Target Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

- Customer base is generally nice
- Coworkers are friendly and helpful (for the most part)
- You can pretty much wear (almost) anything as long as it's red and khaki.

Cons

- Yearly pay raises are a joke.
- Team member discount is an absolute joke! (sales tax kills the discount, depending on where you are)
- Company doesn't seem to promote from within (good or bad, depending on who your are), which produces ineffective management at times.
- Company policies loosely enforced and "best pratices" are ill defined.
- Management seems to care more about getting credit cards than company morale.

Advice to Senior Management

Educate your management on building morale for their employees. Happier employees = happier customers. Also, unifying and enforcing company policies and best practices removes confusion and communication issues between employees, supervisors and guests. Lastly, stop making people work to death for a year for a minuscule $.10-$.40 raise.

Pros

Job stability and predictable schedule.

Cons

Leadership is hit or miss. You have to play up to the right people in order to get recognized for promotion. It is not about your ability or results but about your affiliation.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage and promote people who get results not those who can spin the truth or who are members of the in-crowd.

Pros

Great benefits, once you accrue your vacation time it is very pleasant. Most of the team members are very pleasant to work with.

Cons

Most medical benefits will be gone by the end of 2012. The average guest is horribly mean and get away with treating team members like junk. Any time off or vacation requests are denied. ETL's do not acknowledge you unless they want something. Hours are being cut drastically, the average team member works about 20 hours a week now, when we averaged about 32 to 35 hours. ETL's do not want to take responsibility or accountability for their actions and will not back an employee up who follows company policy. ETL's have been known to talk bad about team members and not get reprimanded. ETL's will either sit in Starbucks or the break room for hours on end and ignore any help the store may need. You are lucky if you get any of your required breaks. ETL's do not work or pull their own weight with pulls, zoning, etc, they expect only team members to do it. Favoritism is noticeable at this store, allowing a select few to have every weekend off, even when they have open availability. The average ETL has never had any management experience or even another job before this position, they are directly out of college. Most of the ETL's will ask for help from team members because of their knowledge but will write a bad review on that specific employee. Moving up within the company, even if you've been with the company for 10 years is ignored if you don't have a Bachelors' degree when in their interviews this is there selling point; opportunity to move up with experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the employees, making an employee happy makes for happy guests.

Pros

Health care benefits for 20 hour part time associates, store hours allow for flexible work schedule, 401 k plan, and 10% discount on target merchandise plus other partner discounts. Also, due to high number of employees, it's very easy to get days off...though usually unpaid. A small handful of team leads, team members and customers who were really nice and appreciated someone they knew did a good job and went above and beyond.

Cons

Management will often purposely schedule part timers just under 20 hours do they don't qualify for company offered benefits, not to mention other assistance. Also, 401 k is only offered to employees 21 and over so the majority of my time there I didn't qualify (started when I was 17). Management will come and go so there is never consistent leadership let alone someone you can feel you can go to with your issues. Hours are long and sometimes you are scheduled barely 8 hours between shifts. Depending on the store, but like most retail, there is no consideration for employee work life balance. Most employees that aren't upper management are either lazy unenthusiastic teens/ young adults, college kids trying to make ends meet until they graduate and book, or jaded older people who have either retired, been housewives who's kids grew up or those who have given up on life (who else could afford to live on these wages lol). Reviews were changed a few years in to where your raise depended very heavily on the score of the store, so even if you busted your butt if your store was red your raise sucked. Not to mention raises were bogus and done by stressed out underpaid middle managent (hourly supervisors) which in some cases you might have rarely worked with or they might have rushed past your review because they had tons of other work to do. Keep in mind it's not always Target as a whole. Sometimes, like in my case, I worked at a high risk store so it was always busy, although the store produced a lot of money the profit margin was lowered because of all the loss due to theft and fraud, the store required more work on the employees behalf to try to keep it up, management was always stressed because of this and the guests were more of a headache. Not all stores are this bad! Lol

Advice to Senior Management

I worked at the service desk. If you expect us to follow policy please try to follow it most of the time as well. I understand customer retention and the customer is always right mentality but working in a store in a questionable area with often times shady "customers", it seemed like management was always going around policy and making team menbers look like idiots or like they have poor customer service skills . Just because the guests have adult temper tantrums or threaten to beat your a** when you dont give them what they want, doesn't always mean you should. I understand picking your battles but this only encourages this type of behavior and treatment of team members. Also, in a retail environment filled with mediocre underpaid employees, do more to show appreciation for those that go above and beyond there job title and reward them with recognition and chances for advancement not just longer hours and lateral movement. Also, favoritism without merit runs rampant as well- make it stop.

Pros

Consistent Development and training of leadership and store teams

Cons

Consistency in work life balance

Pros

Competitive pay w/ great benefits (especially as you move up within the company), Target is always on the cutting edge of technology, great routines and processes in place for maintaining Target's high standards, flexible scheduling, lots of opportunity to learn new skills and jobs, and the people are great.

Cons

Payroll is being slashed company wide and it's hard to maintain the stores to Target's high standards w/ less people and hours to do it with; Target is extremely dependent on technology to complete a lot of its processes, but does not always have enough equipment for the whole team to complete their work and does not have a great system in place to maintain its equipment; Target has a habit of hiring young men and women straight out of college with no prior experience in retail and putting them in management positions leading to a lot of young people in management who do not have a through understanding or realistic expectation for what can be done with the payroll available; Because of its focus on high standards and productivity, Target's managers can often lose sight of the people who are actually making things happen to make the stores so successful and over look their high performers leading to lowered morale

Advice to Senior Management

Be sure you stop every day to recognize the people who break their backs and sweat for you day in and day out so the store can succeed in its goals.

Pros

flexible with schedule, people are fun

Cons

low wages and raises, very difficult to move up in the company, management plays favorites and lacks communication

Advice to Senior Management

improve on communication with other leaders and team members, be more involved with the sales floor (don't just sit up in office for your whole shift), follow through with what you say you will do.

Pros

Target main focus is on leadership. To be successful with target one must focus on developing all the talent around oneself.

Cons

Target doesnt focus on allowing their management team to have an effective work-life balance, It is imperative to the success of the company

Advice to Senior Management

Please allow management to have a consistent schedule and an effective work-life balance, this will aid in the effectiveness of the store.

Pros

Great structure, good teamwork. The Target location I worked at had excellent management staff, but many of the greatest folks have been promoted and/or left and the store is not where it used to be.

Cons

Target demands that to be an executive team leader you must have a college degree. This puts a real damper on things for career oriented individuals. When I was employed with Target I spent time training new Executive Team Leaders -- but I was just an hourly team leader. Many of the ETLs I trained just came out of college with zero retail experience. I had years under my belt (including management positions at other retail companies). Unfortunately for Target this led to my leaving and joining a company that looked at experience and not just level of education.

Advice to Senior Management

See the bigger picture. Is it worth losing an exceptional associate because they aren't promotable due to a lack of a college diploma? I was encouraged to go back and finish school, and while that is all and well I have a family to provide for.

Pros

Good hours and pay etc.

Cons

Bad team leads and management.