Has Anyone Worked for Target?

Updated on August 05, 2011
S.A. asks from Chicago, IL
17 answers

Another question this morning prompted me to ask this. I was thinking about applying there to work a few evenings per week and weekends. Christmas is around the corner, and we are pretty broke right now. I have heard they pay better than some stores and treat their employees pretty well. Do any of you have experience working for them? How do you/did you like it? How is their employee discount? Do they offer the discount on top of sale or clearance prices as well?

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C.O.

answers from Minneapolis on

I worked there when I was 16 until I was 22. I'm now 31 so it's been a few years. I really liked it there. I actually worked in two different ones since I transferred when I started college. I was happy with them. At the time & I don't think it's changed I got 10% off everything at Target. Also in I got 20% off at Dayton's (I think they're Marshall Fields now) and 15% off at Mervyn's (I don't think they're around anymore). My friend's mom works in the pharmacy department and I think the discount is still 10% off and she's worked there for a while.

1 mom found this helpful
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A.S.

answers from Philadelphia on

i did it part time for extra money a few years ago....
it was not bad... but it was not easy, esp close to holidays. Black friday is mandatory working. I was often there till 1, 2 am even later. One time they made us stay even though there was ice storm (we had no idea how bad it got till we went outside). YOu are working with lots of young kids.. can be annoying. and as someone else said... you will have new respect for a store and never leave stuff in wrong areas again!

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B..

answers from Dallas on

They have so many employes, that you are just a number. Most people won't even know who you are are, or what your name is. I will persoanlly, never work there again. It's retail, you can't pick your hours. During Christmas, I didn't get home until 2:30 once, and 2:00 am and 1:00 am many times. I was very specific that I could NOT work Sunday for religious reasons. That was the only schedule restriction I had. Every freaking week, I had to go in there and get my schedule changed. They were rude about it every time. I eventually quit. It really wasn't a great job. I had a friend start at Wal-Mart the same time I started at Target. She got more perks and more raises then me. People actually bothered to know her name. The cart pushers at Wal-mart were making more then me hourly :( And they were not even full-time.

One retail place I did LOVE working, was at Lowes. I was a cashier their, then got moved to customer service. They had a great starting pay ($2.50 more per hour then Target) and I felt the company treated me really well. I never had a single issue with Sundays off.

3 moms found this helpful
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M.E.

answers from Chicago on

I worked at the corporate office in Mpls years ago. In terms of the stores - you are going to get answers from it was the best to it was the worst. Like any retail job, whether you like your job is dependent on your immediate manager. I think it's hard to generalize when it's such a big company.

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J.S.

answers from Jacksonville on

I did...and hated it! Seriously, we would be there until 1 to 2 in the morning, when the damn store closed at 10. They would schedule the highschool kids to close, but in MO they were required to send the kids home at 10, so everyone else would be left to straighten the store, and you weren't allowed to leave until every department was done. I was working two jobs and the time and there were nights I would make it home at two thirty in the morning sleep four hours and go back to work. Not to mention that I was 23 at the time and almost all of my bosses were younger than me. Uggghhh

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K.P.

answers from New York on

A good friend of my mother's is a corporate manager for Target and she would never work anywhere else- despite offers to join other retail chains! She started as a front-end cashier and Target paid for her to finish her college degree and join their management team. She has been with them now for nearly 20 years and as a corporation they are really supportive and stable!

Not sure what they do now, but there was a time when employees got 30% off regular-priced items and 15% off clearance/sale. That may be different now.

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T.K.

answers from Dallas on

I worked there seasonally several years ago. I liked it. They stay open later than many other stores, especially during the holidays, so, that means later nights. When you go in, the employees seem generally happy, so, I assume it's a decent place to work. However, I think there is a class action suit against Target from some of it's employees right now. Not sure what that's about.

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J.L.

answers from Chicago on

I am not sure about the benefits offered if you are an employee but we have a family member who works there and they seem to be happy about it. They got promoted to another position after 6 months. So far so good. :)

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L.K.

answers from Kansas City on

I'm sure it's like every where else in the world, it depends on your direct supervisor/manager.
My nephew's girlfriend has worked at Target in the college town where she's going to school for 2-3 years now. Her manager is very flexible with her schedule.
My son worked at the same Target and quit after just a month. Since he was on the crew to unload trucks and stock shelves his 'schedule' was 3 am to noon. Which makes me wonder why I have to navigate around people at 2 in the afternoon stocking shelves. But his manager was not flexible with his schedule and he was told he could not transfer out of that department for a certain length of time. The odd hours made it very difficult for eating and sleeping, much less get to classes. My son is HUGE, built like an NFL linebacker and works part time as a bouncer at a bar. HE was even a little afraid of some of his co-workers in the middle of the night. And the employee discount was only 10%. Which is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but not huge.

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M.M.

answers from Chicago on

I would be curious to know the answer. I am self-employed with a great kitchen tool company, always hiring.

N.G.

answers from Dallas on

It's retail, and retail pretty much always sucks! It depends pretty heavily on direct management. I'm sure every store is vastly different, this has been my experience with retail (I worked retail for five years from grocery to specialty stores to wal-mart).

Good luck!

M.D.

answers from Dallas on

A few years ago I worked for them during the summer as my kids where at their grandparents and husband was away, so besides needing the money, I didn't want to be lonely. I worked a full time job from 8-5 PM, M-F, then picked up around 20 hrs/week. I did like it, they didn't pay that great, just a little more than min. wage, I want to say I was paid $7.00/hr, maybe $7.50 and I worked so hard compared to my real job. You only get a 10% discount, which I always said that pretty much the tax you would have to pay. I did enjoy it and was addicting since I liked the extra money coming in and would know when items went on sale plus my discount on top... But hubby wanted me to stop when he and the kids came back home, so I did.

The one problem is that there is a lot of young kids that work, and when you are being paid per/hour they tend to make the hours more. You all leave together at closing and walk to the cars (for safety reasons too) and you had to clean the store before leaving. Let me tell you, I don't just leave things in the wrong aisles anymore, I give it to the cashier and tell her I decided I didn't want to buy it...

I really did enjoy it, other than my feet hurt so bad at the end of the day...

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J.K.

answers from Chicago on

I have worked for Target for almost 2 years. The store I work at the people are great. Discount 10% and if you use your Target card you get an extra 5%. You don't get an extra discount on sale or clearance items. The pay is not great.

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A.D.

answers from Minneapolis on

Speaking from a different perspective, Target was my first management job out of college. I worked an unbelievably insane amount of hours as a salaried employee and was completely burnt out after less than 2 years. The culture for management is you are a workaholic or you are totally trashed behind your back. Not dissing Target in particular, I suspect this is the whole retail industry culture. Once you put in that many hours and weekends, it kind of hardens you and it is human nature that you resent anyone else asking for weekends off. I tried to be nice and schedule a fair amount of time off for my supervisors, and when my boss found out, I was chewed out. It was no-win. We used computerized scheduling for 70+ cashiers, but the program was far from perfect and required hours of tweaking each week to accomodate multiple variations, requests, and peak season traffic, and there was ALWAYS someone mad at me for not getting exactly what they wanted. Higher mangement would even call us new managers in to come in on our days off. My friends and I at the new management level would avoid answering our phones. I was WAY too young to handle all of that pressure. Within my peer group, personal relationships took a toll. At least we were younger and were more flexible. I noticed MANY of the managers one step above us saw their marriages and families suffer. Even still, I love the retail environment. Target has a lot of really fun things going on. It would be fun for me to do cashier or sales floor if I didn't mind working most weekends. I would just never want to do the managment thing again. I made a lot of good friends. There is never a dull moment, always a good story or two at the end of the day. Spending that many hours does together does tend to bond you to people. Discount used to be 10% when I worked there many years ago. Hubby loved the fact that he got his oon everything wn discount card too.

K.M.

answers from Chicago on

I had a friend who worked there in highschool and she was miserable ... not a typical teen w/ no wor ethic btw. It was difficult to get time off for highschool/senior year related events no matter how much advanced notice she gave, she also had a medical condition that was under discovery at the time where she got light headed and would periodically faint, she had medication she could take to assist in reducing the symtoms and when it got to a certain point she was to call 911, they hung her cell phone up for her when she was in the stock room calling 911. I would like to think this was branch specific, yes there was a law suit, yes she won, yes it was kept hush hush but I have no confidentiality :). I do periodically shot Target just not that location.

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C.A.

answers from Atlanta on

Have you tried Sunflowerstaffing??? They go to the different retail outlets to demo certain manufactorer products. MY sister does it and loves doing it as a part-time job outside her normal full-time job. As with any staffing company though the more offers you turn down the less offers or assignments are given to you so make sure you take on as many as you possibly can so you don't get compromised in the offers. I don't know if sunflowerstaffing is just a georgia based thing or what but you can google them.

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M.C.

answers from Washington DC on

Tried. Applied several times. Was told I was overqualified to stock shelves...

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