Closing Bell: FIPS Goes Undercover
FIPS goes undercover for a four-part series to expose the Target in the Atlantic Center Mall (or also known as “The Seventh Level of Hell”). What is your experience with the store?
FIPS goes undercover for a four-part series to expose the Target in the Atlantic Center Mall (or also known as “The Seventh Level of Hell”). What is your experience with the store?
Part of the reason customer service is so bad is that these jobs don’t pay well, and everyone’s expectations are low. Nobody is stupid here, the employees know they have bottom level, crap jobs paying just over minimum wage, management has no incentive to properly train them beyond the bare minimum, such as how to use the cash register, and customers know all of that, too.
So what do you get? Employees with permanent logs on their shoulders, mad at themselves for being stuck there, mad at management for making them stay there, and mad at customers for having the nerve to want to buy something and make them work.
Management, also poorly trained, btw, and not all that well paid either, is saddled with surly, underpaid, unhappy people that Upper Management is not ging to take the time and money to train correctly, because they know these people will leave within a year, and can easily be replaced by other surly, underpaid, unhappy people. The complaints of customers can be tolerated because they are still going to come and shop in droves, because Target is still the best deal around, no matter what some surly teenager does.
And customers? Well, most just want to get in and out with their purchases, but some are also rude, crude, inconsiderate, condescending pigs weho knock things off of racks and shelves, allow their kids to run wild in the store, open packages, and steal. They can treat employees like dirt, talk to them like they are mentally challenged children, and assume that just because you work in retail, you don’t have a brain. (Can you tell I’ve worked in retail, and have issues, still?)
Frankly, the only way this is ever going to change is for Upper Management to take the time and money to properly train their staff, from hello to goodbye, and make them feel that a career, not just a job, is possible in retail, and that career can be financially and personally rewarding. They need to make it a part of their corporate culture, and they need to incentivise it. Nordstrom used to do that. Target is not going to, because it will cost money, and since they are doing quite well the way it is, why change? Too bad. It used to be that being a salesperson at a store was a decent job, not a job of last resort.
Ghetto Unfabulous.
Great Video! Target in Atlantic Station is disgusting. Hands down – empty shelves are a disgrace! I went in during the holidays and was disappointed. Thanks for exposing the truth. Anyone who condones their BS is in denial!
“‘m also surprised to hear that this many people from this blog shop at Target. The same people, who no doubt at dinner parties claim to shop at their local stores and use cloth diapers.”
As far as I’m concerned, Target *is* a neighborhood store. I put it down as a perk when I moved here (and it still is, despite the godawful store management).
You should go to different dinner parties. Those sound awful.
“Good customer service went out the window with the advent of the computer age.”
I get great service at my dry cleaner, at my laundromat, at my liquor store, at the corner store at St. Marks and 5th and the similar one at Bergen and 5th.
Of course, in all of those cases I’m fairly sure the employees are immigrants or the children of immigrants.
my experience:
Clerk with slight tude at the register checking out one of my items(basic kitchen utensil):
“um this don’t have a price tag”!
Me: well will it take a long time to find out the price?
Clerk: hmmm hmmm
Clerk: putting the item back in his bin of misfit toys
I didn’t even have a chance!
oh whoa is me. Sure, I get it – this is an urban store that does major business and the workers are probably exhausted from the sheer number of customers etc, but you know being nice and having common sense doesn’t take much, really!!!
he could have offered to do a price check or at least asked ME if I wanted the item still or if he was really savvy charged me $5 for the damn thing.
As far as the video – love the Guru/Gangstarr track, hate the fact the girl is asking about a duvet – i mean most people don’t know what the is, especially a man(sorry !!)
can we now complain about the CVS on 9th street in park slope – I mean that place is HORRID – the lines have to stretch all the way down to the pharmacy before one of those little teenage girls decide to open another line up – I blame age above EVERYTHING ELSE!. I Agree with 11217 the generation that grew up pretty much on the computer( 14-23 )are in bad shape
I shop here because the clothes are cheap. However, some moron designed the store so that men’s apparel is on the second floor and the fitting room is on the other side of the store on the first floor. Incredibly annoying! I was once in line to pay and the computer at the cash register crashed – the moron employees had no idea how to resolve the situation.
FYI PS residents…
They are having a sale at Super Savers (7th between Union and President) and every item in the store is 25% off.
With that discount, I don’t think one could do much better at Target. Might want to check it out if you leave nearby.
I think it’s still going on anyway…it was the last time I was in there a couple days ago…
“If we don’t support our local shopkeepers, it will all start to look like that block of Seventh Avenue between Union and Berkeley in Park Slope”
***
I have to comment on this…this block includes:
Bank of America ATM
Amin Indian Restaurant
7th Ave Wine and Liquors
YoGo Monster Frozen Yogurt
The Park Cafe
Plaza Cleaners
Korean Bodega
Ideal Real Estate office
Ace Supermarket
Leaf and Bean
Roma Pizza
Another dry cleaners
Prospect Pharmacy
So yes…there are some boarded up places (where there was a fire, as I understand it) but the above businesses (most of which are local or at least local chains) are not bad for ONE SINGLE block of Brooklyn, I don’t think. I definitely think you could find far worse blocks in NYC when it comes to retail.
I hope the 3 empty storefronts on the block are rented soon.
It’s one of my least favorite blocks around, but it’s FAR from what you seem to describe.
There are a whole lot of people on the other side of Flatbush who come here, because…there are no nice little shops in their neighborhoods and this is the easiest place to get to. And some people can’t afford to spend the extra dollar or two.
And if this is FIPS idea of hell, they should try an IKEA on a Saturday afternoon.