Day 174: Become A Salesman

"Would you care to take 5% off today's purchase and everything else you buy with us with a Target Redcard?"
 "Are you using your Target Redcard to pay for today's purchase?"
"Are you aware of the benefits of our Target Redcard?"

     I probably ask these questions about a gazillion times a day to the guests that come into my work (Target). See, I'm a cashier and one of my responsibilities is to pressure guests into signing up for a Target debit or credit card. As a cashier, I am expected to get about 2-3 Redcards a week. If you go a week without getting a Redcard then I've been told that your in whats called, the Red-zone (clever eh?). This girl was telling me about the red-zone and how its not good and all. What she told me got me a little nervous cause I've been working there for a little over a month now, and I haven't gotten a single Redcard. I've tried and I've asked, but nobody wants one of these things...well, except for this one lady. I was checking out the last of the guests before we closed the store. There was probably 3 minutes left when a middle aged woman who was purchasing a good deal of merchandise came to my lane. I can't remember what her total was, but it was high enough for me to ask if she wanted to save 5% with a Redcard.  She said "Yes" and I said "Really?" I didn't really know what to do, I had never had someone say "yes" to such a question before. I did what I saw other cashiers do when a guest actually said "yes". I grabbed the pamphlet and followed the long boring instructions, plugged in her info and successfully signed her up for a Redcard. We were only there for like 10 minutes after the store closed and my supervisor was pretty siked cause that last Redcard had met our minimum requirement for the day. It was a good feeling, It was like I had finally proved myself at work. So I guess I'm out of the red-zone for this week, but next week is approaching fast.

Day 154: Using a Baler

     I'm just gonna warn you right now that today's challenge is pretty lame. Think of it like several lame new things that hopefully add up to at least a mediocre blog entry. So first my mini new thing today was stocking merchandise. I was assigned to unload a pallet of boxed merch and place it on the shelfs. I finished the project and had all the product out for guests to buy and I broke down all of the boxes for easier despoil. After that, I was learning how to use this machine called the bailer at work. Its like a giant green cardboard compactor. It became my job to fill it with the boxes that I had just broke down. It was fairly strait forward but I was still paranoid that I would break it somehow. I then got off work and went over to Gerke's house. There I partook in a hacky sack circle with him and his friends of space cases. I've always gotten the hippie vibe when I look at Gerke and his hacking skills only solidified it. I tried to play hacky sack back in 8th grade, but I've never had such an in depth tutorial from someone. I was shown some different types of kicks and some terminology. I even found out that some hardcore hacky sackers use special shoe lacing techniques to help their performance. So three lame new things later, the entry is done and I hope it's not too lame.

Day 152: First day

     So today was my first day at Target. I worked a 2-10:30 PM shift and was on cashier duty. The training process seemed to be almost non-existent for the most part because Mike (My female supervisor with a boy's name) was super busy. She handed me a trainee packet and stood me in front of a pretend cash register that was designed for training people like me. She laid her hand on the packet and said "Look through this then come see me.", then she ran off to take care of Target related things I suppose. So I paged though the booklet and practiced scanning barcodes on the scanner. I had to keep refusing customers that thought my register was open, probably because I looked like a natural at zapping the barcodes. After the pretend time fun at the semi functioning register, it was time for me to tag along another team member and see what they do. That team member was a Masha, a Russian girl with an accent that was sometimes too thick to understand. She was nice and tried to answer any questions I had (while sounding like Ivana Humpalot from Austin Powers). I was eventually moved to my very own register where Masha looked over my work for a while before she thought I could handle it on my own. I spent the next 6 hours or so checking guests and learning the ropes. It was a great first day and the people that work with me seem pretty cool. Hopefully things stay like this.

Day 151: Orientation

     Probably the most boring thing I have ever done in my entire life. I had orientation for my new job at Target today. I'm excited about the job and everything, but man, that orientation was torturous. I sat in a windowless, florescent lit room for four and a half hours filling out fine print forms and watching sexual harrasment videos from the 90's. The chairs quickly grew uncomfortable and my fellow newly hired co-workers seemed to be feeling the strain as well. There were about ten of us total. We were all exchanging yawns and eye rolls while the videos played on. It wasn't the best time, but at least it's out of the way and at least I got paid for it. I start my first day of training tomorrow.

I was the first one there