Working at Target — Reviews by Employees

I rated Target 1344 horrible place to work at because they say you can move up which is not true. The human resources there is a joke. Its all about politcs. You have to kiss a lot of you know what to move up in this store its not fair.

I was hired to work on the sales floor a year ago as a team member, but am now a team lead, and I've gotta' tell you this has been by far and away the worst job I have had, and I've had quite a few. The pay absolutely SUCKS with this company, I know it's only retail and pay ALWAYS sucks in the field, but what the hell does it mean when pay is "competitive"? Everyone who works in the retail field are part of the working poor class so who the hell cares if pay is competitive. Crap is crap no matter what the amount, it's not as if we are impressed. Also, morale in the store I work at is absolutely non-existent, no one shows any enthusiasm, energy or thought for the job. No one smiles or even bothers to go out of their way to ask customers if they can ask them to find something like they are supposed to. Even though I worked myself to a team lead there is no "real" growth opportunity within this sorry-ass company and it doesn't look like there will be for anyone else in the near future as they continue to cut team member's hours (few work more than 20-25 hrs/wk).

Also, I think most you have hit the nail on the head when you say that ETL's talk a lot of smack behind the team members' backs when the team members can't perform a specific task when asked, as I've overheard a lot of it myself. The smack that goes on between the ETL's is atrocious, the low lifes. Yeah right, like they are real "competent" themselves when doing their jobs. Most of these idiots have no business being ETL's themselves. Without a doubt they are a huge part of the problem rather than a solution.

Corporate needs to wake up out of its coma and start making changes from the top, but I know that will never happen.

I fell victim to the internship program. Thank god it only lasted 10 weeks & I was one of the few that didn't get brainwashed. Don't fall for it!

The reason why I rated the company the way I did is because I been there from 2003 to present in the AP department and my money has been going down steadily due to these corporate ass geniuses. I invested my time with this company and I feel I wasted my time and energy now that I am working day-side. Has it come down to this?

I was a team leader in my department and in 2009 they discontinue that and I took a demotion pay losing $4.00. I believe to this day I got duped by that lady in HR for reducing my pay rate to this amount and they don't even care. On top of that, these geniuses have the audacity to cut the budget of overnight security and even worse, there goes my overnight differential pay.

The Assets Protection Business Partner of Assets Protection feels like it's a luxury for us being there failing to realize that it is a necessity. These douche-bags always want to talk shit and not really come see us overnight to see what's going on and experience what it is like working by yourself most of the time without a team. It's not our fault there is not a lot of internal activity going on overnight in our store. How much one person can do when it is a big store with a huge staff on the sales floor and we are bombarded with work on top of that. Even my boss wasn't hardly doing any overnights and not giving us any support. Rookies I tell you. There have been some internal activity day-side as of late that's about it. There are some stores that are still working overnight security to this day. Go figure!!

This really sucks and I'm not planning on staying there any longer nor moving up and re-establishing myself. If I'm asked is target the company to work for, I would have to say no. At least I still have a job and all but I'd rather be collecting unemployment just to keep my sanity, LOL!!

I have family who work for target and they have the worst management who know nothing at all about running a business. someone up in corporate really needs to look again at the people they are hiring as store managers.

I worked at Target for 8 months. It was a pretty crappy job. I was a cashier, and I dreaded going to work every day I was scheduled. I got paid 7.00/hr at first, but after like 6 months, got a HUGE raise of.....FIVE CENTS...wtf?! Five cents, wow. That was more of an insult than a compliment! I was a fast cashier, and always showed up to my shift and I get a mere 5 cents. I never felt appreciated.
Closing was horrible, I'd be scheduled till 10 but be there till midnight or 1am. The people I worked with were nasty, skanky, and ugly. The main managers of Target I never came into contact with because of the size of the store/company, but the immediate managers I worked with were dumb. There was one manager (he has a bunch of tattoos and his name starts with a C) who would ALWAYS go out for a smoke break or just be standing around doing nothing. He would sometimes leave me, a cashier with no management experience, his keys and walkie talkie and disappear for 30 minutes to an hour, and then came back smelling like alcohol. Very unprofessional. Another manager (chubby troll-looking girl, name starts with an S) was always talking about people and talking down to them. I could not stand it.
The managers also tell you to try and push the Red Card, and that gets so annoying. They make you feel horrible if you don't get a bullseye, even though it's not your fault there's a recession and people don't want to open new credit card accounts.
The bonus is that they will supply you with food in the breakroom on certain days of the month. Another discount is the option for direct deposit of your paycheck into your account. The discount sucks though, as it's only a mere 10%.
My advice is don't work here if you have any bit of class! =)

Pay- I gave the company a one. I was making more than minimum wage which is what other companies start you on, for the same job.

Benefits- negative 2. I was told I would get benefits after six months, and then when six months came up, no one wanted to hear about it, and was instead told i'd have to wait another year so they could do their annual benefits changing stuff. (whatever that means.)

Job Security- positive two. There were so many people constantly quitting, that they were having trouble keeping employees, so I felt pretty secure.

Work life balance- negative 3. I requested that I have every thursday and friday off (I had a second job) and so many times They would call me on Thursday and beg me to come in after a 12 hour shift at an assisted living center... It was madness! When I finally quit the second job and worked only for target, I told them I would not work Sundays before noon and thursdays at all. still. Every week I was at Target on Sunday morning and Thursday nights. The schedule was never right in what I wanted, ever. They will call you in to cover someone's shift, and then later that week walk you out of the building so you don't get any over time.

Career Potential/Growth-I gave it a one. If you sleep with your managers, you can get a job that you don't deserve. Otherwise, for the rest of us, you'll walk away knowing you learned organizational skills you can throw on your resume.

Location-I gave it a positive 3. In the same parking lot as several businesses that I frequent.

Co-worker competence- negative 4. This is largely in part due to lack of communication. The cashiers don't talk to sales floor people, and the sales floor people don't have time to talk to anyone except customers, and the managers don't communicate with anyone except other managers.

Work environment- I gave them a -2. Everyone is pessimistic. No one tries to see anything good at all. I was never trained for my job. Never. The guy who was training me got replaced, and then my direct supervisor assumed I knew everything and then blamed me when things weren't right. The best work environment is around Christmas, when everything's so chaotic that people actually work together to get things done. After Christmas ends, everything goes down the toilet, and the employees go back to complaining about lack of respect.

Which brings me to Respect- Negative 5. My direct manager treated me like I was expendable, wasteful, a horrible employee all around, and when it came down to it, I was doing her job as well as mine. I was making her look good. When I tried to talk to a separate manager about this, she sided with the manager, of course. If a customer throws a CD at you, expect the manager to side with the customer. (Hello, what 40 year old woman throws a temper tantrum in the middle of the store?) The customers are about 50/50. Crazy psychopaths, and very sweet individuals. Security is a joke, as far as kids shoplifting.

All in all, if you want to work for Target, expect no respect, negative atmosphere, and a continual turnover rate for new employees, which leads to no training, and expect that no one will talk to anyone.

I've been working for Target on the sales floor for almost a year and I would have to say this was simply the worst job I've ever had in my life. The ETL's are nothing but incompetent morons who have no business being in this field, especially since so many of them have never had any experience in a supervisorial role in retail, the fact that almost everyone has said the exact same thing about the ETL's backs my claim up. Morale in this company absolutely SUCKS!!!! No one shows any enthusiasm for the job or energy to do it. A lot of my fellow team members do a half assed job when it comes to stocking shelves, leaving shelves empty when there is plenty of room for items. As a result, when an ETL sees shelves empty they come to me,regardless of how busy I am and have me do someone else's job. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. Considering pay in the company absolutely sucks with so few hours being given out, and very little room for growth I'm not surprised that morale is pretty much non-existent. If the economy didn't suck so bad a lot of people wouldn't be working this suck ass job. At least I'm lucky enough to have found a real job that will pay me real money, and knows how to treat people, I'll be gone at the end of this week. I feel sorry for those of you who will be stuck with this poor excuse for a company a while longer until you find real jobs. To sum this job up it's a dead end job with no real future for anyone, and no growth potential, and no real leadership at the head of tehe company.

I used to work for Target and at one point was the shoe specialist, I was excited at first to get into the job but I soon realized why none of the shoe specialists stuck around for long. This target had the biggest shoe dept. in the district yet they expected one person do the job of 2 people. At the job I worked before then I did the job of three people and was way more successful! Every time I started doing something I was told I was being to perfect and it was not good enough. They would also load me down with jobs outside of my area and expect me to have the world's most perfect dept. It was not possible. At the same time another employee, who was actually under me would go tell lies or only a sing sided conversation to an ETL which always got me into trouble. When I had told this employee many times that I was not his competition he still treated me as if I was. My idea was to stay as the shoe specialist until I was ready to move up or to a different dept. I was told on many occasions that the ETL over me would never play favorites yet she constantly treated the employee who acted as though he was in high school still, way better then me. When my husbands car broke down we were not in any position to buy a new one so we were forced to share a car. When I put in for a schedule change to at least come in an hour later, I was refused but college students, parents and people with second jobs were given the opportunity to have a revised and approved schedule. I had a real reason, yet I ended up getting fired over this.

My advice to anyone who works or is planning to work for Target that kissing the team leaders and ETL's butts is a must!! Also that you should not trust any team member, you never know who might be competing with you even if your not. Don't take personal calls in the break rooms, do that in your car. I miss the first job that I had, working at Meijer, it was not the greatest job but it was a whole lot better then Target!

With the exception of briefly working in retail when I was a young person, most of my work experience has been outside of retail. I've worked for Target for about 2 years and I do like my job. Because I am much older than my coworkers for me the job is physically demanding but it is one major reason I stay with the job. I feel that at my age a sit down job will destroy my health so this is a very good change for me.

Depending on the day of the week or the time of year the job can be extremely fast moving and by the end of my shift I know I've earned every penny paid to me and that feels good. Also, because of my age, wisdom and life experience I don't buy into the rah rah part of my job. I don't know if that is good or bad but it is where I am in life but I don't begrudge the youngsters from drinking the Kool Aid. it's all part of growing up in the real world.

The negatives -- I don't know how men and women with children can survive on a team members pay. It's very low and the benefits are not that great. It would take an additional job or 60-80 hours of minimum wage for a family to survive. The pay is horrible but that is true for almost any retail job. That in my opinion is the huge downside of being a team member. The young college graduates will do just great as they climb up the Target ladder and most of them are pretty good people.

The best part of the job are my fellow team members, the ability to have flexible hours, Time off when you need it, the physical activity of the job, strong work ethics that is important in any job, and our customers or guest as Target likes to say.