The easiest is subjective. Out of every TL role in the building, there is one I will not take, front-end TL.
Dealing with disgruntled guests ALL day? Hard pass. I'd get fired so quick, lol.
Seriously tho, I get yelled at by guests a fairly regular amount. I can't imagine my entire role being getting yelled at by guests.
Lots of stores have more than one front-end TL along with a front-end ETL. Guest service also deals with most disgruntled guests themselves, so very rarely are those TLs actually brought into those situations -- and even then, it's just to make things right for the guests so they shut up and leave.
It's also one of the only areas of the store that isn't allowed to fall behind. Just call for back-up when it gets busy. If it's too much, even the TLs and ETLs in the store will go up and cash. No other department has that safety net to fall back on.
Essentials GMTL probably is the easiest, imo you’d a glorified pusher with discon/clearanc, and salesplanner responsibilities. Inbound tl means you run the entire morning truck process and are responsible for clearing the line and prepping for next day, grocery tl has to juggle two trucks, food safety thats often ignored, dealing with rude and entitled vendors, presentation tl has all the metrics and the seasonal/bullseye department, two very important departments, on top of all store pricing, fulfillment might be chill depending on your opinion of it, not a fan personally, specialty I don’t have too broad a knowledge on it but beauty, tech, home, and style all pretty heavy-handed
Essentials GMTL here, I agree, but disagree. ASINTS, but in my case, on a day to day, yes it's genuinely glorified TM work, but it's also wearing every possible hat. Since it's a position with the most flexibility, I'm expected to be able to close the building, run the inbound process, manage fulfillment if the lead is off that day, and step in and set aisles if need be. Occasionally even help out drive up if all hell breaks lose.
I'd argue front end lead is still "easier" to learn, especially if that's the world you're coming from in the first place. Since GMTL can wind up being so global, at least in my experience.
You’re definitely not wrong, I didn’t look at it that way regarding the flexibility but you’re absolutely right. At my store my Essentials TL doesn’t do most of that, so it wasn’t at the front of my mind. Our TL only does his sets, ignores front end calls, doesn’t watch opu, and our ETL runs truck on our Inbound TL’s days off
agreed. there's one cauveat, though: typically, bc target wants the most possible bang for their buck, the inbound tl owns essentials gm, unless your store is overnight (which would necessitate two separate positions). so no winning really lol
if i’m not mistaken, the balancing between GM TL departments is ASANTS. as presentation tl, i own all the metrics PLUS stationery, kitchen, storage, seasonal, toys, and sporting goods. i don’t own bullseye though.
If you do decide to go for a TL position, at least in my experience most end up transferring to a different (nearby) store so you’d train under your current managers and then transfer out
This depends greatly on your store. Since you’d be directly reporting to your ETL, take a look at their departments and how they interact with their current TLs.
Are the departments well staffed? Does freight get pushed? How are large scale projects planned out and executed? - These are all questions you need to ask yourself based on how things look **right now**.
As a TL, you’re the middle man between leading your team and keeping your store leadership happy. It’s a delicate balance, but doable if you’re willing to learn while making mistakes.
I can say from my TLs experiences F&B, especially pFresh is one of the hardest. Not just juggling FDC/C&S trucks, pushing, priorities, back stocking, etc. They have to make sure all their TMs are following food safety standards and regularly cleaning too(ha! Like we have hours for that.)...cause you'll have Steritech down your neck if you don't. Not just that, it's way harder to manage callouts with large loads while dealing with backup calls constantly for FF(at my store at least we don't have to do front end but we do have to respond to FF on occasion. Because we can't have trucks constantly rolled over and having so much freight unpushed. Lost sales adds up and food will go bad. One of the biggest time crunch positions in a store if you exclude stupid metrics.
We’re a sbux store manager limited to 40 hours while also counting as part of payroll for regular coverage. 🙃
It’s stressful af compared to other TL roles I’ve had because of that, I know other departments the TLs never have as much separate time as would be good to do all their responsibilities and projects, but at sbux **literally** 100% of running the store is our responsibility we get no help from an ETL or anyone else.
But it’s also the funnest and imo the most fulfilling because your success is easy to measure easy to feel and more or less entirely within your control. Also the team is the tightest cause of working so closely, so once you have a good team built up it genuinely is like a family. 😊
That is wild. We are an ultra high volume Super Target - and Meat is together with Dairy and Frozen under one TL. Produce, Bakery, Deli, Consumables, Starbucks - each have their own TL.
Welcome to Target!!
You might be interested in our [Guide to Store Roles](https://www.reddit.com/r/Target/wiki/storeroleindex) - an index which answers to "What's it like to be a ____?" for every job inside a Target store, written by Target employees.
Also, be sure to check out our [Frequently Asked Questions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Target/wiki/futureemployeefaq) to see if your question is already answered.
We hope you find the answer your looking for! Good luck at Target and on r/Target!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Target) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anything in food or guest service. Provided your team always shows up you will never have any problems in food, and guest service sucks because of all the guests but it’s not actually *hard* just sucks.
The rest I actually find difficult. My store doesn’t have a GM2 atm so I can’t say if their position would be easy or not unfortunately
No guest ever yelled at me in a year. I'm just too eloquent, good looking and gracious.
This is why I will never get a decent raise or promotion. I work with people who can best be described as, "delicate."
if you have a starbucks in your store its not much different than being a plain barista, we typically do everything our manager does besides the schedule. have to deal with caffeine obsessed zombies but its one of the more fun parts of the store. hours tend to be limited depending on your area, though
Closing? At my store my closing TL is basically a mini store director with responsibilities of juggling everything by themself for several hours, alone.
There’s always two closing at my store too but only the CTL has all the responsibility. They’re the ones running the whole store while the other TL just assists as needed but mainly sticks to their department.
If your ETL doesn’t like you the odds of you promoting are slim to none. I’d say transfer to a different location and work your ass off to get your new ETL to see you as an asset and then get on a development plan stating you’re not sure where you’d like to go so they go over all the areas with you. If there is no one fighting for you you’re not getting promoted. Easiest is Specialty home TL, you have the least TMs least truck but more merchandising. Usually GM1 does the hard shit for you
My district HR told me that front end TL is the “quickest” TL position to learn. Aka, easiest.
The easiest is subjective. Out of every TL role in the building, there is one I will not take, front-end TL. Dealing with disgruntled guests ALL day? Hard pass. I'd get fired so quick, lol. Seriously tho, I get yelled at by guests a fairly regular amount. I can't imagine my entire role being getting yelled at by guests.
I’ve been told the same as the previous poster. It’s like the first stepping stone into other leadership roles.
Lots of stores have more than one front-end TL along with a front-end ETL. Guest service also deals with most disgruntled guests themselves, so very rarely are those TLs actually brought into those situations -- and even then, it's just to make things right for the guests so they shut up and leave. It's also one of the only areas of the store that isn't allowed to fall behind. Just call for back-up when it gets busy. If it's too much, even the TLs and ETLs in the store will go up and cash. No other department has that safety net to fall back on.
Essentials GMTL probably is the easiest, imo you’d a glorified pusher with discon/clearanc, and salesplanner responsibilities. Inbound tl means you run the entire morning truck process and are responsible for clearing the line and prepping for next day, grocery tl has to juggle two trucks, food safety thats often ignored, dealing with rude and entitled vendors, presentation tl has all the metrics and the seasonal/bullseye department, two very important departments, on top of all store pricing, fulfillment might be chill depending on your opinion of it, not a fan personally, specialty I don’t have too broad a knowledge on it but beauty, tech, home, and style all pretty heavy-handed
Essentials GMTL here, I agree, but disagree. ASINTS, but in my case, on a day to day, yes it's genuinely glorified TM work, but it's also wearing every possible hat. Since it's a position with the most flexibility, I'm expected to be able to close the building, run the inbound process, manage fulfillment if the lead is off that day, and step in and set aisles if need be. Occasionally even help out drive up if all hell breaks lose. I'd argue front end lead is still "easier" to learn, especially if that's the world you're coming from in the first place. Since GMTL can wind up being so global, at least in my experience.
You’re definitely not wrong, I didn’t look at it that way regarding the flexibility but you’re absolutely right. At my store my Essentials TL doesn’t do most of that, so it wasn’t at the front of my mind. Our TL only does his sets, ignores front end calls, doesn’t watch opu, and our ETL runs truck on our Inbound TL’s days off
agreed. there's one cauveat, though: typically, bc target wants the most possible bang for their buck, the inbound tl owns essentials gm, unless your store is overnight (which would necessitate two separate positions). so no winning really lol
if i’m not mistaken, the balancing between GM TL departments is ASANTS. as presentation tl, i own all the metrics PLUS stationery, kitchen, storage, seasonal, toys, and sporting goods. i don’t own bullseye though.
Wow, yeah I lucked out then, I couldn’t imagine running toys and seasonal at the same time on top of all the others during xmas. Kudos dude
If you do decide to go for a TL position, at least in my experience most end up transferring to a different (nearby) store so you’d train under your current managers and then transfer out
This depends greatly on your store. Since you’d be directly reporting to your ETL, take a look at their departments and how they interact with their current TLs. Are the departments well staffed? Does freight get pushed? How are large scale projects planned out and executed? - These are all questions you need to ask yourself based on how things look **right now**. As a TL, you’re the middle man between leading your team and keeping your store leadership happy. It’s a delicate balance, but doable if you’re willing to learn while making mistakes.
I can say from my TLs experiences F&B, especially pFresh is one of the hardest. Not just juggling FDC/C&S trucks, pushing, priorities, back stocking, etc. They have to make sure all their TMs are following food safety standards and regularly cleaning too(ha! Like we have hours for that.)...cause you'll have Steritech down your neck if you don't. Not just that, it's way harder to manage callouts with large loads while dealing with backup calls constantly for FF(at my store at least we don't have to do front end but we do have to respond to FF on occasion. Because we can't have trucks constantly rolled over and having so much freight unpushed. Lost sales adds up and food will go bad. One of the biggest time crunch positions in a store if you exclude stupid metrics.
I agree with this. The one department I would never take on. I wouldn’t take other ones either but this one’s at the very top.
Thanks for the info I was thinking about f&B at a different store but this changes my mind I also hate the freezer lol
I don't really know what our Starbucks TL does, so it's either really easy or really hard lol
We’re a sbux store manager limited to 40 hours while also counting as part of payroll for regular coverage. 🙃 It’s stressful af compared to other TL roles I’ve had because of that, I know other departments the TLs never have as much separate time as would be good to do all their responsibilities and projects, but at sbux **literally** 100% of running the store is our responsibility we get no help from an ETL or anyone else. But it’s also the funnest and imo the most fulfilling because your success is easy to measure easy to feel and more or less entirely within your control. Also the team is the tightest cause of working so closely, so once you have a good team built up it genuinely is like a family. 😊
At my store it would be Meat. It’s wild to me that we have a leader just for that
That is wild. We are an ultra high volume Super Target - and Meat is together with Dairy and Frozen under one TL. Produce, Bakery, Deli, Consumables, Starbucks - each have their own TL.
Ours is too and we have those leaders and STILL have a meat leader! We get maybe 2 pallets of meat
My store is a lot smaller so it’s just one tl for food & Beverage
Welcome to Target!! You might be interested in our [Guide to Store Roles](https://www.reddit.com/r/Target/wiki/storeroleindex) - an index which answers to "What's it like to be a ____?" for every job inside a Target store, written by Target employees. Also, be sure to check out our [Frequently Asked Questions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Target/wiki/futureemployeefaq) to see if your question is already answered. We hope you find the answer your looking for! Good luck at Target and on r/Target! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Target) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anything in food or guest service. Provided your team always shows up you will never have any problems in food, and guest service sucks because of all the guests but it’s not actually *hard* just sucks. The rest I actually find difficult. My store doesn’t have a GM2 atm so I can’t say if their position would be easy or not unfortunately
No guest ever yelled at me in a year. I'm just too eloquent, good looking and gracious. This is why I will never get a decent raise or promotion. I work with people who can best be described as, "delicate."
if you have a starbucks in your store its not much different than being a plain barista, we typically do everything our manager does besides the schedule. have to deal with caffeine obsessed zombies but its one of the more fun parts of the store. hours tend to be limited depending on your area, though
Probably GM or Fulfillment.
Closing, fulfillment and S&E are probably the easier ones imo
Closing? At my store my closing TL is basically a mini store director with responsibilities of juggling everything by themself for several hours, alone.
Maybe it’s just my store but there’s always 2 leaders closing usually one from style or front end it’s never just the closing leader
Mine has one person 5 days a week and two on the weekend.
I only close alone :)
There’s always two closing at my store too but only the CTL has all the responsibility. They’re the ones running the whole store while the other TL just assists as needed but mainly sticks to their department.
If your ETL doesn’t like you the odds of you promoting are slim to none. I’d say transfer to a different location and work your ass off to get your new ETL to see you as an asset and then get on a development plan stating you’re not sure where you’d like to go so they go over all the areas with you. If there is no one fighting for you you’re not getting promoted. Easiest is Specialty home TL, you have the least TMs least truck but more merchandising. Usually GM1 does the hard shit for you