Target to close all Canadian stores

[Brandon]

I hate Target.  And I'm from Minnesota originally.

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

I've rarely had a problem with Target, and Walmart tends to be dirty and unkempt in our area.  Personally, I pass over both in favor of the nearest Meijer, especially for food items.

[oscar]

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

One reason I prefer Wal-Marts over Targets is that in the U.S. the latter almost never have self-checkouts, while many of the larger and/or newer Wal-Marts do.  (I don't recall seeing a self-checkout in a Canadian Wal-Mart, and I've never been to a Canadian Target.)  So I don't have a lot of experience with their respective checkout cashiers.

But in their territories, Meijer and Fred Meyer are decent alternatives, and every Meijer I've shopped at has self-checkouts to help you make a quick getaway. 

[6a]

So Target fired 20,000 people only to hire around that many again just to lay them off a couple years later? Am I reading this stuff right? Nice job.

[corco]

So Target fired 20,000 people only to hire around that many again just to lay them off a couple years later? Am I reading this stuff right? Nice job.

It's not like floor work at Target requires much training- certainly cheaper to hire, then layoff, then re-hire and train new people for a week than to leave them on the payroll for months.

It's not very nice of them, but it's reasonable business.

[Pete from Boston]

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

One reason I prefer Wal-Marts over Targets is that in the U.S. the latter almost never have self-checkouts, while many of the larger and/or newer Wal-Marts do.  (I don't recall seeing a self-checkout in a Canadian Wal-Mart, and I've never been to a Canadian Target.)  So I don't have a lot of experience with their respective checkout cashiers.

But in their territories, Meijer and Fred Meyer are decent alternatives, and every Meijer I've shopped at has self-checkouts to help you make a quick getaway.

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

[PHLBOS]

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

Sounds like the old Bradlees to me.

[cl94]

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

One reason I prefer Wal-Marts over Targets is that in the U.S. the latter almost never have self-checkouts, while many of the larger and/or newer Wal-Marts do.  (I don't recall seeing a self-checkout in a Canadian Wal-Mart, and I've never been to a Canadian Target.)  So I don't have a lot of experience with their respective checkout cashiers.

But in their territories, Meijer and Fred Meyer are decent alternatives, and every Meijer I've shopped at has self-checkouts to help you make a quick getaway.

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

Yeah. Most of the Targets around here have a smaller percentage of lanes open than the Walmart down the road.

[GCrites]

I think a lot of poor people don't understand that you shouldn't discuss your personal problems in public or with people you just met. Doing so keeps them poor.

[Pete from Boston]

I think a lot of poor people don't understand that you shouldn't discuss your personal problems in public or with people you just met. Doing so keeps them poor.

Agreed.  They should be like higher-class people and discuss other people's personal problems instead.

(WTF?)

[Scott5114]

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

One reason I prefer Wal-Marts over Targets is that in the U.S. the latter almost never have self-checkouts, while many of the larger and/or newer Wal-Marts do.  (I don't recall seeing a self-checkout in a Canadian Wal-Mart, and I've never been to a Canadian Target.)  So I don't have a lot of experience with their respective checkout cashiers.

But in their territories, Meijer and Fred Meyer are decent alternatives, and every Meijer I've shopped at has self-checkouts to help you make a quick getaway.

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

Sometimes there's not enough people on hand to add extra cashiers. You're not going to schedule an extra person to work just in case you get a random spike in business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Even at $7.25 an hour, that's $58 for a whole shift of having someone there just in case it gets busy. Retail scheduling is done by looking at historical business data to find trends of when the consistently busy periods are and scheduling more people then.

[cl94]

The problem with Target is that their customer service is horrible. It's sad that the Walmarts near me have better selection, customer service, and prices than all local Targets. I might see a long lines at both, but the Walmart line moves 3 times as fast because their people actually know how to work without talking amongst themselves about their personal lives.

Wal-Marts I've experienced have even worse throughput than Target, if that's possible.  But it's the exasperation of the Wal-Mart checkers that really makes me miss Target.

One reason I prefer Wal-Marts over Targets is that in the U.S. the latter almost never have self-checkouts, while many of the larger and/or newer Wal-Marts do.  (I don't recall seeing a self-checkout in a Canadian Wal-Mart, and I've never been to a Canadian Target.)  So I don't have a lot of experience with their respective checkout cashiers.

But in their territories, Meijer and Fred Meyer are decent alternatives, and every Meijer I've shopped at has self-checkouts to help you make a quick getaway.

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

The problem around here is that there are typically 4-5 employees milling about the checkout area chatting amongst each other and with the cashiers who can't talk and scan at the same time while there are 3 registers open with long lines. There might be a 10 minute line and the lazy employees and managers keep talking.

[Pete from Boston]

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

Sometimes there's not enough people on hand to add extra cashiers. You're not going to schedule an extra person to work just in case you get a random spike in business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Even at $7.25 an hour, that's $58 for a whole shift of having someone there just in case it gets busy. Retail scheduling is done by looking at historical business data to find trends of when the consistently busy periods are and scheduling more people then.

This is how you understand it: too often, they take too damn long.  And they do this with staff on the floor and mostly empty registers.

I have worked in a large retail environment–it's important to have the flexibility to adjust to demand.  If the last thing your customer thinks of in your store is how unpleasant a wait they had, the customer is going to be glad to get away from your store.  Being OK with that is adopting Kmart-level customer service priorities.

[cl94]

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

Sometimes there's not enough people on hand to add extra cashiers. You're not going to schedule an extra person to work just in case you get a random spike in business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Even at $7.25 an hour, that's $58 for a whole shift of having someone there just in case it gets busy. Retail scheduling is done by looking at historical business data to find trends of when the consistently busy periods are and scheduling more people then.

This is how you understand it: too often, they take too damn long.  And they do this with staff on the floor and mostly empty registers.

I have worked in a large retail environment–it's important to have the flexibility to adjust to demand.  If the last thing your customer thinks of in your store is how unpleasant a wait they had, the customer is going to be glad to get away from your store.  Being OK with that is adopting Kmart-level customer service priorities.

My father says something similar- and he was a higher-up in the retail business. He's always complaining about Target's crappy customer service with people standing around doing nothing.

[DaBigE]

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

Sometimes there's not enough people on hand to add extra cashiers. You're not going to schedule an extra person to work just in case you get a random spike in business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Even at $7.25 an hour, that's $58 for a whole shift of having someone there just in case it gets busy. Retail scheduling is done by looking at historical business data to find trends of when the consistently busy periods are and scheduling more people then.

That's why you cross-train employees. The large department store chain I used to work at cross-trained every floor associate at how to run a register. If there were three or more people in line, a page was initiated to open at least one more register. When the lines go back to normal, you head back to your department. It isn't rocket science.

Do you need to have all 24 registers filled? Maybe one day a year, but there's also no excuse for ten-minute check-out lines every weekend. Even if you have an extra cashier on duty, they can fill their down time with other activities, as we had to, whether it was un-packaging merchandise, cleaning/straightening up nearby departments, etc. "Extra employees" are the result of poor management--not finding them a task to do--and there's always something else that needs doing. Call them back up when the lines necessitate it.

[Brian556]

I currently work at Target..so here's a little insight...

Concerning customer service.. Target makes a huge effort to bring up people from the sales floor when lines get too long. They actually rely on backups way too much, this results in not enough people on the sales floor. This means they won't let you stand in line too long; but you might have a hard time finding an employee on the sales floor when you need one cause they are all cashiering. There are often times when all sales floor employees are called up to cashier.

Part of that problem is understaffing, the other part is that cashiers often call in sick when they are not.

Concerning stocking...Target is way better than WalMart when it comes to replenishing stock. WalMart was recently out of 6v batteries for 3 weeks.
Target's grocery section sucks compared to WalMart's. They don't stock a good portion of items that I want or need. So, despite working at Target and getting a discount, I do my grocery shopping at WalMart. I am actually very surprised that so many people grocery shop at Target.
Target is way cleaner, neater, and more organized than WaMart. I once found a WalMart fitting room floor covered with giant dust bunnies that were rolling around like west Texas tumbleweeds.

At Target, women's shoe aisles do often get really messy. But that is because women are selfish and slovenly, and don't put anything back after trying it on. I personally always put shoes back neatly when I shop.

The parking lot and the cart areas are often messy because not enough cart attendants are staffed.

Concerning product quality...
WalMart's towels are shit. They fall apart within 6 months. Target's last way longer.

The Target I work at is incredibly busy..so much that working there sucks because of it. There are always people in your way. It's like NYC sometimes. Considering how well they do here, I really can't comprehend how they could fail so hard in Canada.

Target does strive to provide short check lines and good customer service, and to have neat and clean stores.
The problems that Target has are all due to understaffing...which is due to them being too cheap.

[Scott5114]

Targets around here usually have more closed lanes than open.  This seems to be less true on weekends, but the rest of the time it's kind of amazing to see the lines at three lanes open next to twelve closed.  Aside from the periodic selection issues that are inherent to their business model, this is my top complaint about Target.

I'll never understand this line of complaint. Those 12 registers are for extreme, balls-to-the-wall peak madness periods, i.e. Black Friday. If you only had three registers in the store and you have a random day where you need 15 you're going to have to find room to set up 12 temporary registers, and lines will get worse while you send people out there to set them up. Having spare registers on hand means that if it gets too crazy it's easy enough that someone can be pulled from the floor to open up register 4 for a bit until it dies down.

During normal business times 15 cashiers are simply not justified. The majority of the time they would be staring off into space rather than ringing people up and they would be drawing more money than their presence would be bringing in. The equation is not "Are we making enough money that we can pay Philip to open register 6?", it's "Would having Philip at register 6 allow us to make more money than leaving it closed?" In most cases it's better to have people deal with a moderate wait (i.e. not one that is long enough to piss them off).

Sometimes there's not enough people on hand to add extra cashiers. You're not going to schedule an extra person to work just in case you get a random spike in business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Even at $7.25 an hour, that's $58 for a whole shift of having someone there just in case it gets busy. Retail scheduling is done by looking at historical business data to find trends of when the consistently busy periods are and scheduling more people then.

This is how you understand it: too often, they take too damn long. 

If they have 5 open lanes, it doesn't matter if they have 12 or 15 or 97 or 0 closed lanes, your wait will take the same amount of time. So complaining about the number of closed lanes still makes no sense.

[spooky]

Target does strive to provide short check lines and good customer service, and to have neat and clean stores.
The problems that Target has are all due to understaffing...which is due to them being too cheap.

You just contradicted yourself.

[vdeane]

If they have 5 open lanes, it doesn't matter if they have 12 or 15 or 97 or 0 closed lanes, your wait will take the same amount of time. So complaining about the number of closed lanes still makes no sense.

The complaint probably arises from the following thought most people probably have when waiting in line when there are a lot of closed lanes: "they have so many closed lanes, why don't they bring in more cashiers so I don't have to be in this ****ing line?".