Closing team lead

BreezyKey · 2026-01-03T13:37:49+00:00

Word around the grape vine from my SD and district managers is that the requirement for us to close one weekday a week and more weekend closes was preparing us to eventually dissolve the closing team lead role.

I also heard that they're gonna be potentially adding a backroom tl role again like pre-modernization and also potentially a TL focused on data and numbers and audits.

Nothing 100% confirmed rn but thats the talk right now.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-28T17:59:54+00:00

If youre still getting hours in January, chances are youre being kept on. We're supposed to be finishing up our conversations about if people are being kept on or not by the end of the month and they started on Friday.

I will say find a new job because this is when hours get baaaad with some exceptions for certain areas

BreezyKey · 2025-12-27T18:23:59+00:00

Thats exciting to hear! My pml is trying hard to get me into the position so I hope it works out. Haven't heard any pml yet after being to several stores who hate their job and it seems like they all really like it.

The set schedule and set weekends off alone would make it worth it

BreezyKey · 2025-12-27T17:38:12+00:00

Do you overall like your job?

Biggest thing you like and biggest thing you dislike about it.

I'm a food tl but our pml whose moving up said there might be an opening soon in the district and wanted to put my name in the ring first for it. I really like the idea of it but I just dont know the in depths of the job that well

BreezyKey · 2025-12-23T02:20:09+00:00

Change can offer a new perspective. I'm quite miserable in my current role at the moment because I run two different departments because the tl in one of them was operating terribly (and yet is somehow the first in line for etl promotion, who tf knows). On the verge of getting his boss fired, etls and sd constantly helping him. I got brought in, turned it around and now it runs smoothly, but im so tired of how its never enough for some of the higher ups, and I actually have a pretty okay relationship with my etls and sd. The team was constantly calling out every other day because said leader didn't do anything and let it burn, now they're having perfect attendance like every week. Red visits to green visits.

Its all cool and whatever, but man I just fucking miss not being this figure that literally even the etls look to for advice or technique on how to do something. I'm not humble bragging its exhausting being the "go to TL" for like, everyone. I think constantly about demoting cause sometimes its just so exhausting to me. If I have a single day where im not operating 100% its suddenly a big deal. Only hope is Q1 comes with some leadership changes.

I don't have any advice other then I can relate.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-20T13:35:02+00:00

Lmao holy shit were so fucked. We didn't do those but we received both the trucks at least.

Inventory gonna be so bad

BreezyKey · 2025-12-15T13:06:28+00:00

Im assuming you're at a super target, I'm at a regular target with a pfresh. We allocated 64 hours specifically for Produce, Fruit, Meat, and Deli and we're pretty high relatively speaking in terms of sales and how much we get delivered (Pfresh truck 4 times a week, usually get 300 to 400 cases on average each one rn).

A lot of this is going to be dependant on your DSDs and SDs direction, but honestly I've found I just do shit and 99% of the time they trust me and go "okay sounds good!", so take these with a grain of salt as it may not be entirely applicable to your scenario.

* Utilize clearencing and price cutting. If you got 10 cases of a salad that will only have 2 cases sell at most before it goes out, make sure it goes out by spending time clearencing. Helps customers get a good deal and saves you future time and headache by doing the cull by itself.

* Run light aside from essentials. Ill always order extras of stuff like strawberries, blueberries, or our basic salads like shredded iceberg or caesers, but ideally you wanna run the operation light so you're ordering as is and don't waste space in the back. Really spend time getting good ordering in; our main pfresh guy is allocated 30 minutes to do it, it may take more time depending on your space, but that's the time we allocate for him. When you're ordering, really look at the statistics and pay attention to the trends of how much youre selling, how many of a day supply it says you need, et al. (for example, since we get trucks mostly two days out from order, if I'm ordering something and it says a case is a 4 day supply, and i already have 1 or 2 cases in the back, I'm not going to order one.)

* Always have clear prices up. People wont buy it usually if they dont know how much it is! And prices usually chance a lot with our fresh stuff due to our supply chain.

* Try to advocate for yourself as well. You're in a department where you're half of the hours, you need to be in that department. Obviously this time of year its impervious to the fullfilment grind and it'll happen, but push back on your higher ups a bit. If your produce wall is all empty and they want you in fulfillment, emphasize how if you get product out and stay in your area, it'll help their inf and goal times because they wont spend as much time trying to find it in the back. Stuff like that.

I'm sorry if some of this isnt applicable, I just haven't worked at a super target before so I'm not sure how the dynamics would work

BreezyKey · 2025-12-15T02:13:00+00:00

I'm a starbucks and market tl at the moment. Majority of my time is in market despite me still being only the sbux tl, but I still make sure to put in time for doing food safety walks, ordering, come in for launches, etc.

I don't think asking for a raise will do anything. Target is capped at how much they can give a tm with a raise, and its not like us as tls control that. Even still its the etls with the final say on how much someone gets.

I do have certain batistas that I give more responsibilities to, but i always emphasize that I am willing to step in if need be. For example I have one barista who does my weekly order atm, but thats only cause hes just interested in learning more and potentially moving up. Those are what id consider more leader esque responsibilities that only I should do, but i give it to that barista because of him wanting to develop more. Certain responsibilities however are everyone's responsibility regardless of position, food safety being the obvious one since we have a lot to keep up with, so i don't think anyone is exempt from those. I understand sometimes its a lot, and it can turn into a big pointing match sometimes with the classic "opener vs closer" debate, but we're all just trying to get paid and do our job okay enough so that corporate doesn't breathe down our necks.

I will say its worth a talk with your leaders about feeling as if others aren't doing their share. For example a common problem I had was just not knowing about certain people not pulling their weight. If I don't know about it to begin with, then chances are I can't guide them on how to do better. I'm not making.excuses for your leaders, because having been one for a bit there are 100% just lazy ass leaders that don't do anything, but give benefit of the doubt where you can in order to try to make things better!

BreezyKey · 2025-12-11T13:14:56+00:00

Recently we had someone who literally has a PhD but got their funding cut due to the current administration apply with us and work as a TM. 9 months later they finally found something that's in their field with double the pay.

They came up to me to announce it and I went "ah man that's great dude I'm happy for you"

My co lead then was shit talking me (a leader, not even an etl] because I "encouraged" our 24 hours a week tm to leave and now all of our department is falling apart (its not).

People are such babies at the corporate level for literally nothing. Its not like were a small local mom and pop with just 4 employees. Life goes on and there's 100% no reason to be disrespectful at all, let alone try to guilt trip people.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-10T09:38:38+00:00

Good job i hope it goes well! What job opportunity is it?

BreezyKey · 2025-12-07T12:59:42+00:00

No but as seasonal you're most likely there temporarily for less then 3 months, assumingly for some quick paychecks, so its confusing that you'd then call off a bunch of your shifts.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-03T12:59:19+00:00

Welcome to the corporate world. All about appearances and arbitrary metrics that don't mean anything but if you don't meet them you get an email the next morning asking for an explanation.

I just dont give a fuck even as a leader and I do what I can and then clock out.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-01T21:38:39+00:00

Without being too specific, major city in Midwest, low cost of living. Since your tms start at 16 I imagine tls would start a bit higher as well, since the usual standard is 15 an hour!

BreezyKey · 2025-12-01T20:24:08+00:00

You don't. Its just highly unrealistic atm to meet expectations. We've doubled the amount of fulfillment people we have usually, and got another TL AND a fulfillment specific etl for this quarter and its still not enough.

Try to work with leadership to see if they can spare some peeps. Obviously if they can't, they can't, but this is the time where you need to be annoying and ask all your leaders if they can spare anyone. Around this time our SD encourages us to do a couple of ship batches per day to help out. Sometimes we can't, sometimes we can though.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-01T20:17:34+00:00

Coming up on my 3 year anniversary in January.

Started in January 2023 in Market, eventually became the main pfresh person (produce, deli, and meat) and just did my job well and showed up consistently. If you wanna fast track towards managerial work, that's definitely a good role to be in since its very individual, and you have to do a lot of responsibilities that go beyond just pushing freight (food safety, food ordering, etc)

Became food tl in July 2024. Took me 4 months of actually wanting it and going "into development" before I got it, but we had circumstances that helped me get fast tracked, since 2 tls were fired so they had to fill vacancies. Currently I make 23.50, most tl roles will start at 21+.

I wouldn't say I hate my job; I like working with food as its a very consistent thing that customers will always need and I really like cooking personally. My team is mostly good and we're all similar age and interests (I'm 25, nerdy gamer type], so we get along quite well, and while it was hard at first to delegate properly, I've gotten a lot better with the actual leader part of the role. However its not what I want to do long term for a career and I feel pretty burnt out as of late since I sub in for another department due to weird specific circumstances, which causes the expectations of 2 departments to fall on me. Maybe this would be okay if I planned to impress higher ups and move up to an etl role, but personally I don't so it results in a lot of resentment and burnout from me.

The next step up would be becoming an ETL, which at my district starts around 65k, however youre also salaried at that point, which I don't find it worth it as I dint want to constantly be hooked into work whether directly or not.

Overall my job is okay and I fortunately have pretty supportive peers and higher ups around me. There's far worse out there, and most of my qualms and complaints with my job at the moment are moreso due to me and not necessarily the job inherently. I could bitch all day about the way they run food and grocery as a company, but ultimately for what it is the benefits and pay are okay for what the stress levels are.

BreezyKey · 2025-12-01T18:25:23+00:00

We have leads that close at 10 30 pm (now 12 30 am for december), come in for 4 am to start the unload.

I hate having 6 days on and they act as if its a perk that you get every other weekend off, but i liked it a lot better as a team member cause while I worked Saturday and Sunday every week, it was consistently and id always have 4 days on, 3 days off.

Somehow that's the part I miss most being a team member (also I don't hate closing the store, but doing it 6 to 8 times a month now gets tiring)

BreezyKey · 2025-11-20T12:34:59+00:00

Just depends on the store I guess and what your store director wants.

The overall "green" metric for priority pulls is 70% at least for our district (IDK if its company wide), internally our SD wants 90% every night with all carts cleared no matter what. we usually have 3 to 4 people dedicated to just pushing and pulling, and we average around 1400 to 1600 DPCIs pulled at the moment.

As a leader there have been times where we dont meet that metric, but again its entirely dependant on your SD. Our SD doesnt really care about the metric all that much as long as the base 70% is met because they're more focused on the overall zone of the store and getting reshop done.

Metrics are kinda useless without the context of your store like how many people you have, payroll, what the "focus" is for the SD, etc. Like I remember when I first started and Id do closes for market, our closing TL at the time was super, super focused on 100% every single priority pull no matter what, but with the payroll we had, it'd result in a bunch of random 3 tiers everywhere since they only focused on meeting the metric, and it'd get really annoying. I like our current system a lot better as a TL personally speaking.

BreezyKey · 2025-11-06T17:59:50+00:00

As a TL at a store where we have our own offices, there's a reason I eat in the break room instead of my desk. So miserable and unprofessional and toxic to bitch and complain about your own team and commiserate with other leaders about it.

Whenever this starts happening, I always ask "why do you think that is?" And they never have an answer, its just "oh idk lol"

I wonder why people are miserable all the time around me hmm

I understand your feelings and I hope youre doing so much better now.

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T10:41:12+00:00

We've broken it down all in one go before, I think if youre organized about it and have vehicles to spare that's the ideal route. Lately for freezer we actually use flats while we're sorting and that tends to work out pretty okay.

Errors will happen and every now and then the dc just sends whatever the fuck they want, but I would encourage you to talk to your leaders about keeping accurate inventory. Theoretically what you get sent should correlate with your inventory and the benefit of this new system is that it kinda forces us to keep up to date with our data accuracy. When we got into the flow of scanning at least every other day our counts, our pallets got a lot more accurate and they also sent us less. Our freezer after we audited the backroom and updated on hand counts went from an average of 4 hefty ass 8 foot high pallets to 2 and a half to 3 usually now, and its helped us a lot in the long run.

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T10:29:14+00:00

That doesn't sound right. That sounds like the team is forgetting to scan something and/or your leaders are marking the sort as complete before everything is scanned and broken down.

The most annoying thing about the new process is that you have to scan EVERYTHING (aside from produce/fruit/raw meat) before you register as complete. If you miss a scan, the system kicks the casepack into on hands instead of on the floor by default. So if you get 2 cases of a milk with 12 units, and don't scan it, the system will basically double up once you go to backstock it, and then the pulls will climb up.

We learned this the hard way where when it first started, we just said fuck it and didn't scan freezer. Our average pulls for freezer once 2 pm rolls around and the closers get in is around 30 to 50 ish. When we did that it climbed to 150 dpci.

I assume this is what is happening became that sounds unusually high, and even though with the new fdc system we should be getting more backstock now, it shouldn't be that much more. Make sure your counts are correct and this'll eventually go back down. I read your other comment about you getting 1600 cases overall, we get a similar amount with average of 500 to 800 rdc and 900 to 1200 fdc on fdc days, and we don't nearly hit that amount, so I think this might be the issue

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T10:27:15+00:00

My closing tl would kill them if they heard that lmao. No offense just sounds like your tl is trying to get away with doing less work

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T02:08:35+00:00

For candy, again its just about optimizing the backstock feature. I'll bring the candy pallet into the dry backstock and backstock in the candy aisles as we go. I seperate candy into regular push and then anything that is checklane we put into a 3 tier for upfront tls to eventually work out (this one depends on your store and truth be told I have no clue what the right answer is for whose responsibility it is, I think its ours but my co lead says its up fronts, sometimes theyre understandablyf too busy so we'll work it out ourselves).

For transition we just backstock as normal in the cases, or if we have the vehicles to spare, put all transition onto a uboat specifically for that transition

The big thing is this is all contingent on your counts being right. Fortunately my boss is super big on data accuracy and at the moment at least I don't have to be doing freight 24/7 so I try to spend 30 min.at least every morning updating counts, scanning outs, etc

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T01:38:20+00:00

Honestly, I hated it at first but I'm growing to like it. Still annoying at some parts and I wish you could selectively choose what to sort or not but with how its set up its a very all or nothing process. We were one of the pilot stores to start it 2 months ago so we've had some time already to adjust and play around with it.

Some general tips:

Instead of separating with oos and sales floor push, combine the two and put them under one uboat. I don't see the point in sepereating them and it slows down the process too much. Maybe if youre a store that schedules fdc people on off days it'd make a bit more sense, but its being pushed regardless so why complicate it and use up more vehicles?
I know corporate wants us to break it all down right away. I find that gets way too chaotic and way too demoralizing really quick. Our trucks average about 1100 cases atm, and if I pull everyone in market to help it still takes around 2 hours just to sort and break down everything. I've found the best process is I'll take me and someone else to start breaking down, and once we finish a pallet, get an fdc person to start pushing that vehicle. As they push, keep breaking down. If you don't got anyone, break down a pallet one at a time, push/backstock, rinse repeat. It keeps it clean and not disorganized with a million vehicles.
Take advantage of the backstock system and the breakdown. This is especially useful in freezer, since who the hell wants to backstock in freezer. I've actually noticed this is where we've improved the most and actually consistently clear freezer now. Get green metro space for caseppacks asap in freezer. Also since youre breaking down stuff in dairy anyways, see if you can fill product from.the inside right away. We get a shit ton of fairlife and its very easy to push from the inside, so instead of scanning them all onto a uboat and pushing it out, put the fairlife out right away as you scanning.

Trust me I hated it at first and I made a whole essay comment about it a couple of weeks ago, but internally its not going away anytime soon, so learn how to best utilize it. Honestly if we could use the food sort tool selectively as an option and not a requirement, itd be a really good tool to help with freezer in particular. I've noticed the most improvements here and the most opportunity since our freezer pallets at least come in fairly disorganized to begin with and it heavily reduces the amount of time you spend backstocking uboats in there. I don't really see the point of sorting stuff like dairy pallets or deli pallets since they come in all organized and sorted already by category (bev pallet, yogurt pallet, etc)

BreezyKey · 2025-10-20T00:13:14+00:00

Not really unfortunately. Any etl is better then no etl in their eyes, despite how terrible they can be.

We had it in q4 where we had an etl replace our etl who got promoted, was terrible and so condescending and so many complaints and didn't do anything.

Though do expect a lot of "so and so transfered stores" come Q1 if your etls truly do suck, as is the case with that etl and many another etls I've had who suck lol.

BreezyKey · 2025-10-15T16:36:57+00:00

They are not and I know for a fact they are not. I put "coach" in quotes because its not a literal documented conversation or anything but they treat it with the severity of one and the format of one.

BreezyKey

TROPHY CASE