL; if you have your team on lock, it can be easy. If you have high turnover and a team that lacks problem solving skills? Good luck, have fun doing truck or sorting reshop your whole shift to get them caught up.
Backroom TL: lol there’s still stores with backroom teams? Ours are all openers, and they just do audits and some autos; they pull it then push it immediately. I actually like this part.
Food TL. That’s the answer to your question. This one is the hardest no matter what kind of store yours is.
