I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time lol.  After working at Target for near 10 months now, I want to give a few heads up to what can make your life easier, simpler, whateva.  Prob applies to WalMart/KMart/Anywhere.  You’d think people would know these things, but you’d be surprised.  Most of these relate to returns/Guest Service because that’s where I supervise.

1) Take hangers off your clothes while you wait in line.  If you’re waiting and have your stuff on the belt, just take off the hangers.  It’ll go faster for you, and everyone else who may be behind you.

2) Be nice to the staff.  We want to help you, so don’t act all huffy if something isn’t in the spot you think it should be in.  ESPECIALLY GUEST SERVICE.  I’m a lot more willing to go above and beyond if I feel like someone will actually appreciate it.

3) Please take care of your children.  Things happen, things spill, children cry, etc.  Life happens.  But if you know you can’t control your child and you bring them along anyways…  It’ll make your shopping trip harder.

4) If we’re out of something, we sincerely apologize.  We don’t control what the trucks bring us, it’s based on what we sell.  Somethings get restocked right away…some things…not so much.  So please just keep that in mind and don’t take your anger out on the person who has to tell you we’re out.

5) Coupons.  It’ll be faster if you remember to give them to the cashier.  You can always add them on by going to Guest Service, but it definitely will take a lil extra time.  Plus if there’s a price descrepency or coupon under a dollar…why?  

6) If you return food, we have to throw it away.  If you return mediciene, we have to throw it away.  If you leave pershibles in your cart, we have to throw them away.  It’s for the consumer’s safety, but no doubt it is wasteful.  So next time you by ‘light’ chedder cheese instead of regular, please think about the bag that is going to waste and question if it’ll really hurt that much.  I cannot stand wasting stuff like this.

7) We CANNOT refund movies, CDs, software, or other disc based media if you have opened it.  If it’s defective, you can get the same item ONLY.  Sorry.  This is not Target’s policy, it’s US law.  Pushed through by the RIAA and MPAA.  So blame them.  This is a huge point of contingency for guests and I end up getting yelled at.  We just can’t do it.

8) If it’s out of the 90 day limit, we can’t return it.  This is for part stocking reasons and partly because then it is the manufacturers responsibility.  Just because you can’t return an item that stops working after 6 months doesn’t mean you need to get mad, you just need to take the case directly to the company’s customer service.

9) The store manager is not going to change the situation much.  The computers we run will tell us how we can issue the refund, when we can’t accept an item, etc.  In some cases we will have to call an internal number for Target support to override a choice, but that is usually with some creditcards and checks.  There is no way we can manually do it.

10) If for any of the reasons that were mentioned here, or some other situation occurs, and you can’t return your item, please do not get mad.  I know that I push my Guest Service to do as much as they can and be as friendly as possible, so at least I know they did what they could.  And yeah, it can get really frusterating to hear an answer you really don’t want, but it isn’t something we’re personally responsible for.  Saying ‘Oh, well, I’m never going to shop here again’ really isn’t going to help at all and only serves to make the person who just tried to help you feel bad.  And if there is swearing involved, I will not hesitate to escort someone out of the store.  As an employer, Target does not allow abuse of its employees.

If you haven’t caught on to an underlying point, working up at the frontend can get stressful when people don’t understan that there is a limit on what we can personally do.  My job (what I’m specifically paid for) is to attend to Guest’s needs at the registers, Guest Service, and the food court.  Supervise what’s going on and make sure things are running like a well oiled machine.  So at first glance it might not seem like a hard job, but I’m the person who gets called over if someone is *really* mad and I’d love to help avoid any situations =]

I do like how much attention Target puts on Guest Experience though.  If you saw the inner works, you’d see that it is a top priority for us.

<3 Paul

PS- Target does have rules for blogging if you’re an employee and I’m fairly sure I didn’t violate any of them.  Most important is to keep any employee/Guest information confidential.

In order to preserve the sanctity of marriage, shouldn’t we outlaw divorce?  What meaning does marriage even have if it can be undone at the slightest whim?  Baseline is that we should not let married couples disband until one of them is dead.  By natural causes of course.  If people choose the wrong person, then they have the rest of their lives to anguish about it!  After all, hasty and rash decisions are not conducive to the sacred union of two souls…and those that make them will have to live with the consequences.

And remember, this is only to better America and keep our traditional values pure.

Here’s Olbermann’s special comment on Prop 8 and I feel it should resonate with everyone.  It coincides completely with my beliefs about the issue.  And above all, I think it is very pertinent in light of how hard some Christian denominations worked to influence the government.  The Mormons seem to be very upset no that people are holding them accountable for their actions during the ‘Yes on 8′ campaign, but really, they need to be held responsible for the part they played.  Should they really get to pay no taxes but stick their foot into the government?

I think this is a worthwhile read for anyone, no matter how you feel on the issue.  You can go to MSNBC’s site and watch it if you’d like here.

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Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics, and this isn’t really just about Prop-8.  And I don’t have a personal investment in this: I’m not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them—no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble.  You’ll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

I keep hearing this term “re-defining” marriage. If this country hadn’t re-defined marriage, black people still couldn’t marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn’t have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it’s worse than that. If this country had not “re-defined” marriage, some black people still couldn’t marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not “Until Death, Do You Part,” but “Until Death or Distance, Do You Part.” Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn’t marry another man, or a woman couldn’t marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.

How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the “sanctity” of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling.  With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.

You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

“I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam,” he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love.”