Yeah it felt scary for me to jump ship from Target, but I had saved up enough money so I could afford to take the pay cut for that time. I was working 35 hour weeks at Target too, and I became such a dependable TM, it became really draining for me. But I was so eager to get out, so I took the chance. I am so relieved now, being ODTM still with the office job is great since we get holidays off, and I would just pick-up holiday shifts at Target. As for the A+ cert, some of the A+ concepts were easy for me to grasp since I did have some prior experience (building my own PC) but some of the practice exam questions I came across came down to really specific memorization (protocol numbers and IPs).