[quote name='the_grimace']I worked at Target for 1.5 days before I outright stopped showing up and never even said I quit. Worst job I had in my life, and a terribly horrific experience.
I was unemployed at the time, just finished one professional contract and was looking for another. I was doing some freelance work on the side in my field, but it was slow starting and not bringing in a much money at all. (Now I can probably do it full-time if I wanted). I started looking around town for any work I could find to cover the extra cash I needed for bills. Applied to the whole lot of retail stores, was looking just for a stocking job. I'm pretty introverted so cashier/CS stuff wears me out way more than it should. Other companies told me I was too overqualified. Target however brought me in for the interview.
I was interviewing for the daytime inventory team. Like stocking the store (not the overnight flow), replacing misplaced items, marking prices, helping customers on the floor if they looked confused, etc. They asked me basic questions, but it was essentially, "here's the job details, do you want it". I said yes. Well, when I showed up for orientation, they said they switched me to to an Electronics position because they filled the Inventory spot.... what??... I also made 50 cents less, but that's just irrelevant, the point was that they just switched my position and pay without even asking me. They asked if that would be a problem, but I was desperate for a job at the time, I just was like, whatever.
So first day comes, and here I find out the first thing I do is have to CASHIER on the FRONT REGISTERS. They had a "throw you into the lion's pit" mentality. We were supposed to have a cashier shadow us and help us out, but my lady kept complaining about how she had to leave for her lunch break. After like an hour of her not helping me at all and me embarassingly doing the transactions, she COMPLETELY LEFT me. I have never used a cash register in my life, and here I was, no experience, front line. I don't think my face has ever been so red from embarrassement... The sweat I was pouring too from the anxiety... It was a horrific experience. To make matters worse, at least 3/4 transactions had some crazy payment method or question. One wanted to open a target card, another had a gift card that wasn't working, another had WIC payment, another had a registry, another had a target card that wasn't working and had to leave his stuff at the store... I had my blinker light on for help almost every transaction... I seriously wanted to break down and cry right there.
The misery didn't end there... My lady that was supposed to help never came back. Before I knew it, I was on the register for 5 hours, and overdue on my MANDATORY 15 minute and 30 minute lunch break. (Funny how much they stressed how important these were in the orientation!) I kept trying to call over the floor manager to move on (we were only supposed to cashier for 2 hours....but she completely disappeared. I felt like just walking off, I should have. Anyway, she finally was back at the 5 hour mark, and sent me right to another task WITHOUT LUNCH. I told her I didn't get any of my breaks, and she was just like "That's ok, we are busy today, we need your help".
So off to electronics I went. Where I ended up cleaning up the clothing section instead... after I cleaned up the clothing section, I went back to electronics where I now had to clean and adjust inventory in the clearance section. What sucked most about all of this I had literally no one to help me, so I was completely lost.. it was my first day and retail was completely new to me... They pretty much put me in a section of the store, said do this, and left. Customers kept coming to ask me stuff and looked at me disappointed when I was like, I have no idea where that is... sorry.
At this point, it was 8 hours in and I had no break or lunch... No one was around, so I just walked to the lunch room and took my own break. My supervisor walked in the room and was like, did you work in electronics yet? Truthfully, I said, no, I've been in other sections. She said that was not right, so to electronics she escorted me.... She put me on the cashier in electronics with another NEW guy, and once again, left the two of us to fend for ourselves. Once again, it went like most of the day had gone, being completely lost, constantly calling for help, and wanting to break down and run, but hey, at least I had someone going down with me. It was nice to have a partner in suffering. (Because if we could, we probably would have held each other and wept, lol)
My supervisor never came back till 11 that night, it was 12 hours I've been working there so far.... I thought we could finally go home. NOPE, she needed us to help close. I didn't leave till 12 at night with the doors locking behind me as I went... 13 hour day my first day with only a 30 minute lunch break. I never had a chance to take my 15 minute breaks, or second 30 minute break I was supposed to get for working so long. No one seemed to care either...
All and all, I didn't show up the next day, and had no intentions of continuing that crap. Quite literally the worst job experience I've ever had. They never even called me to be like, "hey, where are you". Whatever, I would have just said your company is terrible and I quit. I ended up working for a temp agency instead getting a variety of nice administrative jobs here and there that helped bring in about $200 a week.
Moral of the story... Target is a terrible workplace. I even went online and googled to see if others had bad Target work experiences. I found a whole website dedicated to workers ranting about it!
http://www.ihatetarget.net/
EDIT: Sorry for the long post! Had a lot to say there.
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Also, this was in October 2011. Still makes me cringe thinking about it though...[/QUOTE]
You still got paid for those hours, right?
with me on purpose. Who the 
