Target "Self Checkout Hours" 11 AM to 7 PM

[storewanderer]

Target has released a new metric for stores that at least 50% of all transactions must be at a "belted" checkstand (so this means people who go pay at customer service or go pay at Starbucks don't get included in this percentage) as they want to discourage self checkout use.

So the stores have different strategies to meet this. Some are only letting a couple self checkouts stay open (as customers stand around in line looking at the closed self checkouts), some are only opening self checkout 11 AM to 7 PM, etc.

This is probably one of the worst strategies I've ever heard. Customers are going to be standing around waiting in line looking at closed self checkouts. Those could easily be opened up to alleviate the lines but all to meet some metric people have to wait in line. I suspect there is also motivation to push people to sign up for Target credit cards/Red Cards/Circle memberships and this is another reason why they want to waste the customer's time and make more customers wait in line for a regular cashier despite installing many self checkout units that should be open at all times the store is open so customers never have to wait in line.

I don't know who's idea this was but there seems to be some very poor management within Target making some very poor decisions.

Stores remodeled as recently as back in mid 2023 shifted half of their front end to self checkout (expanding from 4 units to 12 or 16 units in said stores); now you are going to close those during certain hours or not open all of them? This is just stupid and confusing to both the customers and the employees.

For Target in particular this is a very poor move. The typical Target customer absolutely prefers self checkout, as I have watched them waiting in line for self checkout when regular lanes have no line or just one customer checking out.

Where Target went wrong was pushing "self checkout only" - that was a bad strategy, yes, and needed to be reversed. But now they are going to the other extreme here...

This is not unlike their Pride Merchandise fiasco in 2023 where they similarly went from one extreme to the other.

If Target staffed its regular checkstands with enough cashiers and cashiers that were efficient enough to keep lines from forming, I could support this move. But Target's cashiers are understaffed and not very efficient, also a poor checkstand design does not help efficiency either, especially in states with bag laws where the bags are directly next to the scanner and for any customers who don't want bags/use reusable bags the cashier has to lift every item over 4 different hooks for bags and put them onto a tiny counter space. Wal Mart has reconfigured its checkstands in many places with bag laws so the scanner has a large counter right next to it and the cashier just slides the item past the scanner onto the flat surface there for the customer to deal with, similar to how most grocery store checkstands are set up.

[Super S]

This is not a smart move.

Even before self-checkouts, Target was known for not having well-staffed front ends. A typical weekday would be maybe 1 or 2 cashiers, maybe 3 or 4 on weekends, and the expectation that all other employees in the store would come running every 5 or 10 minutes when they called for backup cashiers.

If anything, they need more self-checkouts.

[ClownLoach]

The longtime Chief Operating Officer is out finally. They installed a new COO on Monday who was the CFO before. I think the previous COO was on thin ice and some of these wacky decisions like "limit 10" self checkout were basically attempts to save his own job. But.... What if this was a demand of the NEW COO because he's aware of other serious problems at Target?

Target used to manage their store payroll by month, meaning that as long as the store made their budget by month end they would not get in trouble. And they typically run alternating weekends off for management. So this led to two phenomenons: first, if the Store Manager was off the cashier payroll at the front end was slashed to recover over spends (since they wouldn't have to deal with the backlash). Two, if the store is running over budget then they'd slash cashier payroll at the end of the month. With lots of self checkouts it is easier to make these cuts. Without the self checkouts it's damned near impossible.

So if they're going to hold the stores accountable for at least 50% of transactions going through the staffed register - first it's going to require a payroll budget increase. Second and more importantly, this is going to weed out a lot of bad managers who don't run good processes, cheat on hours as I explained above, have favorites who are really poor performers etc.. Basically Target is making a stand with this metric by saying that the cashiers have to be staffed properly. And since the manager bonus is heavily affected by survey scores, they're not going to be able to just close self checkout as suggested here and have long lines for regular. Customers will trash them on the survey plus sales will go down as they abandon carts and/or skip short trips and go elsewhere. If you're seeing a 11-7 operation it's probably the idea of a District or Regional manager, but when they see the survey scores tank and fear their bonus is gone then they're going to back off it.

Because Target has been so amenable to letting their Store Managers make these decisions you're going to see some stores get really rough, really fast as they have to give the hours back to the front end... And a lot of Store Managers get fired. I'm sure there are stores that shift hundreds of hours each week out of the checkout lanes and into the freight team, the order pulling team, etc. because they're more complicated positions that require detailed adherence to policies and a lot of training. A bad manager won't care about either and will just keep funneling more hours in by cutting the front lanes. That obviously is not going to fly any longer.

The lack of discipline that created this phenomenon, and the need to address it, is visible throughout the current Target operation as many have called out here. They're capable of running much better stores than they do, and there is too much variation in store conditions and service right now as some stores are fabulous and others are disasters. Compare to Walmart who arguably has tightened up these gaps in the last year or so - we used to all talk about hopelessly broken Walmart locations with hundreds of pallets of freight blocking the aisles for months, but those got fixed. The outgoing COO allowed the lack of discipline at Target from the payroll shifting to the poor dress code adherence etc. as he was focused on the wrong priorities.

This is a very interesting decision because it represents far more than just self checkouts. To me this is a signal that they're not going to put up with poor operations anymore and are going to become more disciplined about the way the company operates, and focus on the basics again. It's a really big deal. Also, although the new Walmart remodels are very nice I am hearing a lot of push back about the single queue line, which then turns into waiting in a second line if you want to wait for a staffed register. I wonder if Target is noticing an unexpected sales lift near Walmart stores that get the massive new self check area (32 self checkouts, 16 large format, 16 small format, and only 8 full service registers of which maybe one is actually open). Maybe they're realizing that they can pick up business this way, but I don't think it will work if they are forcing customers who prefer self checkout into the regular line.

[storewanderer]

Single queue is not going to work for Wal Mart. The store is too big. For the customer who is down by pharmacy/garden/hardlines and picks up a single item in a department over there and slips out through the pharmacy side door they exit that self checkout right by that door. A single queue will require them to walk practically all the way across to grocery to line up and that isn't going to be acceptable. I have been in many Wal Marts in multiple states last year including many recent remodels and did not see one single queue front end.

Wal Mart does not have this single queue thing at all in my area and in fact in the recently remodeled stores (2 stores did front end only remodels without remodeling the rest of the store) they have eliminated the one spot that had a single queue and that was the "caged" self checkout that had a square area with 8 or 12 self checkouts arranged into it. The remodels remove that and put the self checkouts into "lines" basically placed like regular checkstands one next to the other so there is no more single queue for anything.

The front end remodels massively improve the Wal Mart front end. Even before the remodels they only had 1 register open a lot of the time. The remodels simply added more self checkouts (which are basically always open) so now nobody is waiting in lines at all. Now they can have 30+ customers checking out at once vs. before with maybe 12 self checkouts and one cashier they could have 13 customers checking out at once so lines form. For example the store I went to tonight wasn't very busy but had the 36 or however many self checkouts they have open even though maybe 5-8 customers were using them at any given time, plus 2 cashiers open with steady traffic. Plenty of available self checkouts. There were at least 3 employees watching the self checkouts on the grocery side, one was cleaning/filling bags.

And this is where the Target problem comes in. Target has 12 self checkouts plus 16 registers. The problem is the 16 Target registers are never open; not even during the day before Christmas or on Black Friday. If you're lucky they may have 3 registers open. So this means only 15 customers can check out at once at Target. Now due to some terrible corporate management directive the store starts closing self checkout during certain hours or not opening all of them so you reduce how many customers can check out at once. This is a terrible idea. Customers do not like waiting in line to help Target hit some metric that they don't care about. All the customer knows is Target has all these self checkouts but for some reason they aren't open, maybe they are broken the customer assumes, but once they go back and keep seeing it again and stand in line staring at closed self checkouts again they will then start to realize Target doesn't value their time. Unless Target is going to start having minimum 3 cashiers open at all times and 12 cashiers on duty during busy weekends, this isn't going to work.

The power of self checkout is to make it so many customers can check out at once so people aren't waiting in line. This is why stores that only have 4 self checkouts feel so outdated and are frustrating (regardless of chain). You go in there and it is like why am I waiting in line, why don't they have more self checkouts so I don't have to wait?

[ClownLoach]

Single queue is not going to work for Wal Mart. The store is too big. For the customer who is down by pharmacy/garden/hardlines and picks up a single item in a department over there and slips out through the pharmacy side door they exit that self checkout right by that door. A single queue will require them to walk practically all the way across to grocery to line up and that isn't going to be acceptable. I have been in many Wal Marts in multiple states last year including many recent remodels and did not see one single queue front end.

Wal Mart does not have this single queue thing at all in my area and in fact in the recently remodeled stores (2 stores did front end only remodels without remodeling the rest of the store) they have eliminated the one spot that had a single queue and that was the "caged" self checkout that had a square area with 8 or 12 self checkouts arranged into it. The remodels remove that and put the self checkouts into "lines" basically placed like regular checkstands one next to the other so there is no more single queue for anything.

The front end remodels massively improve the Wal Mart front end. Even before the remodels they only had 1 register open a lot of the time. The remodels simply added more self checkouts (which are basically always open) so now nobody is waiting in lines at all. Now they can have 30+ customers checking out at once vs. before with maybe 12 self checkouts and one cashier they could have 13 customers checking out at once so lines form. For example the store I went to tonight wasn't very busy but had the 36 or however many self checkouts they have open even though maybe 5-8 customers were using them at any given time, plus 2 cashiers open with steady traffic. Plenty of available self checkouts. There were at least 3 employees watching the self checkouts on the grocery side, one was cleaning/filling bags.

And this is where the Target problem comes in. Target has 12 self checkouts plus 16 registers. The problem is the 16 Target registers are never open; not even during the day before Christmas or on Black Friday. If you're lucky they may have 3 registers open. So this means only 15 customers can check out at once at Target. Now due to some terrible corporate management directive the store starts closing self checkout during certain hours or not opening all of them so you reduce how many customers can check out at once. This is a terrible idea. Customers do not like waiting in line to help Target hit some metric that they don't care about. All the customer knows is Target has all these self checkouts but for some reason they aren't open, maybe they are broken the customer assumes, but once they go back and keep seeing it again and stand in line staring at closed self checkouts again they will then start to realize Target doesn't value their time. Unless Target is going to start having minimum 3 cashiers open at all times and 12 cashiers on duty during busy weekends, this isn't going to work.

The power of self checkout is to make it so many customers can check out at once so people aren't waiting in line. This is why stores that only have 4 self checkouts feel so outdated and are frustrating (regardless of chain). You go in there and it is like why am I waiting in line, why don't they have more self checkouts so I don't have to wait?

For the utmost clarity, they have two queue lines and the big pod of self checkouts with a few regular in the middle is split in half so they have two banks of registers but generally only one is open which is on the grocery side. So if the store was incredibly busy they could open the second bank of registers and have two queue lines. But it is a queue line just like TJMaxx or others which I had never seen before in a store the size of Walmart. It never stops moving though, and they always have the line staffed with a worker who directs the customer to a specific self checkout station based on basket size, or a regular checkout lane if they request one. They tell you exactly what number to go to.

I do like the setup with the spacious area for the large self checkout, it is extremely clear how to set up ergonomically with giant decals on the floor "Cart goes here" and such. Everyone else needs this same setup. But there are a lot of people who do not appreciate the queue line and then waiting in another line, even if the first queue moves quickly. In the first Walmart I saw with the new format they walled in regular check lanes in the middle, in those locations I saw some pretty long lines for what were only 4 lanes. That is not the case in this newest version which is now called "store of the future." Although they double the full service checkstands, going up to 8, they have only operated half of the checkout area on all of my visits since the remodel (so roughly 16 self checkout open plus potential of 4 regular checkout).

The queue lines themselves are well signed and wherever you are at the front end there is a sign in front of you with arrows directing you to the entrance to the line queue. This is in Temecula.

Separately, I was at a SuperTarget last night and clearly nobody got any message about 50% there. There was only one staffed lane at 9pm and all self checkouts were fully open (although three were broken). They did not have any signs about 11 to 7 self checkout, but they did have the limit 10 items signs posted which the attendant clearly wasn't enforcing. I really think the 11 to 7 thing is not a company policy and just a local directive probably from a DM who is going to get canned along with their entire district of store managers. What this really amounts to is that Target is going to force their lazy managers to do their jobs because they are no longer going to have the luxury of pulling the employees off the checkout lanes and spend the payroll elsewhere. Last night I saw socializing employees all over the store in clusters failing to get their work done in a messy store with out of stocks everywhere. I saw a stocking crew that was talking instead of stocking and a recovery crew doing the same while 4 carts of go-backs were sitting blocking the entrance to the foods area. Clearly they needed half of those people doing these tasks plus a supervisor giving direction and following up, and all the rest should have been up front on a register. Target has become way too lax and has Store Managers who never leave their cozy office which in most cases is now in the furthest back corner of the warehouse. That culture allows for the problem stores like the Reno one you share pictures of. Target operates on substantially higher payroll than Walmart but you wouldn't know it when you see front end staffing in stores that rob the hours from that area.

I can tell you that as a Store Manager I spent more time pushing the performance of my front end than I spent anywhere else, and drove double digit comps on top of double digit comps while getting sky high survey scores without playing games. Get the customer checked out fast and they'll shop more often and buy more because they know they have time to browse and won't get stuck waiting in a long line. Target has been lax about every aspect of their front ends for years aside from Red Card sign-ups. One of the biggest mistakes they made was eliminating the "scoreboard" which was on every screen between transactions, their cashiers were timed based on scan rate, scan time, tender time etc. and would get a score of Green or Red for each transaction. They used to fire slow cashiers who did not improve after training and coaching. But all that stopped about 5 years ago and then they removed the scoreboard from the register on the new POS (or buried it so it isn't always on the screen, it looked like a bold line of say GGRRGRGGGG). So now not only are their cashiers not held accountable for performance, allowing slow and unproductive workers to remain on the payroll, but as an added bonus they also get pulled out to the sales floor for recovery or stocking where they fail to get anything done other than blabbing to their coworkers or play on their cell phone.

I really think that there is a larger message being sent to Target management here, and the lazy ones who immediately cook up workarounds like closing the self check aren't going to survive because workarounds don't change behaviors. Target has become wildly undisciplined in its operations, we all see it when we visit the stores, and there's a new Chief Operating Officer who is going to put his foot down immediately and get these stores back in line. They use scorecards so the idiot who puts up a barricade in front of every self checkout and gets that 100% score is also going to have double digit negative sales results along with a 0% customer satisfaction score and they'll be "targeted" for termination due to poor overall store performance rating.

The consultants who came up with these Scorecard reports at these companies go in and study the best run stores, determine the metrics that make them great, and then set those for everyone. The way they select is simple, a third of the chain runs well and regularly exceed the metric. A third of the chain achieves it sometimes. And the bottom third never achieves it and will have to improve to get there. So I would not be surprised if well-run Target stores that don't cheat on payroll and staff their registers exactly as dictated by the schedule always average over 50% of transactions on a regular register already even with self checkout open all the time. That is most likely where that metric came from, and that means it's achievable without pissing off the customer or negatively impacting sales.

The more I think about this, the more likely I can say I would ask for the same thing if I ran their company (and I would explicitly ban any closing of self checkouts at the same time). They are given payroll for staffing the registers, which clearly is not being spent there. They get enough payroll so nobody should have to wait for either self check or full service. If the manager doesn't want to spend the hours on serving customers then they should not get a choice in the matter. Right now they do, and that is not okay.

[storewanderer]

For the utmost clarity, they have two queue lines and the big pod of self checkouts with a few regular in the middle is split in half so they have two banks of registers but generally only one is open which is on the grocery side. So if the store was incredibly busy they could open the second bank of registers and have two queue lines. But it is a queue line just like TJMaxx or others which I had never seen before in a store the size of Walmart. It never stops moving though, and they always have the line staffed with a worker who directs the customer to a specific self checkout station based on basket size, or a regular checkout lane if they request one. They tell you exactly what number to go to.

I do like the setup with the spacious area for the large self checkout, it is extremely clear how to set up ergonomically with giant decals on the floor "Cart goes here" and such. Everyone else needs this same setup. But there are a lot of people who do not appreciate the queue line and then waiting in another line, even if the first queue moves quickly. In the first Walmart I saw with the new format they walled in regular check lanes in the middle, in those locations I saw some pretty long lines for what were only 4 lanes. That is not the case in this newest version which is now called "store of the future." Although they double the full service checkstands, going up to 8, they have only operated half of the checkout area on all of my visits since the remodel (so roughly 16 self checkout open plus potential of 4 regular checkout).

The queue lines themselves are well signed and wherever you are at the front end there is a sign in front of you with arrows directing you to the entrance to the line queue. This is in Temecula.

Separately, I was at a SuperTarget last night and clearly nobody got any message about 50% there. There was only one staffed lane at 9pm and all self checkouts were fully open (although three were broken). They did not have any signs about 11 to 7 self checkout, but they did have the limit 10 items signs posted which the attendant clearly wasn't enforcing. I really think the 11 to 7 thing is not a company policy and just a local directive probably from a DM who is going to get canned along with their entire district of store managers. What this really amounts to is that Target is going to force their lazy managers to do their jobs because they are no longer going to have the luxury of pulling the employees off the checkout lanes and spend the payroll elsewhere. Last night I saw socializing employees all over the store in clusters failing to get their work done in a messy store with out of stocks everywhere. I saw a stocking crew that was talking instead of stocking and a recovery crew doing the same while 4 carts of go-backs were sitting blocking the entrance to the foods area. Clearly they needed half of those people doing these tasks plus a supervisor giving direction and following up, and all the rest should have been up front on a register. Target has become way too lax and has Store Managers who never leave their cozy office which in most cases is now in the furthest back corner of the warehouse. That culture allows for the problem stores like the Reno one you share pictures of. Target operates on substantially higher payroll than Walmart but you wouldn't know it when you see front end staffing in stores that rob the hours from that area.

I can tell you that as a Store Manager I spent more time pushing the performance of my front end than I spent anywhere else, and drove double digit comps on top of double digit comps while getting sky high survey scores without playing games. Get the customer checked out fast and they'll shop more often and buy more because they know they have time to browse and won't get stuck waiting in a long line. Target has been lax about every aspect of their front ends for years aside from Red Card sign-ups. One of the biggest mistakes they made was eliminating the "scoreboard" which was on every screen between transactions, their cashiers were timed based on scan rate, scan time, tender time etc. and would get a score of Green or Red for each transaction. They used to fire slow cashiers who did not improve after training and coaching. But all that stopped about 5 years ago and then they removed the scoreboard from the register on the new POS (or buried it so it isn't always on the screen, it looked like a bold line of say GGRRGRGGGG). So now not only are their cashiers not held accountable for performance, allowing slow and unproductive workers to remain on the payroll, but as an added bonus they also get pulled out to the sales floor for recovery or stocking where they fail to get anything done other than blabbing to their coworkers or play on their cell phone.

I really think that there is a larger message being sent to Target management here, and the lazy ones who immediately cook up workarounds like closing the self check aren't going to survive because workarounds don't change behaviors. Target has become wildly undisciplined in its operations, we all see it when we visit the stores, and there's a new Chief Operating Officer who is going to put his foot down immediately and get these stores back in line. They use scorecards so the idiot who puts up a barricade in front of every self checkout and gets that 100% score is also going to have double digit negative sales results along with a 0% customer satisfaction score and they'll be "targeted" for termination due to poor overall store performance rating.

The consultants who came up with these Scorecard reports at these companies go in and study the best run stores, determine the metrics that make them great, and then set those for everyone. The way they select is simple, a third of the chain runs well and regularly exceed the metric. A third of the chain achieves it sometimes. And the bottom third never achieves it and will have to improve to get there. So I would not be surprised if well-run Target stores that don't cheat on payroll and staff their registers exactly as dictated by the schedule always average over 50% of transactions on a regular register already even with self checkout open all the time. That is most likely where that metric came from, and that means it's achievable without pissing off the customer or negatively impacting sales.

The more I think about this, the more likely I can say I would ask for the same thing if I ran their company (and I would explicitly ban any closing of self checkouts at the same time). They are given payroll for staffing the registers, which clearly is not being spent there. They get enough payroll so nobody should have to wait for either self check or full service. If the manager doesn't want to spend the hours on serving customers then they should not get a choice in the matter. Right now they do, and that is not okay.

I just don't see the queue lines working for Wal Mart. I am not sure why they are pushing it. Like I said projects they did very recently doing two front end remodels (but no other store work) in NV do not have these queue lines. I have left Burlington without buying anything multiple times due to a very nasty looking queue line there. Had they had 3 cashiers with 3 customers in each line I may have gotten into one and waited, but seeing that 9 customer long queue line scares me out the door empty handed. I think too many people have had too many long waits at post offices and banks with queue lines and just don't like them. Recall Smart & Final tried queue lines and ripped all that equipment out. TJX seems to manage its queue lines better and keep them from getting too long or if they are long they are moving better.

11-7 is a directive from high up in Target for some stores and it is nationwide. Some stores supposedly have no directive yet about self checkout but it is coming any day now. I am hearing some stores are also supposed to open and close the self checkouts intermittently throughout the day to further discourage use, and there are plans to remove half of the machines. Also some stores will have a policy that self checkout can only be open when loss prevention is present in the store and available to monitor the self checkouts.

The Reno Target does not have those socializing packs of employees anymore; that stopped after Christmas. The employees are better on task, but not very efficient, and seem unhappy. It still needs help but it is looking better than before.

Front end is the only part of the store with a mass/grocery like Target that basically every customer "visits." Of course if the store is a mess and shelves aren't stocked then more people will walk without buying anything but most people will at least buy something and will visit the front end. The front end needs to move as many people through as quickly as possible through whatever means they can some up with. In this case having a lot of self checkout units is a way to accomplish that. Taking those away or limiting/reducing how many are open and you go back to that old bottleneck style front end... it is fine if you add 3 cashiers during slow times and add 12 cashiers during busy times but I don't see that happening.

This is where a Union environment puts a check on bad managers who try to mess around on who is doing what tasks vs. what corporate budgets them for. In a Union shop, you cannot have the stocker go and cashier; those are separate positions with a separate pay rate. Sure there are combo clerks and such that can do multiple tasks but it is limited how many of those you can have per contract. But you don't need a Union to do that. You need better oversight over the stores. And clearly Target lacks oversight.

[veteran+]

I have never heard of grocery clerks, produce clerks, GM clerks and other clerks prevented from checking at busy times (Florida, Colorado, California).

Meat clerks, service deli clerks, service seafood clerks and often bakery clerks are not allowed to check (but I have seen exceptions). Also of course pharmacy clerks.

It also depends on the Union and jurisdiction. The rules are not always the same from region to region.

[ClownLoach]

For the utmost clarity, they have two queue lines and the big pod of self checkouts with a few regular in the middle is split in half so they have two banks of registers but generally only one is open which is on the grocery side. So if the store was incredibly busy they could open the second bank of registers and have two queue lines. But it is a queue line just like TJMaxx or others which I had never seen before in a store the size of Walmart. It never stops moving though, and they always have the line staffed with a worker who directs the customer to a specific self checkout station based on basket size, or a regular checkout lane if they request one. They tell you exactly what number to go to.

I do like the setup with the spacious area for the large self checkout, it is extremely clear how to set up ergonomically with giant decals on the floor "Cart goes here" and such. Everyone else needs this same setup. But there are a lot of people who do not appreciate the queue line and then waiting in another line, even if the first queue moves quickly. In the first Walmart I saw with the new format they walled in regular check lanes in the middle, in those locations I saw some pretty long lines for what were only 4 lanes. That is not the case in this newest version which is now called "store of the future." Although they double the full service checkstands, going up to 8, they have only operated half of the checkout area on all of my visits since the remodel (so roughly 16 self checkout open plus potential of 4 regular checkout).

The queue lines themselves are well signed and wherever you are at the front end there is a sign in front of you with arrows directing you to the entrance to the line queue. This is in Temecula.

Separately, I was at a SuperTarget last night and clearly nobody got any message about 50% there. There was only one staffed lane at 9pm and all self checkouts were fully open (although three were broken). They did not have any signs about 11 to 7 self checkout, but they did have the limit 10 items signs posted which the attendant clearly wasn't enforcing. I really think the 11 to 7 thing is not a company policy and just a local directive probably from a DM who is going to get canned along with their entire district of store managers. What this really amounts to is that Target is going to force their lazy managers to do their jobs because they are no longer going to have the luxury of pulling the employees off the checkout lanes and spend the payroll elsewhere. Last night I saw socializing employees all over the store in clusters failing to get their work done in a messy store with out of stocks everywhere. I saw a stocking crew that was talking instead of stocking and a recovery crew doing the same while 4 carts of go-backs were sitting blocking the entrance to the foods area. Clearly they needed half of those people doing these tasks plus a supervisor giving direction and following up, and all the rest should have been up front on a register. Target has become way too lax and has Store Managers who never leave their cozy office which in most cases is now in the furthest back corner of the warehouse. That culture allows for the problem stores like the Reno one you share pictures of. Target operates on substantially higher payroll than Walmart but you wouldn't know it when you see front end staffing in stores that rob the hours from that area.

I can tell you that as a Store Manager I spent more time pushing the performance of my front end than I spent anywhere else, and drove double digit comps on top of double digit comps while getting sky high survey scores without playing games. Get the customer checked out fast and they'll shop more often and buy more because they know they have time to browse and won't get stuck waiting in a long line. Target has been lax about every aspect of their front ends for years aside from Red Card sign-ups. One of the biggest mistakes they made was eliminating the "scoreboard" which was on every screen between transactions, their cashiers were timed based on scan rate, scan time, tender time etc. and would get a score of Green or Red for each transaction. They used to fire slow cashiers who did not improve after training and coaching. But all that stopped about 5 years ago and then they removed the scoreboard from the register on the new POS (or buried it so it isn't always on the screen, it looked like a bold line of say GGRRGRGGGG). So now not only are their cashiers not held accountable for performance, allowing slow and unproductive workers to remain on the payroll, but as an added bonus they also get pulled out to the sales floor for recovery or stocking where they fail to get anything done other than blabbing to their coworkers or play on their cell phone.

I really think that there is a larger message being sent to Target management here, and the lazy ones who immediately cook up workarounds like closing the self check aren't going to survive because workarounds don't change behaviors. Target has become wildly undisciplined in its operations, we all see it when we visit the stores, and there's a new Chief Operating Officer who is going to put his foot down immediately and get these stores back in line. They use scorecards so the idiot who puts up a barricade in front of every self checkout and gets that 100% score is also going to have double digit negative sales results along with a 0% customer satisfaction score and they'll be "targeted" for termination due to poor overall store performance rating.

The consultants who came up with these Scorecard reports at these companies go in and study the best run stores, determine the metrics that make them great, and then set those for everyone. The way they select is simple, a third of the chain runs well and regularly exceed the metric. A third of the chain achieves it sometimes. And the bottom third never achieves it and will have to improve to get there. So I would not be surprised if well-run Target stores that don't cheat on payroll and staff their registers exactly as dictated by the schedule always average over 50% of transactions on a regular register already even with self checkout open all the time. That is most likely where that metric came from, and that means it's achievable without pissing off the customer or negatively impacting sales.

The more I think about this, the more likely I can say I would ask for the same thing if I ran their company (and I would explicitly ban any closing of self checkouts at the same time). They are given payroll for staffing the registers, which clearly is not being spent there. They get enough payroll so nobody should have to wait for either self check or full service. If the manager doesn't want to spend the hours on serving customers then they should not get a choice in the matter. Right now they do, and that is not okay.

I just don't see the queue lines working for Wal Mart. I am not sure why they are pushing it. Like I said projects they did very recently doing two front end remodels (but no other store work) in NV do not have these queue lines. I have left Burlington without buying anything multiple times due to a very nasty looking queue line there. Had they had 3 cashiers with 3 customers in each line I may have gotten into one and waited, but seeing that 9 customer long queue line scares me out the door empty handed. I think too many people have had too many long waits at post offices and banks with queue lines and just don't like them. Recall Smart & Final tried queue lines and ripped all that equipment out. TJX seems to manage its queue lines better and keep them from getting too long or if they are long they are moving better.

11-7 is a directive from high up in Target for some stores and it is nationwide. Some stores supposedly have no directive yet about self checkout but it is coming any day now. I am hearing some stores are also supposed to open and close the self checkouts intermittently throughout the day to further discourage use, and there are plans to remove half of the machines. Also some stores will have a policy that self checkout can only be open when loss prevention is present in the store and available to monitor the self checkouts.

The Reno Target does not have those socializing packs of employees anymore; that stopped after Christmas. The employees are better on task, but not very efficient, and seem unhappy. It still needs help but it is looking better than before.

Front end is the only part of the store with a mass/grocery like Target that basically every customer "visits." Of course if the store is a mess and shelves aren't stocked then more people will walk without buying anything but most people will at least buy something and will visit the front end. The front end needs to move as many people through as quickly as possible through whatever means they can some up with. In this case having a lot of self checkout units is a way to accomplish that. Taking those away or limiting/reducing how many are open and you go back to that old bottleneck style front end... it is fine if you add 3 cashiers during slow times and add 12 cashiers during busy times but I don't see that happening.

This is where a Union environment puts a check on bad managers who try to mess around on who is doing what tasks vs. what corporate budgets them for. In a Union shop, you cannot have the stocker go and cashier; those are separate positions with a separate pay rate. Sure there are combo clerks and such that can do multiple tasks but it is limited how many of those you can have per contract. But you don't need a Union to do that. You need better oversight over the stores. And clearly Target lacks oversight.

11-7 doesn't even match the last "all hands on deck" program Target was running. They supposedly have two customized, store specific hours blocks where they're supposed to be all hands on deck, and those are assigned by store by corporate for their unique traffic patterns. 11 to 7 doesn't even align with their scheduling. For example it could be 9 to 1 and 3 to 6. I really question the accuracy of this. They also have been very big on the volume code system which also dictates everything from when registers are to be closed for the night to when the LP agents are to be working up front. Just hearing anything that sounds one size fits all makes me question the accuracy of the information because they've spent a fortune on data mining and operations people who have developed customized approaches for each store.

The fact that the leadership of the entire stores group just changed 4 days ago for the first time in decades also makes me question this.

There is no way in hell that Target is going to have everyone stand on their head over an oddball metric like this over all the other stuff they dump on their stores these days. The only thing it does is forces them to stop allowing managers to under schedule cashiers or pull them off the register and put onto other work that didn't get done on time which is a good exercise in improving management and discipline.

As far as the self checkout machines etc. may go, they still do have a lot of the older leased units in the stores and they frankly need to go away. The two Super locations near me are stuck with these older models and they usually have 3 or more units broken as they are dependent on the scale for produce unlike regular Target stores; apparently the scale is the part that breaks the most although I've seen the same problem on brand new units at Walmart. So once again it sounds like two unrelated exercises being tied together; some stores that got the new machines have lost registers while others have received more.

I'm going to have dinner with a long term Target SM next week who is the regional "fixer" and I'll find out exactly what is going on here because none of it makes any sense and sounds like the telephone game on steroids.

[storewanderer]

11-7 doesn't even match the last "all hands on deck" program Target was running. They supposedly have two customized, store specific hours blocks where they're supposed to be all hands on deck, and those are assigned by store by corporate for their unique traffic patterns. 11 to 7 doesn't even align with their scheduling. For example it could be 9 to 1 and 3 to 6. I really question the accuracy of this. They also have been very big on the volume code system which also dictates everything from when registers are to be closed for the night to when the LP agents are to be working up front. Just hearing anything that sounds one size fits all makes me question the accuracy of the information because they've spent a fortune on data mining and operations people who have developed customized approaches for each store.

The fact that the leadership of the entire stores group just changed 4 days ago for the first time in decades also makes me question this.

There is no way in hell that Target is going to have everyone stand on their head over an oddball metric like this over all the other stuff they dump on their stores these days. The only thing it does is forces them to stop allowing managers to under schedule cashiers or pull them off the register and put onto other work that didn't get done on time which is a good exercise in improving management and discipline.

As far as the self checkout machines etc. may go, they still do have a lot of the older leased units in the stores and they frankly need to go away. The two Super locations near me are stuck with these older models and they usually have 3 or more units broken as they are dependent on the scale for produce unlike regular Target stores; apparently the scale is the part that breaks the most although I've seen the same problem on brand new units at Walmart. So once again it sounds like two unrelated exercises being tied together; some stores that got the new machines have lost registers while others have received more.

I'm going to have dinner with a long term Target SM next week who is the regional "fixer" and I'll find out exactly what is going on here because none of it makes any sense and sounds like the telephone game on steroids.

There are multiple Reddit posts about the self checkout hours on the Target Reddit. This came down last week. Some even have pictures of the signs. It varies by store what they have been directed to do but blocks of stores were directed to do this 11-7 self checkout hours thing.

The new self checkout units they have break even more than the old units. Usually there are 3-5 of them broken in Reno. For some reason in Carson City and Sparks they always are all working. Maybe some stores are better at fixing issues on those new units than others. The old units when those broke it was a service call and of course that meant they were down for days. Those disappeared in my area.

[Alpha8472]

NCR was notorious for sabotaging their own self checkout machines. The NCR tech gets paid for how many service calls they get and however long it takes. They have an incentive to purposely make the machine break down or stay broken for longer.

They do this with regular cash registers too. The power briefly went out and the register wasn't working for some reason. However, NCR came and claimed the register was damaged beyond repair and needed a new unit. The guy took his sweet time diagnosing it and making multiple trips to his car. This is the same guy who took a nap in the corner of my pharmacy while the register was rebooting and he was snoring. NCR knows how to rack up those bills.