Archived What is "vibe" and why isn't it practiced in Canada?

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Charming

Senior TL HR
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Nov 15, 2013
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I see a lot about "vibing" on here and see it mentioned in Red Magazine, but we don't have that here in Canada. What exactly is the "vibe" and why do you think its something that isn't being used in Canada?
 
It's a few different things. Going the extra mile for guests is part of it. An example = walking a guest to an item instead of pointing, or describing where it is.

It also includes adding things to their basket. Example = "oh, I see you're buying this toy. You might wanna get extra batteries!" or a general formula would be something like this: "I see you have [item], can I show you the [related items]?" It's like being the human version of that related items section on amazon.

I think the "getting appy" stuff is considered vibing too, where you'd tell the guests about Cartwheel coupons relating to items they have in their cart/basket.
 
I invite you to read the monster of a thread when it first rolled out.

http://www.thebreakroom.org/showthread.php/2878-has-anyone-else-seen-the-new-vibe-stuff?

It might confuse you more, but it's good for a couple laughs.

Haha I got through about page 8 and pretty much all that I know is that everything is "amazing" but it made me laugh. I just find it so weird that it is a prominent fixture in the US but Canada never even mentions it! I wonder if eventually they will introduce it here, I just don't understand why they haven't if they push it so hard in the US!
 
Thanks for making this thread charming. As a fellow Canadian I've been meaning to ask about vibe and only had a small grasp of what it was.
 
Once upon a time, about an eon ago, Target TMs were naturally happy. The culture was good, the pay was good, the raises were real and not token yearly insults; life was good. Guests were happy to come to Target partly because the in-store culture was good because the TMs were happy.

But then hours were cut, raises disappeared, the workload requires two or more TMs for every one TM that we factually have, the TMs are stressed because of such an unrealistic workload, the ETLs drive the TMs like slaves because we're supposed to be thankful for making minimum wage but working workloads that should pay at least 50% more or have twice as many TMs, the equipment is garbage and makes the TMs jobs harder and slower (i.e. more stress), and so many other things. As a result, TMs are grumpy and apathetic and way, way, super duperly overstressed and they feel like they definitely don't have time to coddle to and hand-hold guests around the store every 2 minutes. Ain't nobody got time for dat. Many of the good ones even skip breaks on most days because while you still can't finish your workload either way, at least you'll have 15-30 more minutes worth of it done.

SO, as a result, the Vibe was created to try and FORCE TMs to artificially act and appear as happy as they naturally did 10+ years ago.
 
Maybe because Canadians do it naturally or because right now the stores have enough hours that it isn't needed to be a forced concept.

I'm going with the latter.
 
Maybe because Canadians do it naturally or because right now the stores have enough hours that it isn't needed to be a forced concept.

I'm going with the latter.

I wish I could say we had enough hours. In the beginning you were hard pressed to find a TM working less than 40 in a week. We knew hours would drop after open, so we didn't want to overhire by a mile, so we often found ourselves short staffed.

Then June hit and most of our non-process TMs were in the 10-15 hour a week mark. Flow team was at 10 a piece to satisfy the number of bodies we needed. We have two banks of registers and would only have single coverage on each for the day. Some days we would have none on the second bank and have to pull from whoever was there or the one GSA or GSTL that was on would work there until we could call someone in for the 1,000th time.(I spent much of my time in HR calling every TM to come in. This happened daily so TMs were pissed that we didn't just schedule them in advance since we knew this would happen every single
day).

Forecast became 17 hours for both HL and SL combined for the entire week. Culture was horrendous and you'd be hard pressed to see a TM on the floor. The number of guests was constant, but we had no stock so sales were so low (we still have no stock months later -- DC issues across Canada). We fell so far below sales forecast, some days 30% or more so hours were slashed even though we still saw so many guests.

Now that we're in Holiday time we have strong hours, let's see how this plays out after the holidays.
 
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Maybe because Canadians do it naturally or because right now the stores have enough hours that it isn't needed to be a forced concept.

I'm going with the latter.

I wish I could say we had enough hours. In the beginning you were hard pressed to find a TM working less than 40 in a week. We knew hours would drop after open, so we didn't want to overhire by a mile, so we often found ourselves short staffed.

Then June hit and most of our non-process TMs were in the 10-15 hour a week mark. Flow team was at 10 a piece to satisfy the number of bodies we needed. We have two banks of registers and would only have single coverage on each for the day. Some days we would have none on the second bank and have to pull from whoever was there or the one GSA or GSTL that was on would work there until we could call someone in for the 1,000th time.(I spent much of my time in HR calling every TM to come in. This happened daily so TMs were pissed that we didn't just schedule them in advance since we knew this would happen every single
day).

Forecast became 17 hours for both HL and SL combined for the entire week. Culture was horrendous and you'd be hard pressed to see a TM on the floor. The number of guests was constant, but we had no stock so sales were so low (we still have no stock months later -- DC issues across Canada). We fell so far below sales forecast, some days 30% or more so hours were slashed even though we still saw so many guests.

Now that we're in Holiday time we have strong hours, let's see how this plays out after the holidays.

Thanks for this. This is probably the most honest, unbiased communication of the current situation for Target Canada.
 
Maybe because Canadians do it naturally or because right now the stores have enough hours that it isn't needed to be a forced concept.

I'm going with the latter.

I wish I could say we had enough hours. In the beginning you were hard pressed to find a TM working less than 40 in a week. We knew hours would drop after open, so we didn't want to overhire by a mile, so we often found ourselves short staffed.

Then June hit and most of our non-process TMs were in the 10-15 hour a week mark. Flow team was at 10 a piece to satisfy the number of bodies we needed. We have two banks of registers and would only have single coverage on each for the day. Some days we would have none on the second bank and have to pull from whoever was there or the one GSA or GSTL that was on would work there until we could call someone in for the 1,000th time.(I spent much of my time in HR calling every TM to come in. This happened daily so TMs were pissed that we didn't just schedule them in advance since we knew this would happen every single
day).

Forecast became 17 hours for both HL and SL combined for the entire week. Culture was horrendous and you'd be hard pressed to see a TM on the floor. The number of guests was constant, but we had no stock so sales were so low (we still have no stock months later -- DC issues across Canada). We fell so far below sales forecast, some days 30% or more so hours were slashed even though we still saw so many guests.

Now that we're in Holiday time we have strong hours, let's see how this plays out after the holidays.

It's hard to tell for certain given that your store just opened this year, but your store sounds like it's operating as a ULV.
 
As well we are just beginning to use systematic replenishment so everything is happening back there at once.

That's good. If they start implementing instocks in Canada, then things should go more smoothly on the logistics side. In stock = sales.
 
Once upon a time, about an eon ago, Target TMs were naturally happy. The culture was good, the pay was good, the raises were real and not token yearly insults; life was good. Guests were happy to come to Target partly because the in-store culture was good because the TMs were happy.

But then hours were cut, raises disappeared, the workload requires two or more TMs for every one TM that we factually have, the TMs are stressed because of such an unrealistic workload, the ETLs drive the TMs like slaves because we're supposed to be thankful for making minimum wage but working workloads that should pay at least 50% more or have twice as many TMs, the equipment is garbage and makes the TMs jobs harder and slower (i.e. more stress), and so many other things. As a result, TMs are grumpy and apathetic and way, way, super duperly overstressed and they feel like they definitely don't have time to coddle to and hand-hold guests around the store every 2 minutes. Ain't nobody got time for dat. Many of the good ones even skip breaks on most days because while you still can't finish your workload either way, at least you'll have 15-30 more minutes worth of it done.

SO, as a result, the Vibe was created to try and FORCE TMs to artificially act and appear as happy as they naturally did 10+ years ago.



this is the vibe in a nut shell! everybody hates the vibe in my store unless you can get the guest to sign up for a redcard.
 
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