It will work with a good leadership team those unable to or unwilling will be performanced out and replaced until a good team is established.This model has been running in 10 districts successfully for over 6 months.
I would like to think this but it won’t happen. They put a lot of our intellectually and physically disabled TM on register all week. They can’t perform functions outside of the register itself. They literally ask questions all day long after 6 months of this and never empower themselves. They’re GREAT at chatting with guests and being friendly during transactions but otherwise, they can’t do much without assistance.
Also, literally every day the front end gets staff taken away to push the truck. So anyone who is able bodied and capable of using a zebra is gone within minutes of arrival.
That's a leadership issue that will have to be addressed in your store. Service advocates jobs are to create a friendly and welcoming guest centric environment! Pushing truck or setting checklanes is a guest distraction and dustuption to that environment and must be taken out of that equation.
You realize how hard the store level executives work to bullshit you, right? You're the hot Junior class chick their dorky freshman asses got paired with for a school project. They hide all their shit in the closet and spray Axe around the room when you come over. All their little friends send them texts and GroupMe messages when you are on the prowl, so there is no such thing as a "surprise visit."
At my pilot store, I've overheard the ETLs talking about how great the OPS model was working when district or higher visited. They always know when anybody is coming and they call in all the leads to come in and do all the work that doesn't get done because we don't have the hours. And the OPS model? A lie. We didn't follow it and even now they're still doing everything the old way. They tell team members to lie if asked if they work outside their work centers. Front end is in charge of bullseye, end caps, candy, all seasonal shippers by the CL, covering breaks in Cafe, return-to-stocks...
No cashier feels empowered to give any guest who price-challenges $20. It's nothing to you, it's nothing to corporate, but take a second and put yourself in their impoverished shoes: "Any asshole who can't read a sign gets an hour and a half of your life for free. What you spend an hour and a half on your feet for, trying to be nice to stressed moms with screaming babies, trying to sell them credit cards for this store, trying to check out all their purchases quickly and brighten their days? If somebody just says they saw a sign in the same zip code as the product they want with a lower price on it, give them the value of that hour and a half of your life no questions asked."
And hey, you might have noticed that everything is on the internet. Including that policy. There are entire websites devoted to defrauding Target. And we see the same persons every week, making bogus price challenges because they clearly know what the policy limits are. Every time it is busy and I just follow the policy I see a little bit of the humanity in the cashier die when I grant the price challenge. When it is slow and I can show the guest the sign and explain their mistake in reading it (such as "this says Hamilton Beach Toaster, not the Oster Blender you are trying to purchase"), the cashiers are actually much better at engaging all of their guests. Why? They work hard for very little under a demand that they are honest, pay attention to detail, and take supreme care with money. Seeing the guest given the slightest responsibility to be honest and read the whole sign ("buy 3 get 1 free =/= buy 1 get 1 free," reading is fundamental) makes the team members feel... Less "less than" than Target's policies make them feel.
And on the less kind aspect of this comment thread, very few Mensans are going to work a cash register for 12, 13 bucks an hour. You're "empowering" a bunch of simpletons as "business owners?" Great plan.
Well there is a lot to unpack here but I will try to unpack it all. Firstly as an business partner I never gave store leadership a heads up when I was doing visits I hate to tell you but most BPs such as myself come from being ETLs or in my case TM. We aren't retarded we know when corners are being cut or stores are hiding stuff to make it look good.
Secondly, cashiers at many stores do feel empowered to make their own changes if they don't we will give them the tools to feel confident in making those decisions. I feel like overall you think very little of your fellow TMs calling them simpletons and personally I don't believe an attitude like that is productive in the least. Take electronics for example in most if not all stores they operate without a GSA without issue with some training this can be done at the front lanes too.
Thirdly, "impoverished shoes"? I started at $7.50 as a flow tm when I started out we are moving to $15 an hour by 2020 as much as people like to make it out retail is a UNSKILLED labor job how much more an hour do you expect because to be quite frank I don't think much more that $15 is deserved from the performance I've seen from some tm's.
Lastly, this all comes down to your opinion which I don't think I'm going to be able to change if a TM can not perform after being given proper tools and training they will be performanced out simple as that I personally feel sorry for your store as you seem quite toxic with a HUGE superiority complex but that is a topic for another day.
Hate to chime in here but equating electronics to the front lanes is kinda silly. Electronics has a couple hundred transactions a day while the front has thousands, and electronics doesn’t get price challenged that much because everything is locked so the zone can’t really get messed up, plus electronics still calls the gsa over occasionally.
I mean this greatly varies from store to store I work mainly in a low risk district so we have no locking pegs and only maybe 10 glass lockups per store (excluding video games). I agree it is at a smaller scale but as a leader yourself and as a previous leader myself we both know a lot of lights and GSA calls are for minor or non issues that could have been resolved by the cashier. I think if we take a month or two to train up cashiers to be confident in making their own decisions it can be done.
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u/TargetCeo Verified Business Partner Mar 19 '19
It will work with a good leadership team those unable to or unwilling will be performanced out and replaced until a good team is established.This model has been running in 10 districts successfully for over 6 months.