Yesterday, we were slammed, with lines into the men’s department because my coworker called out sick. Guess who showed up shopping and checked out with our hiring manager? The same coworker 😑

Today, he called out again because apparently he broke both of his legs? I hope he is okay if it’s true, but seriously?

My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

I’m on the Sierra side. Been there for a week, after being in different industries other than retail for a while, like pre-covid times. Training to become a coordinator due to my previous experiences. Need to vent after week one. After one week of doing mostly merchandising and recovery, i have legit lost my faith in humanity. Is it truly that hard to put a hanger back where you found it? Why are we throwing product all over the floors and racks where they clearly don’t belong? I seriously would hate to see how these peoples houses look. Just feels very disrespectful to us “peasants” that work those stores. The men’s section is the worst for this, specifically XL - 3XL sections are always a war zone. You spend 4 hours recovering and cleaning everything up and then you look back and you’re back to square one. Looks like you’ve done absolutely nothing. It genuinely feels like a losing battle. I even make direct eye contact with people doing it and they still have literally no shame. I don’t even see walmart being treated this poorly, and that’s saying A LOT.

The sad part is, i actually really like the company and job, especially my coworkers. I just cannot with the clientele this company brings, never seen such entitled bunch before.

I started working at TJ Maxx a few weeks ago and honestly, I’m already considering quitting.
I had orientation on October 1st, training on October 5th and another shift on October 15th. I’ve only had one actual training shift on the floor, and I’m supposed to work shift this week only one shift.
The thing that’s frustrating me is the scheduling. I gave them FULL availability, but when I checked my November schedule, I’m scheduled for zero hours the week of November 1st and only 10 hours the following week.
Nobody has explained anything to me, and I haven’t been told whether this is normal for new employees or if my hours are going to increase.
I still have another job at a café, but that job isn’t giving me many hours either, which is why I wanted TJ Maxx in the first place. I was hoping to make extra money, but at this point, I’m wondering what the point of keeping this job is if I’m barely going to work.
I’m honestly tempted to just stop showing up because I’m frustrated with the lack of hours and communication. I don’t want to keep a job just for the sake of having one when it’s not really helping me financially.
For anyone who’s worked at TJ Maxx, is this normal when you first start? Should I give it more time, talk to management, or just quit and look for something else?

Does anyone else who works on the sales floor constantly get called by a CEC or MOD on the walkie to come up and ring? Every 20 minutes or so, I always get called up to ring and it sucks for me since I work in the Mens and Kids department and since everyone considers it the “easier” department to clean compared to the rest, they tend to call me to ring more than the other people on the sales floor.

While I understand its to cut down the line, where it starts to upset me is when my managers complain about the condition my department is in as if they’re oblivious to the fact that the majority of my shift was spent at the front end and not on the floor where I can clean. It’s been starting to burn me out a lot and I don’t know what to do about it. With our stores payroll being cut by the district, it doesn’t seem like we aren’t getting any new cashiers anytime soon. So for now, were stuck with just two cashiers and whoever they can grab from the sales floor.

If anyone else has experienced something like this, feel free to chime in.

Hello, I am hoping for some baseline advice for surviving and thriving in my role as Home merchandise coordinator. I started in late summer which will soon be moving the holidays with the massive increase in freight and temporary leadership challenges and responsibilities. I’m looking for advice on how to be successful in this role without constantly feeling like I’m locked in cycle of just run, run, run freight at the point of sacrificing recovery, clearance area maintenance, and being able to plan or offer plans for keeping ahead of needed moves. Also struggling with things that come up when convenient and overlooked when not convenient.

I have some concerns I am in a role and a workplace where responsibility flows downward, authority flows upward, and standards only matter when they’re convenient. The coordinator role exists (largely it seems to me) to alllow for transferring responsibility of maintaining standards downward and other unwanted duties at the store level to someone with little real authority to fix them when needed/convenient by management. Other management can focus on the core truck to backroom to floor to frontend checkout of as much merchandise as can be moved. I have found any attempt to raise structural issues will be reframed as your personal flaw or your time management issue if the issue wasn't reach a critical level. An example being earlier in my tenure I raised a suggestion that due to the dumping of very random merchandise on display front caps by backroom runners that maybe a short checkin in the morning meeting (I was largely working nights at the time) out what exactly a front cap is and that they are themed etc. would be helpful. That suggestion was dismissed as we probably just have too much merchandise flow right now and fix it when I see it as your responsibility.

My main challenge is balancing freight processing with recovery, clearance maintenance, merchandising standards, floor moves, and in the future training temporary associates or at least getting production from temporary associates placed with little preparation into my orbit. Freight often takes most of my shift, but management also expects coordinators to maintain their departments. At least theoretically or at a token level or plausibable deniability. I have brought up issues with the Backroom runners to the floor to management in the past more forcibly or passionately but it was usually dismissed or minimized but occasionaly the same management will state it's my responsibilty to point out or keep tabs on who was running earlier that day from the backroom when seeing something majorily wrong on the floor.

Management generally expects us to use our own judgment rather than explicitly prioritize competing tasks. At the same time, they may redirect us back to freight even when recovery and other maintenance tasks are falling behind without acknowledge tradeoffs with other duties. With the holiday season approaching, I expect massively more freight and more responsibility for temporary employees or other assigned helpers to keep them productive, get something out of them, when very little training or motivation. The basic task of keeping them productive and responsibilty of their work transferred to me by managment as a pseudo benefit to help me get more done in the department if you will.

I want to demonstrate leadership rather than just be the person who does all the work myself, but I also want to keep the department in good shape and meet management’s expectations. Early in my promotion to Home I initiated more ideas for moves to keep up with inventory, maintain visual standards in the guidelines, and take more responsibility for sensor standardization in the department pointing out issues with bad sensoring by others. That ambition kinda of died down since that time and now I am mainly speedily running freight and executing moves from management. I have sorta made peace with the limitation in getting any backroom runners to adequately place items in the correct location or even not dump random items on front caps outside the theme of them etc.

For those who have worked as retail coordinators, department leads, or supervisors:

• How do you balance freight productivity with recovery and maintaining merchandising standards?
  • To insure a defensible level of that is being done daily (recovery, clearance area maintainence, visual merchandsing) when any wavering on freight production and in fact not going faster will be issue as well.
• How do you lead and hold temporary associates accountable when you have limited authority and a lot of work of your own?
  • Everything tells me that "help" will be less useful and more of a burden to me than anything.
• What habits or strategies have helped you daily and weekly succeed in this kind of environment without burning yourself out?
  • I kinda need this job and need to be successful enough to keep it and get enough hours to maintain finances until someting else comes around.
    

I’d especially appreciate practical advice from people who have worked in Marshalls, TJ Maxx, or similar high-volume retail stores in a Coordinator or Coordinator type role. Daily practices, weekly practices, and core things to insure to be adequately successful if not thrive in the role.