An ex-Target worker posted a viral TikTok saying the store no longer has designated sections for employees but requires them to work in multiple departments while on their shift.
Sara (@sarbearhugs) has reached over 1.6 million views and 139,000 likes on her video this week. She captioned her video with the hashtags, “#retail #retailproblems.”
To start the video, Sara stitched another creator’s video who asked, “WTF IS GOING ON @target ?!” The stitched video is a minute long clip covered in recent headlines of a man recording all of the aisles in Target that seem to be trashed. In the video you see shoes out of boxes, clothes off racks, and piles of random items placed in the wrong section.
At the beginning of Sara’s video she explains how she has worked at Target two separate times. “The first time in maybe 2012, 2013, and the second time, 2020 … so a good distance between.”
Sara says that the first time she worked at Target, “everyone had a designated section.” She explains how she had worked in the clothing department at the time. “When you worked in the clothing department everyone had a section within that department.” She says the section were split up into men’s, women’s, boys, girls, and infants; or jewelry, accessories, and shoes.
“That was your section for your entire shift,” she adds, “you stayed in your spots … for six to eight hours … and that was your shift and it was fine.”
She also adds that “the stores didn’t look bad, they looked pretty good because that’s what your job was for the whole shift.”
Fastforwarding to 2020, the second time Sara worked at Target, when she arrives on her first day she says her managers tell her that on, “Your regular day-to-day, you’re gonna come in and you’re gonna go to the back room.”
Sara pauses and looks closer at the camera. “I’m gonna do what?” she says, “I’m not a back room employee, why would I go in the back room?”
“At the first store, I wasn’t allowed in the back room,” she explains, “you had to be back room trained.”
During her first time working at Target, Sara says she would have to “call the back room” to ask if they had certain items to restock the front store. “It’s not safe back there,” she adds.
She says the store manager told her “Yeah, we don’t have backroom employees anymore.”
“That’s not a title at Target anymore, there are no backroom team members.”
Sara says, “So everyone is going back there and confusing and messing everything up.”
Next she says the managers told her that first thing in the morning of her next shift she will go into the backroom and “grab the push.”
“The push is the new products that came in on the truck that morning,” Sara says. “What about the push team?” she asks.
“There’s no push team anymore, you do it,” Sara says they told her.
“What do you mean? Who’s gonna be zoning your zone?”
Sara explains that zoning is “folding and making everything look nice and pretty and helping customers.” Sara says she went to the back room that next morning and pushed out the new product. At the same time, she says she is asked to “do an hour shift to the fitting room” as well as helping the customers.
“Because there’s no fitting room operator anymore,” she quickly adds. “And, when they call for help back at the registers, because we don’t have enough cashiers, you have to do that too.”
Sara explains, “So then when my push doesn’t get done and the zone looks a mess.”
She says her managers asked her, “Sara what are you doing?”
“I’m doing six different jobs! What do you mean what am I doing?” she replied.
“This is why the stores are a mess,” Sara says. “They don’t have designated employees for the jobs, everyone is doing 15 different jobs in those stores.”
“Everyone’s a backroom, everyone’s a cashier, everyone’s a sales floor, everyone’s a fitting room operator,” she adds.
Before ending her video Sara says, “Target used to be nice, and it’s not anymore. So be nice to the employees, it’s not their fault.”
@sarbearhugs #stitch with @DJ Tischner #retail #retailproblems ♬ original sound – DJ Tischner
Viewers agree with Sara in the comment section of her video. “This answers a lot! Target is not the same store. It’s a constant disaster in there,” one says.
Another comment with over 21,000 likes says, “Target Corp really said ‘how can we make this less efficient.’”
A current Target employee says, “Yes, we do all of these things and are called to help with drive ups, fulfillment, and cashiering multiple MULTIPLE times a day.”
“Companies do not want to train anyone properly anymore. They keep a skeleton crew because everyone quits due to this issue imo,” another adds.
The Daily Dot reached out to Sara via the TikTok comment section and direct message, and Target via email.