I feel like some strange combination of those street corner preachers screaming, “THE END IS NIGH, REPENT YOUR SINS” and the grizzled war vet heading for their third tour of duty, but I have literally spent the past three days at Target trying to convince our Team Leads that we are not ready for Black Friday.

We literally have ONE PERSON scheduled from 12:15 to 3:30pm on Friday.  She’s ALONE at Starbucks for over three hours.  We have another girl alone from 12:30 to 2am during the BOGO free holiday drink special.  Half of our trained staff isn’t even working in Starbucks, they’re cashiering.  For the entirety of Friday we’ll never have more than two people in Starbucks when in past years we’ve had at least three people.

I went to HR and asked about that because it just didn’t seem right and she just coolly told me that this has been approved by our LOD and DM so there’s nothing we can do about it.  Okay, so do they WANT the highest selling location to be run by one person for over three hours on Black Friday?  We literally had more coverage yesterday, a normal Friday, than we will on Black Friday.  Something is messed up there and I don’t feel as if I can trust our Team Lead to make it right.  We’ve had this schedule for a week now and she didn’t notice these huge problems that I found after ONE CHECK of the schedule.  It honestly feels like sabotage at this point.

As we get closer to the Christmas season, I’d like to remind everyone of the following:

• Being rude to food service workers is DANGEROUS.
• Haggling with cashiers in corporate retail will get you nowhere.
• Seasonal workers are crash course trained and barely know what they are doing.  They are not going to know everything or may be wrong.  Do NOT call them stupid.
• Please please PLEASE read company return policies on their website.
• Please please PLEASE read ALL THE PRINT on sale signs, ads, and coupons.  They are intentionally designed to mislead you.
• If you are shopping on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve or Day, or any other day or time of significance, do NOT complain to the employees that they “shouldn’t be working”.  Most often, they get paid extra and want the money.  But mostly because people like you want/need to shop at that time.  Be GRATEFUL.

But above all:

• DON’T BE RUDE!!  Patience and compassion will always get you better service, not worse.

Thank you!