Archived What's your biggest screw-up?

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callmetaylor

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I think I really screwed up today. For now I don't want to say what I did because I plan on approaching leadership tomorrow, fessing up and trying to figure out how to fix it (I'm guessing no one even knows anything happened yet, but it could probably be traced back to me when it's discovered and I'd rather just deal with it now instead of avoiding it)...so on the off chance someone from my store would read this and connect the dots, I'd rather the situation already be resolved.

But I'm kind of freaked about it and was wondering: what's the biggest screw-up you've had and what were the repercussions?

I'm not talking about (relatively) small stuff like compliance...I'm talking big stuff like losing money/injuring a guest or TM/breaking equipment or expensive merch/etc. How did your job change after that? Like, if you're put on Final do things get tense/awkward after that?


(for the record I didn't do anything morally wrong/bad- it was a total accident, although I'm pretty sure I was technically breaking some rules when the incident occurred. It's a rule people break frequently (and I'm not totally clear whether it's a RULE or a strong preference/suggestion), and I honestly feel I was left with little option other than to break the rule...but still, I realize now that I should've played it safe and done things by the book, even if that left my TL/ETL pissed at me for not finishing a task)


I'm just so frustrated right now. Frustrated at myself for not being on my game today and for ignoring the hesitation I felt, frustrated with my store's leadership/process for basically forcing me into a lose/lose situation. Just...frustrated.
 
I can't think of any, but I regularly have to be unsafe to get in and out of my signing trailer. If it's raining is bad, if it's snowing is worse. The ramp should be down, but it's even more unsafe covered in snow for three feet than walking over the gap. Ap and the stl have yet to give me a solution that's safe.
 
Honestly a lot of my screw ups at first were with quantity limits when I started working in electronics, one time a guy bought like 150 prepaid phone cards (all with gift cards, of course) however I did call my TL over during the transaction and they approved it (he totally shouldn't have tho)
But my biggest screw up ever was the day I had an interview for electronics, (the electronics TL did the interview) I was going to hit compliance and it was super busy so it was hard to just walk away, I finally rung the last guest out for a Nintendo DS, then ran to the back room to punch out for lunch, came back 30 mins later and didn't notice for probably another 30 minutes that my electronics keys weren't on my belt loop. Target mobile had found them (luckily) & gave them to the TL, I don't know how I got away with this and was still hired, AND not even talked to about it. I really thought i was going to loose my job.
 
One time I basically gave away 400$ worth of stuff for about 24$. There was a very obvious and blatant couponer breaking the rules and I was telling her such I couldn't accept the coupons blah blah blah, we get into it I am just nodding and saying how sorry I am but it just isn't able to be done, she asks to speak someone who 'knows what they're talking about' and one of my ETLs comes over, hes one of the nicest guys I've ever met he always looks out for my best interest always wants to know how I'm doing genuinely stand up guy but he doesn't understand a lot of the front end things particularly well since I think he is fairly newish, he reads the coupons and basically just says 'its okay we'll do it this one time'. bam 400$ worth of stuff gone. Less than 30 minutes later another woman comes up with the exact same stuff, EXACT same amounts so I was just like nope sorry and that was that. She went to the service desk where one of our GSAs basically said the same thing.
 
Ummmm. This happened at the end of one of my SFS shifts last year... There was a wave parked in my packing area that was plugged in and charging. I had to use it to get a stack of boxes down from the steel so I unplugged the wave, and I thought I moved the cord far enough away. Turns out as I was maneuvering the wave when I was off the ground, I ran over the plugged in extension cord and tore it in half and blew a fuse. I panicked and didn't know what to do. I kind of just left it like that. SFS captain got the PMT to reset the blown fuse the next day. :oops::oops::oops::oops:
 
The front part of the meat bunker was refrigerated and we were gonna set it to frozen. To do so, we go to the switch box thingy where you do that. This switch box is labelled to switch from frozen to fridge and back again. I wrote down what thought was 01B0, what should have been the section in the meat bunker.

Turns out I wrote down 0B10, the refrigerated front end cap with juices. All of them froze. All of them had to be QMOSed. They are all expensive.
 
Not very many screwups really come to mind for me. The only ones that spring to mind are the few times where I left empty register bags (Never full ones) at the checklanes when I went to hand them off to the closing LOD in the cash office. I was always able to run back and grab those before we finished up and locked up the safe.

Safety-wise, I have definitely used the ladder in an "Unsafe" way when having to carry down a massive item from the top shelves of the backroom, and have almost fallen several times because of it.
 
Was hung over at work one time and ran the forks on the corn through a wall in the backroom. 8yrs later am still here lol
 
Joejoe12 said:
Was hung over at work one time and ran the forks on the corn through a wall in the backroom. 8yrs later am still here lol
Click to expand...


Oh man...that definitely makes me feel better!

I told our PMT guy today and he was frustrated but nice enough about it. Unfortunately my tl/etl weren't there though, so I could probably still face some heat when they find out.

I took the wave down a backroom aisle (maybe 1/3 of the way down) because I had an entire skid of HEAVY stuff that was all gonna have to go to the top shelf. Our backroom aisles are super narrow- you can just barely fit a tub down. I barely tapped a shelf but it totally bent one of the separating columns of a 4x4 section. It wasn't a tiny dent- it was pretty major and I'm sure it compromises the entire 4x4 section. I can't fathom how that will be fixed. :-/

I've heard them say we shouldn't take the wave down the aisles, but I've also seen backroom TMs do it right in front of our tl/etl and nothing was said. I've told my tl/etl "I'm done w this section- I just have to put some stuff up with the wave" and they never expressed hesitation, so I genuinely didn't feel I was doing anything wrong, even though I knew it wasn't ideal.

We haven't been coming clean for a while and it's been a big issue, so I kind of felt like I had no other option. It was either A. Take the wave and put stuff up B. Take each item up the ladder one by one and waste the rest of my shift on that one skid or C. Pass it off to one of the guys in the BR...no one wants to carry a skid full of heavy stuff to the top, so I wasn't about to ask someone to do the worst part of MY WORK for me.

I frequently carry heavy stuff to the top- that's part of the job- that's fine. But there's a massive difference between carrying 7-10 things up a few shelves, and carrying 30 things to the top (and even the top shelves are full, so I was having to spend a lot of time up there rearranging stuff)

So yea...a lose/lose situation. I made a bad decision because I didn't want people to think I was a bad worker/lazy. In the future I will lay the situation out for leadership point blank and ask them which (terrible) option they would prefer I go with.

For weeks I've been expressing concern about the overflowing backstock in these particular aisles- we have a large amount of challenge in these fill groups, but nothing has been done about ensuring flow is pushing 100%/capacities are accurate.

We can't come clean on trucks, so it's not a priority- I get that. But on the other hand it takes me twice as long to backstock because there's literally nowhere to put anything...which just makes it harder to come clean on a truck :rolleyes:

If they'd fix the root problem everything else would fall in line.


Haha sorry- this turned in to more of a rant about the current state of our backroom than anything else!
 
callmetaylor said:
Oh man...that definitely makes me feel better!

I told our PMT guy today and he was frustrated but nice enough about it. Unfortunately my tl/etl weren't there though, so I could probably still face some heat when they find out.

I took the wave down a backroom aisle (maybe 1/3 of the way down) because I had an entire skid of HEAVY stuff that was all gonna have to go to the top shelf. Our backroom aisles are super narrow- you can just barely fit a tub down. I barely tapped a shelf but it totally bent one of the separating columns of a 4x4 section. It wasn't a tiny dent- it was pretty major and I'm sure it compromises the entire 4x4 section. I can't fathom how that will be fixed. :-/

I've heard them say we shouldn't take the wave down the aisles, but I've also seen backroom TMs do it right in front of our tl/etl and nothing was said. I've told my tl/etl "I'm done w this section- I just have to put some stuff up with the wave" and they never expressed hesitation, so I genuinely didn't feel I was doing anything wrong, even though I knew it wasn't ideal.

We haven't been coming clean for a while and it's been a big issue, so I kind of felt like I had no other option. It was either A. Take the wave and put stuff up B. Take each item up the ladder one by one and waste the rest of my shift on that one skid or C. Pass it off to one of the guys in the BR...no one wants to carry a skid full of heavy stuff to the top, so I wasn't about to ask someone to do the worst part of MY WORK for me.

I frequently carry heavy stuff to the top- that's part of the job- that's fine. But there's a massive difference between carrying 7-10 things up a few shelves, and carrying 30 things to the top (and even the top shelves are full, so I was having to spend a lot of time up there rearranging stuff)

So yea...a lose/lose situation. I made a bad decision because I didn't want people to think I was a bad worker/lazy. In the future I will lay the situation out for leadership point blank and ask them which (terrible) option they would prefer I go with.

For weeks I've been expressing concern about the overflowing backstock in these particular aisles- we have a large amount of challenge in these fill groups, but nothing has been done about ensuring flow is pushing 100%/capacities are accurate.

We can't come clean on trucks, so it's not a priority- I get that. But on the other hand it takes me twice as long to backstock because there's literally nowhere to put anything...which just makes it harder to come clean on a truck :rolleyes:

If they'd fix the root problem everything else would fall in line.


Haha sorry- this turned in to more of a rant about the current state of our backroom than anything else!
Click to expand...

Was it light duty or a steel aisle? As a pmt I wouldnt really care unless you messed up the entire aisle. Also a little unknown fact is you are allowed to take the wave down the light duty aisles. As a former backroom team member I also see where you are coming from cant tell you how many times I used a wave to backs tock items on top shells rather than using a ladder. At most you are looking at a final. Even that is pushing it.
 
Joejoe12 said:
Also a little unknown fact is you are allowed to take the wave down the light duty aisles.
Click to expand...

It was down our grocery/beverage aisle. Our PMT guy asked how it happened, I told him, and he said "you don't take the wave down the aisles- that's why we have ladders." I told him I understood but I was thinking to myself "dude...I'm 110lbs and had a skid full of 8-packs of juice and those miserable boxes of Hawaiian Punch, etc. plus other stuff that I had to finish after this task. Ladders > wave is easier said than done!"

Thanks so much for your comments though- I really appreciate it!
 
callmetaylor said:
It was down our grocery/beverage aisle. Our PMT guy asked how it happened, I told him, and he said "you don't take the wave down the aisles- that's why we have ladders." I told him I understood but I was thinking to myself "dude...I'm 110lbs and had a skid full of 8-packs of juice and those miserable boxes of Hawaiian Punch, etc. plus other stuff that I had to finish after this task. Ladders > wave is easier said than done!"

Thanks so much for your comments though- I really appreciate it!
Click to expand...
Oh god I have definitely taken the wave down a grocery aisle in the back room... It was bit snug but I have a bad back and I have to pull for Plano so no way in hell am I going up to the top to pull down pastas sauce/soup/juice/etc. not about that life... And seeing as our grocery ladders are not the attached kind shit is not safe for me #sorrynotsorry
 
Does taking out the electronics boat glass displays count? I got stupid & took out two display cases with the wave, because someone did not take several ad items down from the risers. I got in a hurry..
 
When I worked in fast food as a shift manager, I once erased a whole day's sales from the computer on accident. Oops. The area manager spent all day in our office the next day fixing what he could. I wasn't even written up.
 
callmetaylor said:
I took the wave down a backroom aisle (maybe 1/3 of the way down) because I had an entire skid of HEAVY stuff that was all gonna have to go to the top shelf. Our backroom aisles are super narrow- you can just barely fit a tub down.
Click to expand...
did this once, to get a Little Tykes car off a top shelf. I'm tiny, there was no way I was going to be able to haul it down a ladder by myself. I got the Wave down the aisle fine but couldn't back it out straight, so I had to jimmy it back little by little, all the way down the aisle. never did it again.
 
callmetaylor said:
It was down our grocery/beverage aisle. Our PMT guy asked how it happened, I told him, and he said "you don't take the wave down the aisles- that's why we have ladders." I told him I understood but I was thinking to myself "dude...I'm 110lbs and had a skid full of 8-packs of juice and those miserable boxes of Hawaiian Punch, etc. plus other stuff that I had to finish after this task. Ladders > wave is easier said than done!"

Thanks so much for your comments though- I really appreciate it!
Click to expand...
Our beverage aisle has a super wide aisle so the wav fits perfectly. Of course before i wad trained to use it that didn't help me carry those cases of drinks back down...
 
MrGeppetto said:
The 3 C's of Target

Coming in on my day off
Compliance
Coming to work with Diarrhea
Click to expand...

Oh that last one reminds me of aday I came in. I had an orange soda the day before. This was a mistake. I always get a stomachache after drinking orange or grape soda. Something about the red dye used. Idk. Anyways, it reached badly with whatever else was in my stomachache and I ended up puking in the middle of a huddle. Thank God I was right next to a spill station and therefore a trash can.
 
oath2order said:
Oh that last one reminds me of aday I came in. I had an orange soda the day before. This was a mistake. I always get a stomachache after drinking orange or grape soda. Something about the red dye used. Idk. Anyways, it reached badly with whatever else was in my stomachache and I ended up puking in the middle of a huddle. Thank God I was right next to a spill station and therefore a trash can.
Click to expand...

get well soon, that's no fun especially being embarrassed in a huddle.
 
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