The pay. Let’s get real. Target could care less if it pays its team members a fair wage. They figure everyone is replaceable. Target’s and Wal-Mart’s starting wage is about the same. In the report “2009 Cost of Living in Minnesota,” the average annual cost of meeting the BASIC needs for a family of four with two workers in Minnesota is about $58,000. To cover those costs each worker must earn $14.03 an hour. When starting wage is around $7.75 an hour, Target falls far short of that. The raises are a joke. My first year there I received a 1.1% raise and was considered an excellent/good employee. The leads are told to find something wrong with every employee, no matter how hard they work or how long they have been there so they don’t have to give a decent raise. The CEO of Target earned $13 million in 2009 (a drop of 3% from 2008—poor guy!) You work your ass off for Target because they are always understaffed and you get absolutely no respect. They are always cutting hours to try to meet an unrealistic budget, so you do more with less. Of course, I suppose I could be like some of my co-workers and stand around and talk or take personal phone calls. The benefits are a joke. The health insurance is not the best; even Wal-Mart has a better plan as reported in one comparison of the two companies. If you don’t maintain a certain number of average hours, there goes the health plan. How are we supposed to do that when you are always cutting our hours? The 401K will match a certain percentage of whatever you put into it, but again, how am I supposed to do that with such a low wage and not enough hours? A win for Target again financially. There is never enough proper equipment to do your job. Not enough walkies, portable printers, or PDA’s. And please, these stupid contests. Get two Target red cards, and you can win a stupid little prize with the Target logo. Really? How old do you think we are? Five? I’m not interested in a Target dog, pinwheel, pen set, or whatever. How about a real prize? Like 20% off for a whole year. And not just on Target brand stuff. No one in corporate has a clue what their team members do. How about if you come down and do my job for a while? The store leads and team leads really don’t give a crap about the people under them. They are just interested in the bottom line so they can get their bonuses.
