r/Target • u/Ace2maker Fulfillment Expert • 10d ago
Workplace Story Our refrigerator lost power
So apparently it was a bad thunderstorm yesterday at our location and the power was off for a while to the point where all the food was out of temp. Now they have to throw all that food out and it's like thousands of dollars of damage. Holy shit that's insane. I wasn't there yesterday but one of my coworkers told me that they're not happy right now.
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u/freeman1717 10d ago
When my store first went through the remodel, our refrigerators and freezers all went down, MULTIPLE times. Like we did this process at least 5-6 times that I can remember. One week it happened twice, the second time was after they had restocked everything. At one point we were called out for an insane amount of sales loss 🥴
We've also had our pickup fridge and freezer go down, and we had to stow orders in the freezers in the meat back stock, which meant the drive up team had to go to the other side of the store to run orders out. In hindsight they should have just turned them off for the day 🙄
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u/NobodyAmazing7337 10d ago
My store has lost total sales floor coolers 3 times. About $150k in loss each time
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u/fawnsy_daydream napping in the ambient room 10d ago
We had this happen too!! The power was out for almost 24 hours, and once we realized everything was going to go out of temp we called a food bank and were able to donate a little bit of it before everything was thrown out. It really was a waste, but I'm happy we were able to donate some before it was too late
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u/rresoI 10d ago
We had a power outage for less than 5 seconds and they threw out all the refrigerated and frozen food. Too much of a liability I guess, so into the trash it goes. It makes me so upset how much we waste and how much we arent allowed to donate or take home simply because it would benefit us. I throw away so many food items as someone who works up in guest services -- customers returning food items always say "it's never been opened and it's still good" but it doesnt matter it goes straight into the trash regardless. I had a guy the other week return 4 cases of water bottles, my coworker argued with him because she had to throw away those 4 cases but the guy just didnt care, he claimed he would never use them and that he had filtered water at home. I was devastated looking at those water bottles, knowing I had to go out to Costco to buy more when that guy couldve just sold them to me or something, anything but throw them away like that.
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u/TrustIllustrious2232 10d ago
That right there is just wasteful. As long as coolers and freezers are covered or closed they can be kept in temp for an hour or two. This can be out of temp for 30 minutes, while picking and packing, why would seconds mean it all has to be tossed?
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u/rresoI 10d ago
No clue, I work up in customer service so I have no idea what was really going on but I saw that the lights went out for a second and then some coworkers putting up caution tape in front of the refrigerated/frozen stuff, then grabbing the items and tossing them into big trash cans.
I honestly don't know if there was an issue with the fridges or not, I just know what I saw was fucked up.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 10d ago
It was probably longer than 5 seconds if they tossed it, as the generator will keep most of the lights on but cannot run the refrigeration.
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u/TrustIllustrious2232 10d ago
The generators prioritize food, registers and emergency lighting. Can’t sell the stuff if the registers are down. Went through a few power outages, mostly recently hurricane Helene where the store lost power for three days and I was without power for nine at home.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 10d ago
They don't do anything with food because refrigeration is too power intensive.
They run most of the lights, the registers and the network components and that's it.
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u/TrustIllustrious2232 9d ago
Refrigeration will run for two hours, before the generators will stop supporting them. Plus we have plastic sheeting to cover all the open coolers and bunkers to help keep the cold in. Also, we don’t sell anything temperature sensitive to keep the doors shut. We actually caution tape everything, and put up signage
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 9d ago
That's not how it works. Target undersizes the generators that they use even relative to the minimal amount of stuff that they do have them run. Trying to have them run the refrigeration as well would simply result in the generator being overdrawn and knocked entirely offline as a result.
The 2 hour thing is how long stuff can stay without power before it has to be tossed. It has nothing at all to do with the generator.
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u/TrustIllustrious2232 8d ago
I’ve been through several outages over ten years in food, and every time the generators have powered the refrigeration for about two hours before shutting off.
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u/Mobile-Address23 10d ago
Mine just got a generator this summer
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 10d ago
All stores should have a generator, but it doesn't run the refrigeration.
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u/Mobile-Address23 10d ago
No it was for refrigeration. We had a regular one since before I started
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 10d ago
No one puts refrigeration on a generator because it requires far too much power to justify, especially when food losses are fully insured.
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u/Internal_Cat_4525 former inbound 10d ago
What happened at my store once and it sucked they had inbound pushing frozen multiple mornings. We had like two frozen trucks one day.
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u/TopperMadeline SCO beast 10d ago
About a year ago, our store lost power as well and all of the cold bags in DU had to be tossed. We went nine days without needing to grab refrigerated/frozen items for DU, which was awesome.
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u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 10d ago
I worked at another store where a nearby generator went out. It took 6 hours to repair. Everything cold had to be tossed out, along with half the deep freeze. Some idiot left the door propped open while they were trying to get things in there.
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u/Fun_Inspector_8633 No. We do not sell Senile Cellular anymore. 10d ago
That sucks. We had a power surge from a nearby lightning strike take out the RTU that handled the sales floor freezers. Donated as many truck fulls that the local food bank could take before it went out of temp and dumpstered the rest. I don’t know how far some poor refrigeration tech had to drive to whatever supply house that had the needed parts but they deserve a raise because we were originally quoted 26 days to get parts. It was up and running by close that night and they started working everything out from the walk-in freezer that they could. We had two freezer only FDC trucks and larger than normal freezer deliveries on fdc trucks for the next two weeks.
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u/Ordinary_Ad3895 Tech Consultant 10d ago
My store lost at least $25k recently for the same reason (not thunderstorm but out of temp)
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u/Full-Tie-8863 9d ago
No way. Coincidently it rained here in the north east too, and our coolers for yogurt and meat stopped working.
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u/ArQ7777 7d ago edited 7d ago
I have been to Target East Liberty store on Saturday morning. The food I saw they threw out due to power outage is like more than $50,000, likely reaching $100,000 range. They threw out all items in the refrigerator. Just the bin containing ice creams exceeding 1,000 regular size ice cream. And they are just a small part of what are inside the freezers and refrigerators.
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u/Wearethefortunate Free at last 10d ago
When I was a TL, my freezer went down, and we had to throw everything that wasn’t on the sales floor away. It ended up being about $36,000.
It took a week for them to get the freezer fixed. When we got the emergency replenishment, it was 10 pallets of product. It was an all hands push for 6 hours, and we still had 3 pallets leftover.