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.

Overall I think that I underestimated how much behind the scenes stuff goes on in retail. Like if you leave a product out in an aisle it doesn’t belong, someone has to go around and pick that up. Or if you ask for a gift receipt while you’re paying, it’s frusterating. On that last bit, it’s good to ask for a GR when the cashier scans the item. It’s pretty fun to see so many different people and help them. Didn’t take long to get the hang of the routine either. So yeah, I’m pretty happy to be working their and the rest of the staff seems to be very nice too.

Now I have more serious issues to discuss. Lenovo has a new ultraportable laptop to rival the Macbook AIR. Lenovo’s model has the much less interesting name X300 though. My only thought on this is “Do they even have a design team?”. The laptop fails to capture any aesthetic pleasure at all. It’s RIDICULOUS. I’m all for someone taking on Apple, but don’t you think if you’re fighting fire with fire you could at least look as stylish as the other guy. Ugh.

I realized something though, about what new MP3 player I want.  I want the Creative Zen.  Originally I was all like ‘omg the new nano is awesome’, but then I saw the Creative Zen…with an FM tuner and calender/contact sync…and that was more awesome.  It’s like a credit card and plays videos and everything.  So now I’ve got to get $200 to do that.  Oh, and it plays the iTunes tracks with no protection.  The tracks that sell for $1.29 or something.  BUT I have a job building my dad’s website, so I can make money!!  Yay!  I did already buy my Sidekick partly from that.  So now I have something to save for.

In other news, the internet is working out really well.  I used it to download some YouTube videos and convert them so I can play them on my current MP3 player, which was nice.  I also discovered the band The Academy Is… so now I want their new CD.  I’ll have to work extra hard.  Then I put up a quick mashup teaser vid on YouTube saying that I’d be back soon!  Well, as soon as my webcam comes back from Japan.  Shipping by boat was cheap…but slow.

So yeah, have a good Sunday everyone~