cashier

fulfillment associate

sales associate

guest advocate

team member

Target Distribution center

for a team member: If you are a long time retail worker you will get it(we're all addicted to the chaos whether we like it or not). The company as of 2024 is back in the mindset it shared in 2018/2019 where everyone should know how to do everything and be able to support with anything whenever. if you work on the salesfloor you're going to learn to cashier and pick web orders. the only jobs that keep you In one area of the business is inbound(receiving the truck) and service and engagement(check lanes/service desk). The store culture is going to depend distinctly on the leadership team. if you have leaders who jump into web orders to support and jump in to help push the truck, and are generally nice to talk to and come to work in good moods, you are working at a great store(however all stores are not the same). It's very easy to be in a store with terrible leadership that is lazy or not committed to the workload and you can feel it through the whole store. Higher volume stores get more payroll and more people(including leaders) and generally are easier to work at than a low volume store that has less leaders(which means those leaders own more than normal). It's smart to figure out which store in your area is the highest volume specifically for those reasons. you want to look for a store that still loosely designates team members for things like Pricing, Planograms, and Backroom Replenishment. Target is veryyyy guilty of performance punishment whether they'd admit to it or not, it's often referred to as "asking for all the things so you know what's expected of your role instead of only doing one piece of your job and never fully owning your business", but a lot of time this can translate to 'you're going to push this whole truck with maybe no help but we're also going to pull you for web orders several times when they get too blown up to support the fulfillment team'. Granted they function a lot on video interviews but if you did get a chance to ask a hiring manager questions I would ask them about store attendance specifically in the fulfillment team as well as how do they perform against their metrics. ask the store about what their INF percentage and Pick On Time/ Drive Up Wait Time is, these will be key indicators about the health of the store. if the inf is around 8% that's not too bad, and if the POT/DUWT is green you probably have a mostly smooth running store. The absolute best part about target is the product, when the endcaps reset and the new target brand trinkets/etc come out for whatever season or pop culture event comes out it's genuinely the most entertaining part about the job. you can't always get lucky and like the people you work with but in a big box store you can enjoy yourself by yourself typically. You're not supposed to listen to music but take a peek around the store if you can and check the team members out, if you see a lot of it that means management is either really relaxed or the store is a pit(which you'd know because there'd be unprocessed freight all over the floor). 

For Team leaders and higher:
Ask what specifically you would own for your position, in the beginning of 2024 the company restructured who owns what again and put it back on stores to determine that breakdown, not every position in every store is going to have the same approach, that's why its important to ask who owns pricing, Plano, pulls, and audit. those aspects got lumped into one team lead role and out of the two districts close to me I never saw it handled the same way. GOD HELP YOU if you're a GM or Specialty Sales executive because those roles(arguably the hardest) can be absolute dumpster fires depending on the overall health of the store and how close to best practice it is. 

So in conclusion;
-find the biggest store
-go in the morning and see how much freight from the truck is still out on the floor(target wants stores to be done with truck before store open)
-ask about INF, POT, DUWT or how much support the ship team is given(This is frustrating because corporate doesn't tolerate this area not running because of how much revenue it generates so it will always get support unless the store is so bad that even leadership doesn't care)
-ask a team member in clothing how much clothing freight is in the back, if they answer with anything to the tune of that "it's a lot", that's another sign the store doesn't run effectively(and that leadership might not be as hands-on as they should be)
-ask if the team leaders and executives support with truck or fulfillment
-ask a team member in grocery how much freight they have in cooler/freezer (if they're really backed up on freight in these areas that's not a good sign).
-ask if the store does "smart huddles" or "wave push/all store push"
-ask if the front end and HR executives support the salesfloor(if the answer is yes that's a good sign)
-ask about what percent of their priority pulls gets completed every night (as of 3rd quarter In 2024 the corporate directive is 90% so if they're meeting this then that's good)
-ask about how the store is doing with it's pricing/plan/audit workload weekly (another goal that needs to be met). specifically it's worth asking if when they're doing markdowns are they actively finding the items or are they just activating the price in the system(the company really is trying to crack down on this).
-ask about backroom health, I believe that if you're over 90% that's considered green, good questions to ask around this are how much trapped clearance and salvage is in the back, how are they doing with empty location audits, and how do they do with the follow up around the backroom health reporting. the company just did a huge revamp to the reporting on this and there's a report for every single kind of issue you can come across so it's worth knowing what their followup looks like around it, because no followup is bad.
-ask about stores absence percentage (if it's really high, like 7+, that's an indicator there's not a lot of followup around it which means every weekend is going to be miserable and you're going to be doing everyone's job including your own), additionally if it is high I would ask if they overpost on the weekends to try to compensate for it.
-IF YOU ARE JUST DOING A VIDEO INTERVIEW, if you can genuinely just try to be likable and you have good availability you can usually get an offer. show that you have an interest in learning new things, and that you're flexible. so many people say they cant get hired at target and a lot of times its because they have availabilities that don't meet the needs of the business(like if your availability doesn't start at or before store open, there's no point in hiring you just the same as if you cant work until the actual closing time because they wouldn't schedule someone to work until a half hour before close when they could hire someone who will just work those extra 30 minutes).
-for leadership applicants, if you have a phone interview with a recruiter, do not panic and think of it like the real deal! its just the recruiters job to find candidates and you probably are going to do a video interview that the store leadership would actually watch. 
-ADDITIONALLY, for the leadership interviews when they ask you for a situational store, HAVE ONE. Target is all about your key strengths as a leader and times you've utilized them to succeed. if you can craft an answer that legitimately has the situation, the behavior (leadership quality) you used, the interaction you had to impact the situation, and the execution and outcome of it, then you're already speaking the way that target wants its leaders to speak which is huge. nothing is more miserable than a leadership interview where they ask for a "tell me about a time" and you don't answer with a time and just go on a random monologue with no direction. YOU CAN BRING NOTES TO YOUR INTERVIEWS TO HELP KEEP YOURSELF STRUCTURED, and you can take a second to think before you respond(that's a good thing, stoping and thinking, even though it can feel so agonizing).

In my experience at Target there were two things I loved, doing my job, and helping customers, and my coworkers, except for a few exceptions were quite friendly, and good people I could get along with from various different backgrounds and cultures, there of course was one major exception, the "leaders" your bosses. Management was corrupt from the bottom to the HR. 

I worked at a Target in Torrance, primarily as a fulfillment expert, my job was primarily to fulfill online orders for people online in the store, aswell as help anyone who may need help finding an item in the store alongside that. This job was great, albeit they didn't teach you how to do it very well, the training was very minimal and you pretty much have to become a master of this through trial and error using the various tools and learning the layout of the store and what different codes and such meant.

I don't know why they didn't care much to train new employees but already was a pretty rough sign. 

Where I worked, one of the biggest demographics in the store was Japanese customers, and despite this fact, I was the only person in the store who could speak any Japanese whatsoever, as someone from around the area aswell as growing up with many people in that culture, aswell as studying a bit of Japanese myself I was actually the only person in the store who could interact with any of these people properly and help them find what they were looking for or if they needed any help.

This skill that I had was not valued whatsoever, despite the fact that helping customers was an important part of being a fulfillment expert because of the fact you are often going around the store looking for items to fulfill an online order and along the way you will often run into a customer or two who needs help with nobody to help them.

Helping customers, particularly being able to use my knowledge of Japanese to do so was a very enjoyable experience, along with being able to get quite a workout for having to walk around a big store for 6-8 hours a day in many cases. I never really realized how much I loved helping people until I had this job.

Now there was extremely massive favoritism on the team I was on, and I know this because our stats are actually tracked on a device we all carry around called a "MyDevice" its an item that's like an android phone that allows us to scan items, find items throughout the store, and a myriad of other things, and if you don't have one, your job is gonna be screwed, and they might even force you to do something that you weren't even hired to do in the first place that you may not even have any knowledge of how to do. 

That was a big problem in and of itself that I will address in the future, but for now let's focus on the favoritism. In terms of productivity and accuracy aswell as being able to find the items, I went from being a fresh newbie to being the number one new hire at least if we looked at the stats in the fulfilment team, only being below 2 people who had been working there for many years before me, and were actually the people who trained me, they were really good people in my experience and I know they hated their jobs but did the most of it and were productive. 

I followed their lead to the best of my ability, and was only improving as the days went by. 

Now here's the thing about your Job or "Role" at target, just because you think you were hired for something, or are set to be in a specific role, doesn't mean you're actually going to be doing that job/role even if you NEED to, and are best suited for it. 

Let me explain, as part of being on the fulfillment team, we have to fulfill orders within a certain time limit or the order will be late, and we don't want to have a late order because that will upset customers right? Now depending on the time of the day or what day it is there will definitely be a lot more orders to fulfill than others, it's actually quite rare with how peoples schedules are set up that there wont be a time of the day where there isn't an order to fulfill from the fulfillment team, yet despite this, even if orders will get clogged up and even late in some cases, leaders/bosses from different teams in many cases will actually force you to do something completely different, such as backstocking, or stocking shelves on the floor, sometimes in the middle of busy hours, which can really be detrimental to our jobs.

Also stocking shelves, and backstocking is a much more lengthy process, and if you do it properly it might take a few hours or more in some cases, but oh if you're doing your job RIGHT, expect to be threatened about taking too long and being slow, which is why many many team members/coworkers just throw stuff randomly on the shelves as fast as they possibly can and just make it look as nice as possible, however some don't even do that, just so they don't get in trouble, but if you're a seasonal worker like I was, then don't the risk of getting in trouble could be your entire financial stability as there is a looming threat of losing your job.

There's a lot I can't share because it might risk sharing personal details but there was DEFINITELY an extreme bias towards me, and I was treated much much more poorly despite the hard work I put in, while people who half baked their job were put on a pedestal BECAUSE they were buddy buddy with the leaders, or in some cases were even seen as more attractive.

My job abruptly came to an end in the middle of one of my work days after a week prior my leader forced upon me to stock the floor with carpets, some of which were twice my size, and couldn't even be lifted with my own hands, this was the one time that I went on the walkies and said I actually can't do this by myself so I don't know how they expect me to stock this within 15-30 minutes, i'll stock what I can but I can't do this without getting hurt, my leader didn't care, and help was never sent despite her saying she would send another leader who put me down over not being able to stock these massive carpets by myself. I'm not a power lifter, and this wasn't even my job, I should have been out there doing my ACTUAL job, fulfillment.

After this I was very upset and made a bit of a snarky comment about how, "unless I turn into the hulk I don't see how I can do this within 10 minutes" because she threatened my job if I couldn't. My leader then took me to the back and said I can't be saying these things to her, and what could I do? If I stood up for myself I would have been fired right then and there despite the mistreatment. I had to apologize.

All my coworkers know about just how messed up management and the leaders are, we all talk about this together, heck, I didn't even believe it was true until I experienced it first hand, but we all just have to be quiet about it and just try and do our jobs.

Sadly because of what happened with the carpets, my leader held a grudge against me and said nasty things about me to the other leaders aswell, she would give me dirty looks all the time and even yelled at me for no reason for doing my job. This behavior was entirely unacceptable, but again, what could I do about it? It was looking like before this incident that I was going to go from a seasonal worker, to a full time team member come December or January, but I know she must have done something to say otherwise because in the middle of a workday, in the middle of a pick I was doing, I was pulled into HR and let go simply because "the season was coming to an end and they didn't want to take away hours from any other workers.

This was a very sickening and horrible experience, so maybe it was a good thing I wasn't permanently hired, but even so things haven't financially been the same, and I am always worried when I have to give the number of my previous employer in the worry that my leader will sabotage any recommendation of my work to anywhere else I try and apply to.

Would not recommend as a suitable workplace for the “long term” minded individuals looking to make a career in retail. Working for Target I’ve had my fair share of good, and bad and couldn’t explain the bad without first going into the good.

The culture - being “Obsessed with the Guest” was Target’s main focus when you performed your day to days and I was really lucky to share those experiences and gain knowledge of how retail truly operates, especially since I worked at the Herald Square location in New York City, New York, other wise known as the heart of the city, and the company’s flagship store. We saw tens of thousands of guest a day (even if that’s common for most stores in the city). But what separates us from our sibling stores would be that we were what’s considered a small format store, or a “Target Express.” When I tell you that getting to know the guest, and helping the shop, or getting a toy from the back room to give to a kid when there’s none of the shelf genuinely made my heart melt day in and day out. I completely had a passion I had no where else because of the environment of the culture in the store. 

The Team members - I loved my fellow Team Members. Being a GSA (Guest Service Agent) and the Trainer for Guest Service in the store, meant I had a huge responsibility in my day to day interactions in the store, and with my fellow employees. Having to make connections with all of them to motivate them to want to achieve greater was my role, apart from helping as Cashier assistance when there was a guest inquiry/complaint and I loved every moment of it. The people were high energy, the work load consistent but fair, new comers eager to learn, and the atmosphere always rose when you saw their face and made the first smiles of the day. 

These are two examples of what’s great about Target, and honestly made me fall in love with working there. But as I said before, the bad outweighed the good. 

Work load / Payroll - there was never a dull moment at Target except for at the beginning of the day, or at the end, and this would be a pro if not being dragged down by massive cons.. While I loved dearly my HR team, the way schedules were made, and consistency to your life was nonexistent while working for Target. There was no regard for your personal life in that schedules rotated on a weekly basis. Now while this is common in retail, it was exaggerated at my specific store by the fact that Monday you’d be working 4PM - 12AM, and have to stay to clean the store before overnight came and did everything you needed to do.. to then have to come back in sometimes the next day at 7 in the morning when the store closed. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t on a constant basis and while yes, we were directed to point out these anomalies as they presented themselves, this shouldn’t be a problem from a team trained to handle the resources and time cards of employees. To add onto this, there was a lack in consistency in everyone’s ability to take accountability for their actions and it seemed that HR would protect themselves by doing shady things (something I will get into in just a second). 

Managers/LODs/SRTL - While I enjoyed working along side them as a senior in the store, I never felt I could truly trust their decision makings in the store, I could never fully pinpoint why but it would have something to do with the fact that it was made very apparent that they protected each other in order to pursue their own self interest, and to keep each other out of trouble with their district supervisors. An example of this that I can bring is one time while working a shift, my significant other came to visit me at work, which for context she use to work at this Target location as well. At the end of my meal I clocked back in and asked one of my Managers (who I will keep anonymous as this is not that type of post) if she could stay in our breakroom because I would get off in the next hour or so and didn’t want her waiting in the rain. The LOD agreed and I sent my partner to the breakroom, where she was met with love and warm fullness by her former co-workers. My LOD and I’s superior Manager, what Target calls (Executive Team Leaders) or ETL for short came and saw this and asked me to get her to leave the breakroom. I challenged it by bringing up the fact I was given permission by my superior and he said he would run a “circle” basically meaning he would check in with her. He came back to me and brought her to to have a “mediation” where basically she covered her own end and said the conversation never happened, and my ETL lost trust in me from then on out. This is a situation that was in camera and I could have challenged the DC “Documented Conversation” but there was no point as I figured that I really did not care anymore. 

The managers will put people to perform their task when they fall behind on their work, and make people do LOD tasks like pick up calls on the walkie and such in a constant while only paying us the minimum Team Member pay. And Managers would talk disrespectfully to team members and there was a sense of fear mongering going on as people always felt they had to close up when an LOD came around. They looked down at us, always pulling the “superior card” and spoke to us as if they were better even when most of us have more retail experience then some of them put together.

Lack of care - As Teammembers we understand we have a list of things to get done each day, these are general tasks that should be completed, that’s understandable. But we’re humans, and LOD’s forget that once upon a time, they were like us too, and I’m not excusing being lazy, but what I‘m getting at us people who go above and beyond on a consistent basis, are shamed when we don’t perform at that level, and that’s simply not fair. For Q4, or Christmas season I was in self checkout for hours by myself holding a line out the door, because I was the only one could handle it, and my manager, the GSTL had the nerve to hold a documented conversation about my work performance and how it’s gone “down”. When I never saw her upstairs during a Christmas rush. It’s incredible the lack of leadership we possess, and I can’t say this across the board for Target because I’ve known some managers who have gone to other stores who were the absolute best. There’s no room to grow outside of made up team member titles as the LOD’s promise to develop all their teammembers, but choose who to grow. I got picked over a HR team member to be a GSTL, when he knows nothing about the front end and used me to train him during his LOD training period. 

In conclusion - Target is the perfect place to work for if you are okay with being your own boss, but also are okay with being subordinate. Be aware of the LOD’s, stay to yourself and just clock in and out on time, and don’t miss your 46, and you’ll be A-Okay.

Hope this helped. 💪🏽

PLEASE READ BEFORE APPLYING TO TARGET, FOR THIS POSITION.

Right away, I'm gonna say this is not a woman's job. I've only seen one female do this job and she quit after a couple months.

I'm writing this review not exactly to complain, but to help other people who may be in my position, or may end up in my position in the future.

Let's start from the beginning, I applied for this position with the typical 'macho' mindset. "Backroom Team Member? For $9.50 an hour, all we have to do is stock products and carry boxes around? Not having to deal with the customers? Peace of cake!" I thought this would be fun. Wrong.
For one, $9.50 an hour may sound like a decent amount, considering how most other people working minimum wage jobs are pulling in like $7-$8 an hour, but it really isn't.
This position, in particular, is set to work a very small amount of hours a day.
As Backroom Team Members, our job is to stock the store before it opens.(we rarely meet this goal, as we're almost always short-handed on team members)
The typical schedule is from 4am to 8:45am, that's almost 5 hours a day.
If you're good, & I mean GOOD, they'll throw you 3-4 days a week, that's about $45 you make a day. Let's say one week you score 3 days, then the next you have 4, $45 x 7 is $315 (before taxes). That's about $300 you make every two weeks. Now if you're a hard worker, or someone who's been working a good while, you're gonna know right away, that's a small check.
But maybe you dont agree, just because you dont understand the labor you have to put into this job, which I'll do my best to help you understand.

When I got called in for my interview/orientation, I got hired for this position along with like 5 other guys, after about two months, 4 of them quit.
The hours weren't ever a problem for me, I wake up at 3am with no problem.
This job doesn't effect my social life at all, I never miss out on anything because I work while everyone's sleep pretty much. Only thing is you might have to go to bed slightly early just so you can get up in the morning with no problem. (10-11pm) I dont recommend sleep aids, because usually you can still feel them when you wake up and go to work, and they can hinder your performance. (yes, I just used the word 'performance' for a job. This is that kind of job)

When I first started working here I didn't know what to do, or how to do anything. I would clock in and stand there and look around like okay, where do I go now? Everyone would break off in separate directions. Even though all of our job descriptions were the same, we were assigned to do different things. And being that I was still in training, they always tossed me in different area to see what I was best at. They had me unload the truck. (for the stronger, rougher guys who dont mind getting soaked in sweat for an hour) They had me on the line. (basically standing in one spot, throwing boxes on the correct pallets for an hour, mostly for the older, immobile guys)
& then, there was pallet-pulling, we are the guys who run around with pallet jacks, taking the pallets (usually stacked high with boxes) and pulling them to their designated areas. Like we'd take the snack pallet to the food section, toy pallet to the toy section, and then we'd take the individual boxes and bowl out the boxes to their correct aisle. (not as easy as it sounds) then we'd go back and do the same with another pallet for an hour until the truck was unloaded. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But being that we're usually short handed on team members (we'd have 4 pallet pullers instead of 7) we usually fall behind on the truck and get yelled at the entire time. I guess when someone doesn't show up to work, they expect us to over-exhaust ourselves in order to compensate for that missing team member. It makes a difference when 1 doesn't show up, so it must be miserable when 3 people decide to sleep in and not come in. Right? Yup.
That's stage 1 of my day, after the truck is done we have to go to our stations and work the boxes that we bowled out. (rip open the boxes & stock them) Also, all while getting yelled at. For what you may ask? Not much, they just expect us to wake up at 3am, with superhuman speed, for $9 bucks an hour.
That's all, we just stock products, it just sounds so easy. But it hurts that it actually isn't.
It's not even the actual job you should worry about, it's the management. We're all grown  men here, yet they talk to us like we're 12 years old. They spy on us, breath down our necks, yell at us and criticize us for the smallest stuff, almost as if they feel like they pay us too much? I used to be the 'yes, master!' Type employee, they loved it. I was running and carrying three boxes at once, I took pride in my job. What happened?
I remembered that I only get paid 9 bucks an hour. I only make like $40 bucks a day.
I realized I was being a proud slave to this place. Don't work here, dont apply here, dont let your kids or siblings apply here either. Not for this position.
We get the least amount of respect, out of anyone else. They don't treat their day team like this. (the people you see working there during the day)
You see those guys walking around, smiling, full of energy, their shirts look clean and ironed. That's the day team. 
When you come in the store the second it opens (before 9am) and you see a couple of disgruntled, tired, slightly dirty looking team members who dont exactly look like they woke up on the right side of bed, that'll be us. The backroom team members who have to wake up at 3am and do the dirty work.
We love it when the store opens, and the customers come pouring in, cause that's when the management immediately cut off their lousy attitudes and start sucking up in front of the customers.
They yell at you for moving too slow, they yell at you for moving too fast (cause if you hurt yourself or someone else, that's money outta their pocket, if you break something, that comes outta their pocket)
The pay is very lame, for the labor you're putting in, in order to make it on your own, you HAVE to be getting some kind of income from somewhere else, i barely hit $1000 a month, who can live off that? Who? Seriously.
As for advancement, lol what?
There's people who've been working here for 15-20 years, what do they do? Same stuff i do. Get yelled at while they stock the store. How much do they get paid? Same amount as me.
How do you even work here that long? How do you even work here for more than a year?

The discount is a joke, it's 10% off pretty much anything, but all that really does is beat down the tax. (helps when you're buying alot of stuff at once though)

They remind you as often as they can, that you're expendable, or Replaceable. They'll yell at you and tell you "we can find someone to do better than that in less than a week" 

Really? Watch him quit after a week.

I applied to Target after seeing their starting out pay for new employees was $13 an hour and then would be increasing to $15 an hour by 2020. It was a very enticing entry level pay and beat every other job starting pay in my area so I applied. After a couple of days not hearing back I called the store and finally got into contact with the hiring manager there and they scheduled a in person interview. I got to the interview and the questions were very easy (what would you do in this situation, are you a team player, etc...). The interview was then over and I was told I would have to go through two other interviews before I got the job. The next two interviews were very simple and fast and eventually I reached the end of it all and got a job offer for a part time (keep PART TIME in mind - we will come back to it) cashier role in their store. I was very happy because I was told I would be getting 20-25 hours a week and at $13 an hour that is pretty good pay per week.
        The hiring manager at the time then told me I would be coming back for orientation the following week and I left the building feeling ecstatic, however that feeling was about to be ripped from the overjoyed feeling of having a nice job. I get to orientation the following week and we watched videos and do the store tour, the usual thing, and then at the end we were told we would be called to let us know when we start our first day. I thought that was a little weird but I was fine with it. About a week later I still had not received my first day schedule or anything, which was really odd, so I got the store and they said I would start that following week. This process of having to wait so long was starting to become slightly irritating. Finally, I started working that following week as I was told. I started out with 19 hours my first week which was an hour less then promised but it was still good hours for part time so I ignored it (big mistake) and did the job I was hired to do.
         In regards to the cashier job itself, I have to say it would not be a job I would want to go back If I had the choice. First off, the managers constantly pushed you to sign up people for red cards (Target versions of a debit/credit card) and you had to get at least 2 sign ups per shift or it would not look good on you at all. However, there was one small problem! NOBODY WANTED TO SIGN UP FOR THEIR CARD. I got maybe 3 people to sign up for the card in my entire MONTH of working there and I was constantly having managers come up to me reminding me to get red cards and sell protection plans (another thing you were required to push). I was doing the job they asked, asking every single customer if they wanted a red card, and I was the one getting accused of not doing a good enough job? It was ridiculous. Moving on from the red cards and protecting plans, another thing that was crazy was that in addition to running a register you also sometimes have to be responsible for the self checkout lane and the front of the store where the buggies are. So you are doing three things, checking people out at your register, running the self checkout and making sure no one needs help there, and trying to make sure the front of the store looks clean where customers enter the store.Also, on some days, if a cart pusher called out sick or what have you then you (A CASHIER) were responsible for getting carts off the lot which I think is ridiculous. I was hired as a cashier, not a cart pusher! This comes back to target being understaffed most of the time and it affecting everyone! It was very stressful and unorganized. It was bad enough that some of the registers did not have a device to remove electronic locks from secure items making it so I would have to stop what I was doing and go to an entirely different register to remove the security lock but now I am trying to juggle three peoples jobs at once.
         Ignoring the job aspect, the reason I quit was because of hours. I could handle the annoying managers and target's ridiculous red cards and protection plans but what I could not, and would not, stand for was the hours I was getting. I mentioned earlier that my first week i got 19 hours which was good, and I was happy with that. My second week I got 20 hours. I was also happy with this. My third week, I got another 20. Again, happy. However, my fourth week is when things turned bad real fast and what eventually led me to quitting. I went and looked at the schedule and my hours were cut to 11 hours. I was going to work two days out of a week and have FIVE DAYS OFF! I was surprised and upset to the say the least! I was promised 20 to 25 hours a week in the interview after all. I spoke to my manager about the low hours and the only thing they said was that hours are going to be cut during September because it is apparently their slowest time of the year. However, I did not see how that was my problem at all and why I should suffer less pay because of it, but I kept my mouth shut and I said ok. I kept working because like everyone, I needed money.
         However, my final day of working at target came only a few days later. I walked into the employee lounge to clock in and saw a note "Please refer to the schedule for updated hours between September 1st 2019 to September 7th 2019". I looked for my name on the updated schedule and eventually found it. I was about to get really upset because on the new schedule my hours had been cut from 11 hours down to FIVE hours. You read that right. Also, to make it even worse, Target has a two week out schedule to look at as well. I WAS NOT EVEN ON THE SCHEDULE AT ALL. SO MY PAY FOR TWO WEEKS TOTAL WAS ABOUT TO BE $65 DOLLARS. At the point I had enough. I went to a manager who was off at the time but still in the lounge and asked to speak to her privately and told her I no longer wanted to work at Target. She gave me a form to fill out which asks why you are leaving and when you are wanting to leave. I filled in the blanks for LOW, VERY LOW, HOURS and also that my manager was overbearing and putting way to much pressure on cashiers to get red cards and protection plans and put that I was leaving immediately. That was it. I quit Target because of the crazy low 5 hour week and I WOULD NOT want to go back. To anyone looking to work at Target, I would say stay away.

I worked as "Inbound/SRT" (stocker/truck unloader). A typical day at work involved showing up at the scheduled time. 4 AM for 2-truck days and 6 AM for single truck days. There were about 3 - 6 of us to unload an entire truck, sometimes more, most of the time less, and usually around 1,500 - 2,000+ products. For the most part, everyone got along fine, though sometimes it was hectic to work with the full-time or part-time people who had been there for a long time and deal with their cocky arrogant attitudes and acting like they are your boss. However, there were definitely some really nice team members there who would help you out, say hi in passing, and were just very nice to work with.

For the short time I was there, during the holidays, corporate culture seemed good. There were a few mornings where there was breakfast waiting after we had unloaded a truck, there was lunch waiting, or there was a potluck. Occasionally, there were just random treats, a "snack bag", and things like that. It was very nice to walk into, and it would happen maybe one day out of the week. 

Working with dozens of people on the Target team is a mixed review: some people were happy, cheerful, and helpful. Others were miserable, energy drainers, and just unpleasant to work with, or just annoyed by you because you are new and they have been there for a while.

Although the seasonal pay was good, management has very high expectations of their "inbound/srt" team when corporate gets on them about the store, so they add that pressure to the team members. A surprise visit from corporate one day left us struggling to keep up, and having to put in a 12 hour shift, since the supervisors were actually "following rules".

It was extremely rare to receive anything that could be considered "positive feedback", "constructive criticism", or a "positivity booster" in the entire time I worked there, I think one supervisor said over breakfast, "great job guys getting that truck unloaded."  That was the extent of any recognition other than the feedback I received about my own performance. 

The other recognition I got was when corporate showed up, and a woman saw me in my dirty red shirt and pants (inbound team can't help but not get dirty from all the unloading we do), and asked me if I was on the schedule. I told them I had received my first paycheck, so I obviously worked there. After that, it seemed I was doomed to "not be kept on beyond seasonal".

While I want to say that the pay was justified, when you unload two trucks at 4 in the morning, stock your area with everything from those trucks, manage to grab all the backstock and pulls with it, somehow find time to take a "mandatory 15 minute break" in order to "meet compliance" (which is hard to do without a supervisor questioning where you are), help out customers who need help finding things, and get done by 11 AM without even taking a lunch break, and then get told "you're too slow" ... and eventually "we won't be keeping you beyond the season", didn't even know I was in a race, but you realize with that added pressure, there is definitely something wrong with Target and it's just not worth working there to me. 

My micromanaging supervisor, who was always constantly checking up on me, every 20 minutes it seemed, not to help, but to remind me that I should take no more than X amount of minutes to unload my entire cart, or grab more in the back, had called me into an office and told me that I was too slow for what they were looking for and had alerted me that they would not be keeping me on. This was actually more of a relief than a disappointment, since "inbound/srt" work is hard labor - lots of walking, lots of unloading, lots of loading. I loved it for the exercise more than anything and they were paying me so that was a plus. And the fact that my schedule was 4 AM and 6 AM every other day... to say I was really upset about not being kept on as a permanent Target employee after the season was over would be a total lie. I'll miss the few people I worked with, but getting the boot makes it all easier to leave. But as this is an honest review: they did me a huge favor by letting me go. Thank you so much!

I was considered part-time, so scheduling me for 6-7 days a week for 3 hours a day was quite the norm. Very rarely was it ever a 3 hour day for me - which was a good thing for the extra money, but bad when I had other things to do, like go to my other job. It was common that I would work at least 3 hours more than my scheduled time. Target is very stringent on overtime: they don't like anyone to have it ever. So single truck days -- you got cut within an hour after your normal scheduled shift, while two-truck days might have you working at least 3-4 hours longer. However, once they saw you were nearing 40 hours, it's easier to replace you with an employee who has less hours than to pay you overtime.

It was an experience for me and my first job working for a huge retailer like Target and a seasonal job as well, which is why I wasn't worried about "not being kept beyond seasonal". I will probably never work for Target again, at least not in that department.

I would recommend this job to people who love Target and want to be a part of a larger retail organization. It's also not a bad seasonal job if you are looking to make extra money, like I was, though they were treating me like I cared if they kept me after the season was over. Defintiely had no intentions of impressing or making an impression on anyone. And kissing butt ain't my thing. It seems that no matter what you do for Target, they'll never recognize the true backbone of WHAT AND WHO keeps their stores running. 

There's probably not much opportunity at Target to call it a "career" and if there is...your career is that you will get to keep an entire department stocked for the rest of your life. Don't worry though, HR will make it seem like it's a great privilege and honor to work for Target. Maybe for you, but definitely not for me. Remember: this is retail job, and retail is never pretty. After all, it is all about hitting the "Target".

I had three interviews before accepting a position at Target. I did my due diligence asking about company culture, turnover, and what onboarding would look like after 30, 60, and 90 days of the probation period. I was told that there was low turnover, extensive onboarding, and that the position was the front end of the store, check lanes, and guest service. Right away upon my first and second week there I noticed that what I was told in the interviews was not accurate. There was an excessive amount of turnover for attendance issues which made sense, however they also wanted to fire team members after one or two weeks that were thrown into positions which little to no training which I could relate to since the same thing was done to me. My training was literally, you have many years of retail and management experience, so you will get it while being told to sink or swim and that this was the best way to learn. I was handed a device and told to go into "training mode" on the registers to figure it out, but when things would come up like when a guest is using WIC they would get mad at the new hire and I even admit myself that with many years even I did not know how to do that transaction, without remaining calm and trying to self teach myself. My first week six to eight  people were fired from my department that I never even met them or knew who they were. There was also an area of the department I was in called OPU (Order Pickup) which I was never told about before accepting the position. Out of 8 people scheduled there it always seemed like half would call out, especially on weekends. We would have to deliver product to guests in their cars and there were moving goals in that when I first started it was 5 minutes to complete a guests order and bring it out to them, then 3, and finally 2. I struggled to keep up with this demand as guests would all arrive at the same time and that's when the counter would start and with half of the people calling in it became a unreasonable expectation and everything was tracked using the Zebra digital device. We had walkie talkies to call for backup from other departments, however there would often be times where you would radio for help 8 times plus with no response and senior leadership (ETLs) was supposed to assist when guest help was needed and often times these calls went ignored which was very frustrating and as a result, I collapsed at work from extreme heat, trying to hit metrics with short staff, and extreme smoke due to Candian Fires from the north. I called out as a result and was very publicly reprimanded as a supervisor I reported to did not get the message and assumed I had talked to HR and I just called the store so it was awkward and aggressive. I even made up a few of these days as I felt bad being so new. However, in the short time I worked there another team member fainted and I was lucky to have caught them and another team member who had been there for an extremely long time had fallen and needed to be rushed to the hospital. As this was happening a few team members were upset that no one would be able to do this person's job and that's when I knew there was a lack of empathy in my department. I would often cover for call outs and there were times where cart pushers would break and I had to do it by hand and this was almost every day. It quickly led to physical and mental exhaustion and a feeling of illness on most shifts. I never got any feedback on how I was doing unless I asked or if I was being reprimanded in a very public setting which led to planting a seed of doubt in the people around me by lacking emotional intelligence. During this time the store was also cutting hours which I could not figure out given how I was always doing the work of so many people who called out. Come to find out from another long time supervisor that the overnight team would wait for trucks to show up and they would not arrive on time leading the store to have to cut hours during normal operating hours adding to an already stressful situation. All members of management would share an office space and often times there would be conversations that should have been had behind closed doors and what ultimately led to me leaving was a former supervisor in my department was talking to another team member and I overhead the conversation that she was going to try to get me to leave by sabotaging so that another team member who was promised my position by a member of management who was fired or left my first week of working there since they were friends with this person. When I tried to talk to people about some of these things, I was often cut off mid-sentence so I did not feel secure or have confidence at this point to talk to anyone as it was so chaotic. 

I did meet a lot of very nice people who I know shared some of the same concerns in private with me and were also afraid to speak up. This location is the 3rd to 5th busiest location in the country for the company so the shift went by extremely quickly. The pay was also a bit above fair market value and there was day one benefits. They would also often host food events for the staff and provide water and Gatorade after asking for workers when the heat index was extreme. I will honestly miss working with people I have met, but in the long run it was not a good cultural fit for me or my family. 


My experience with Target is that they pretend to be better than Walmart but they're just as horrible to their employees as Walmart is. I believe that if their guests knew exactly the type of work place that it is they would find other places to shop just as they have shunned Walmart!

I know that my experience isn't going to be the same everywhere but there's definitely a consitancy that I see throughout all departments and positions. These behaviors weren't just picked up but rather learned as people advanced in the store.

The store I worked for looked horrible, merchandise in the wrong locations with wrong prices, merchandise just not out on the floor even though it was in the backroom, team members avoiding guests, team members pawning guests off on other team members that couldn't help them rather than finding someone who could, team leads and executive team leads showing favoritism towards team members for personal reasons, team leads retaliating against team members for going to HR about problems, allowing certain team members to do nothing while demanding others do more, not holding team members accountable for their work, not holding team members accountable for their attendance

This is a great place to work if you don't feel as though you should have to work. Those are the people who do best at Target as a team member. Target hires temps for the holiday season but instead of letting them go like they are suppose to they keep too many of them who then cut into those who have been there for years hours. The team leads hold very few people accountable for their behavior. They don't teach their team members how to work efficiently and hold a general standard through out to get the most work done. They encourage team members to make a project last 10 times longer than it should rather than explain a better way of doing something and if another team member tries to help someone they are treated very poorly for only trying to help. Team members don't like new team hires coming in and being able to do their job better than them. If they come to an area that the new person is working and they get angry if that new person explains whats what because that person is new so they should just come over and do whatever it is they want. Team leads do not demand respect between team members so that when a team member goes to another area they should speak with the person working in that area to find out whats going on. If they don't like you then you better watch yourself because they will ride you no matter how good of a worker you are. Actually, the better of a worker you are the more they will ride you hoping that they can catch you screwing up. If you screw up once you will hear about it for years as though it happened yesterday. Flow team members can come in and pretend to have checked their merchandise to see if it will go out on the shelf when they actually just stick it on a cart and send it to the back without checking. Some open the boxes and stick it where they feel it should go. If a guest cannot find what they need the store can't make those sales. If the store doesn't make those sales then the store has less hours to give out. If the store has less hours to give out then a lot of team members aren't going to be able to eat. Why Target will give these team members who could care less if Target shuts down or not more hours than those who work their tails off I do not know. The Executive Team Leads and Team Leads will give their favorites more hours each week no matter what work ethics they have. They will give shifts to a person who leaves early at least once a week rather than a person who is willing to stay late! Some Team Members have personal relationships with team members outside of the store and team members buy the team leads gifts. They allow their team members to act out and cause trouble for other team members only doing something once physical threats are made. It only shows team members what they can get away with when they're jealous of other team members getting more attention than them. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you work with young people that haven't crossed over into adulthood and a team of managers that don't help that team member cross that hurdle but instead sympathize with them and allow it to happen over and over again. They will retaliate against team members and not let them pick up additional shifts for trying to stick up for themselves. At the store I worked at a team member would come in early and check the shift give away board. If someone cannot work a shift they can write it up and someone else can sign up to pick it up. This team member checks the board out and picks up what he/she can but if he/she cannot pick up whats up there he/she takes that paper off the board and hides it in his/her locker then goes around asking those she wants if they want to work that day. If you care about your work you will be lucky to get 12 hours a week. If you are lazy you will get more than 30!

Maybe I am wrong and this is only the location I worked at but this behavior had to be learned somewhere. I know I sound like a disgruntled employee and I am since I'm in a huge amount of debt and couldn't afford necessities. I was a very good worker and have proof of that but they didn't deserve my hard work nor did they appreciate. I can't justify a hard working team member losing hours to lazy people who could care less if the company makes money or not.

I worked at this location for about 8-9 months, November 2021 to July 2022. Ironically, I felt better about this job during holiday season. The store was getting a remodel from about April-August and had taken employees from the department I worked in so we had a substantially larger workload than usual during this time. I have fantastic customer service skills and shared a pretty vast knowledge of my department and nearly everything in it. What I didn’t know, I learned on the job making it to where I could help nearly every guest with ease. I received compliments on my costumer service from high management and guests alike constantly. When you first start working for Target, they tell you that the “guest” comes first, except that’s no true when you actually work for them. I would constantly get put down by my ETLs for spending “too much time” helping guests. If I was not consistently stocking the shelves while trying to show the guest that they had my full attention, I would get reprimanded. Important to note, I worked in Electronics and sometimes, you have to spend the time explaining pretty much everything about a product to the consumer as not everyone has the knowledge necessary for making a tech purchase, whether that be they’re not sure what Apple Watch model to get so they get the features they want or if they’re buying a game for a friend/ child/ grandchild and need to find the right one for the right console. At one point during my employment with Target, I was the only employee in my department and worked 44 hours during my finals week (I am a college student). One employee was out on medical leave, one was moving and the other had been taken for remodel. We had immense trouble keeping staff, with many telling other employees that management was the issue before they just stopped showing up. Management asked me on multiple occasions to text these employees on their behalf so that they could try to get them to come back or just find out what happened. Another big issues is that they give you no time to learn and expect your trainers to go through every little detail of the job, which they can’t do, it’s just not possible during the 1 to 2 week training period. My training period was the two weeks before Black Friday and my trainer was 16-17 years old so there was obviously bigger things we needed to focus on as a team as Electronics is one of the highest selling areas of the store, even more so during holiday season. The biggest issue I had with the store was with how they handled me leaving. My hours had been cut pretty bad in July so I was seeking other employment opportunities and made the mistake of telling my ETL because she proceeded to treat me like absolute garbage for the weeks leading up to me leaving. The week before I left, on July 16th, my aunt passed away from Stage 4 Cancer and I called out of work. A few weeks before this, I would guess beginning of June, I was in the hospital for breathing problems and I couldn’t speak, so obviously not optimal for working in retail as the only employee in my department for the night. I had come in on the Wednesday after July 16th and spoke with my ETL about putting in my two weeks and she persuaded me to become an on demand employee, meaning they would call me in for shifts as needed and I would only be required to work a few days every so often to stay employed. The plan was to be on demand until holiday season, where I would become a full employee again for the holidays. I had also mentioned to my ETL during this conversation that my schedule had been changed outside of my availability and I would not be able to work that. Following my aunt’s death and my call out, my schedule was changed. They tried telling me that I had an unfinished schedule and a shift for Thursday had been added onto my schedule, which was not there a few days prior, AFTER the schedule had been finalized and posted in the office. I politely told them again that I would not be able to make it, as I already had commitments that day for job interviews. My manager then told me to go ahead and put in my two weeks because I was “unreliable”. Something I have not mentioned is the fact that I was the only employee in Electronics that would come in on short notice to cover other employees. I also gave up all of my school breaks and had to sleep in my car as I had no place to stay after my dorms closed. I was sleeping in my car in the middle of December just to keep my job, and they were aware of this. I did the same thing over Spring Break in March. But I was unreliable? I walked out of the job, which I am aware of how bad that is but I could not take the unappreciative attitude towards me and my work. I was consistently on time and would come in for nearly every shift, even while sick unless it was something that prohibited me from doing so such as COVID or not being able to speak. I may have worked a bit slow because my focus was the guest but they don’t get to tell you that the “guest comes first” if you get in trouble for doing so.

A word to management, don’t call your most reliable employee unreliable. You still haven’t filled my position and it’s hurting your store. Show your employees that you care about them and their time and not that they’re “easily” replaceable.

I enjoyed the idea of family photography and at first this job seemed excellent, but the longer I worked here the more under pressure I came from the company itself, expecting me to boost my sales average despite unrealistic coupons provided to customers year-round via Target Portraits and Groupon, which made keeping my personal sales average at an acceptable level impossible. More on that later.

A typical work day on my own would involve opening the studio and preparing the camera for the day's work, then awaiting the day's appointments, which on some days wouldn't arrive until the very end of my work day, meaning I would have a full day of down time followed by three appointments in quick succession, which made it easy to fall behind by myself and caused a lot of stress in a short period of time. During down time I would take calls from potential customers looking to create new appointments, take care of customer pick-ups, and confirm existing appointments for the next day, but the range of duties was quite limited, and I found myself sitting uncomfortably for hours on end waiting for something to happen on many occasions.

Often on weekends when I would work together with my manager, appointments would be booked every 20 minutes which was stressful for the both of us. The company also only allows so many daily man-hours depending on the appointments for the day, and the amount fluctuates significantly if any appointments cancel or reschedule to another day, often resulting in me having to clock out for break time longer than reported which, while understandable, does affect my pay, and I rarely had anywhere to go in the middle of Bridgewater, so I would just wait in the studio until it was time to clock back in while my manager would take another appointment without me.

Going back to coupons and Groupon, Lifetouch constantly offered unbelievably good deals for their products, and while this is a great point for customers (I would love to go to Lifetouch as a customer with this stuff available) it significantly hurts the business of independent employees, who are then blamed for their poor sales performance due to excuses such as "bad photography" or "lackluster sales skills" especially those without prior experience in sales. Many customers have now realized that with Groupon, they can walk in, have their pictures taken, get the freebies guaranteed to them by the Groupon, often to the value of between $100-200 in savings, then leave without buying anything else, and all additional purchases made are 40% off anyways, so as soon as a customer would come in with a Groupon my sales average was almost guaranteed to suffer.

The company would go on to make complaints to my manager that my sales average was far too low (within the $20 range) yet at the same time no attention would be brought to the fallacy that I could keep up with the expected sales average when more than half of the customers I would do sittings with were so used to using Groupons, they would exclusively buy the freebies and then finalize their order, and no enthusiasm towards our other products and services could change their minds. Selling a 16x20 Gallery Wrap, normally at the value of ~$150 for free is guaranteed to make your sales suffer, so why is it my fault when the company is the one offering these deals year-round?

Anyways, it's not a bad company, Lifetouch's customer service is quite good, training mixes both informational and hands-on experience, and I learned a lot about proper photographing techniques which will help me in my long-term career, but the pressure put on employees to make a standard sales average despite ridiculous deals granted to customers put me in a negative mental state, feeling degraded by the company for not being able to keep up with their expectations despite the situation being partially out of my own hands. I'm not a master photographer and I'm not a sales-whiz, but I tried to do right by every customer that came into the studio, and seemingly that wasn't enough. As of writing this review I am planning on finding work elsewhere in a less mentally-taxing job. I'm inexperienced in this field so perhaps I'm giving up too easily, but the stress is real and it is significant, so I recommend those in a similar frame of mind to be wary of taking up a position with Lifetouch, there's some great stuff going on there, but unless you can really milk a sale for all its worth to the point of borderline manipulation, you may find yourself in a similar position with the higher-ups bearing down on you to increase productivity in spite of hurdles put in your way by those very same higher-ups.

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