# Terminated



## Cloud00456 (Apr 30, 2020)

Due to an accident happen on last Saturday I just got terminated today. It sucks. Worked for 9 months and I was doing well and it just bad to be something happen on a weekend. What a rotten luck I have. Now have to wait 90 days to reapply. Do I need to apply online again and answer the questions or can I call the manager to ask if I can have the job back? How does it work?


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## Lost12487 (Apr 30, 2020)

What was the accident? I'm assuming that if they termed you it was because the determined it was due to negligence. If you're termed you're almost certainly keyed as non-rehirable. I'd definitely start applying elsewhere. You can call the manager if you think it would help, but in my experience that just isn't going to do anything for you.


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## Captain Orca (Apr 30, 2020)

Was that the cart attendant car scratch accident?


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## Hardlinesmaster (Apr 30, 2020)

Yes.








						I'm Lost! - Cart Attendent Trouble
					

Hello,   I worked for target for 9 months as cart attendent. I love my jobs, my friends, I respect my coworker, and my manager. I am writing this post because I am concern about my position. Today I was using the machine to push the carts. And I happen to accident hit a car denting it on the...




					www.thebreakroom.org


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## Captain Orca (Apr 30, 2020)

Only accident I ever saw in the back room was a guy dropped a bale with only 2 wires, chains tight, ram up----BAM  !  blew to pieces when it hit the blue pallet.  Awesome!


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## jackandcat (Apr 30, 2020)

Cloud00456 said:


> Due to an accident happen on last Saturday I just got terminated today. It sucks. Worked for 9 months and I was doing well and it just bad to be something happen on a weekend. What a rotten luck I have. Now have to wait 90 days to reapply. Do I need to apply online again and answer the questions or can I call the manager to ask if I can have the job back? How does it work?


 Sorry you've been kicked out of Target for this mistake, which reflects a normal risk faced by cart attendants.  Sometimes there's only a split second when some car swerves out in front of your carts.  Usually a firing at Target is because of blatant dishonesty, stealing money or merchandise, intentionally injuring a co-worker or guest, intentionally damaging company property, or serious absenteeism.  If your description is accurate, you did not engage in what's called "willful misconduct", insubordination or theft.

Firing seems to be an excessive punishment, but employment-at-will laws allow this kind of immediate firing.  Most of us who work at Target, myself included, have found that if you are honest about your mistakes Target will give you a second chance.  Cart attendant losing control of the carts when a car comes out of nowhere in the parking lot isn't a typical cause for firing.  Somebody in your store's management has some other agenda going on. *Sad*.


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## BoxCutter (Apr 30, 2020)

You would have to give it a long, long time for Spot to rehire you. Learn from your mistake and move on. Good luck.


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## Amanda Cantwell (Apr 30, 2020)

jackandcat said:


> Sorry you've been kicked out of Target for this mistake, which reflects a normal risk faced by cart attendants.  Sometimes there's only a split second when some car swerves out in front of your carts.  Usually a firing at Target is because of blatant dishonesty, stealing money or merchandise, intentionally injuring a co-worker or guest, intentionally damaging company property, or serious absenteeism.  If your description is accurate, you did not engage in what's called "willful misconduct", insubordination or theft.
> 
> Firing seems to be an excessive punishment, but employment-at-will laws allow this kind of immediate firing.  Most of us who work at Target, myself included, have found that if you are honest about your mistakes Target will give you a second chance.  Cart attendant losing control of the carts when a car comes out of nowhere in the parking lot isn't a typical cause for firing.  Somebody in your store's management has some other agenda going on. *Sad*.


Looks like based on the thread if I’m reading it right according to a post near the bottom OP also hit a pregnant guest which IMO combined with hitting a car in the same week is probably not a hidden agenda by management


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## Tessa120 (Apr 30, 2020)

I think it was the same event. The same loose carts hit both a car and a guest.


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## Amanda Cantwell (Apr 30, 2020)

Tessa120 said:


> I think it was the same event. The same loose carts hit both a car and a guest.


Oh.... well still hitting a pregnant guest is not good, much worse than just scratching a car.


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## BoxCutter (Apr 30, 2020)

Yep, much more liability hitting a pregnant guest. Missed that part of the thread.


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## jackandcat (Apr 30, 2020)

Amanda Cantwell said:


> Oh.... well still hitting a pregnant guest is not good, much worse than just scratching a car.


OP was vague about the carts and a pregnant guest, which is why I kept mentioning "if your account is true".  So the big question:  was this accidental or intentional?  In my observations, I see TMs who occasionally make accidental mistakes, they clearly get coached and perhaps written up but not fired unless the SD and HR figure it was intentional, deliberate, malicious, whatever you want to call it. Our store has high standards and doesn't tolerate intentional bad behavior, so that's why I was a bit startled at why this cart attendant was terminated. Yeah, there is a liability issue and this is definitely not a good thing, but I am not seeing where the cart attendant behaved deliberately to harm others.  "Accident" means something which was accidental, not planned in advance or intended to happen. 

In fairness there might be more to this story than we've been told by OP.  ASANTS.


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## Amanda Cantwell (May 1, 2020)

Even if it’s accidental... hitting a guest with carts especially a pregnant one is a *huge* liability for Target


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## sunnydays (May 1, 2020)

extraordinarily huge liability lmao


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## jackandcat (May 1, 2020)

That's called a cost of doing business as a big company.  No company, big or small, is immune from premises liability claims even if they are truly baseless.  That's why companies like Target purchase insurance policies with various policy provisions and coverages.  The insurance adjusters and their lawyers play a key part in managing Target's defense along with Target's corporate lawyers and their external hired legal counsel. 

Although the SD and ETL will not discuss this with TMs in the store, saying only "the cart attendant is no longer employed with Target", the Target SD and ETLs fired the cart attendant to send a chilling reminder to anyone in their store that "*you are replaceable*".  I'm biting my tongue at this point.


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## Lost12487 (May 1, 2020)

jackandcat said:


> Although the SD and ETL will not discuss this with TMs in the store, saying only "the cart attendant is no longer employed with Target", the Target SD and ETLs fired the cart attendant to send a chilling reminder to anyone in their store that "*you are replaceable*".  I'm biting my tongue at this point.



There is a lot of shady shit done by Target to their employees, but I can just about guarantee you that there was no message being sent to team members other than "if you are unsafe with the machinery we train you on and you hit a guest and a guest's car, you are replaceable." I'm assuming the HR looked in their binder for a similar situation, the binder recommended termination, they termed the TM that had the accident. While I'm sure there are plenty of managers that set out to send *"chilling reminders," *many of them are just doing their job the same as you.


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## Dead and Khaki (May 1, 2020)

Even if there had been more than one incident, wouldn't they just take OP off cart attendant duty and assign him/her to a different role in the store?  Something doesn't add up here.


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## Tessa120 (May 1, 2020)

Depends on how loud and far the pregnant woman yelled.  If she had a fit to corporate and demanded payment for a doctor checkup (even if it was just a bitty bruise and not a real threat), yep that person's gone.


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## Tarshitsucks (May 2, 2020)

Can you get a job elsewhere? Also judging by the cart thing don't do carts again. There are other places that much better that may take you. Don't wait six months for Tarshit.


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## dannyy315 (May 2, 2020)

Even if it’s a big liability, firing over one incident seems excessive, unless there has been a pattern of carelessness. If there were no issues before that incident, a final warning seems more appropriate.


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## sunnydays (May 2, 2020)

if you struck a pregnant guest with a cart and you were in your 90 days, i would not keep you

sorry


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## allnew2 (May 2, 2020)

Captain Orca said:


> Only accident I ever saw in the back room was a guy dropped a bale with only 2 wires, chains tight, ram up----BAM  !  blew to pieces when it hit the blue pallet.  Awesome!


Wtf 2 wires only? Wow


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## Fyi (May 4, 2020)

apply for unemployment ASAP.  You’ll get whatever your weekly benefit rate is plus the $600 federal pandemic unemployment  Until June 30th, which should be around $5400.


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## jackandcat (May 5, 2020)

dannyy315 said:


> Even if it’s a big liability, firing over one incident seems excessive, unless there has been a pattern of carelessness. If there were no issues before that incident, a final warning seems more appropriate.


  That seems like a rational approach.  How was the cart attendant TM to know this lady happened to be pregnant? I suspect this so-called guest read the riot act to corporate, and when it bucked down to the district and the SD, they took the easy way out. Target has the legal right to screw this cart attendant, they don't legally need a reason for firing under employment-at-will, so Target exercised that right.


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## Captain Orca (May 5, 2020)

Maybe she wasn't pregnant and just wanted to screw the kid over.  Karens will do that.  Horrible people.


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## 60SecondsRemaining (May 5, 2020)

Hitting a pregnant guest with anything, let alone a cart, is a massive PR liability and would totally get you canned.

Next time you see a pregnant lady at work "accidentally" run into her with your cart.  See what happens.  Let's test the theory.

For science.


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## jackandcat (May 6, 2020)

60SecondsRemaining said:


> Hitting a pregnant guest with anything, let alone a cart, is a massive PR liability and would totally get you canned.
> Next time you see a pregnant lady at work "accidentally" run into her with your cart.  See what happens.  Let's test the theory. For science.


In the past, I worked for an insurance company handling premises liability and personal injury claims, some of which went into court.  Here's info from the other thread:


> Today I was using the machine to push the carts. And I happen to accident hit a car denting it on the side. I dont know what's gonna happen with the situation I just want to know what is the worst outcome. *Today was a busy day with all the cars driving by fast in the parking lot* I thats to stop the machine many time and that's when the carts deattached and I happen to push the button and the deattached carts happens to ram into a guest car.





> The thing is I did accident hit a customer only that it's on me because *even though the customer was just standing there and on the phone and then called me an ass***because she was pregnant complain to my manager even though I apologized*.i dont even know if they are gonna let this one go


  (bold added for emphasis)
You can read more on this from the other thread. The cart attendant TM had been performing the job for 9 months and I take their comments about the abnormal parking lot traffic as reflecting several months' experience.  "*Massive PR liability*" would be the Target Credit Card Data Breach of 2013, not a truly unfortunate but isolated accident involving premises liability. Target has plenty of insurance coverage and lawyers. With a huge company, *this is a risk of doing business*. This kind of stuff does happen. I think it's quite disturbing that the TM has been fired over this, given that no cart attendant in the world can absolutely predict the behavior of nearby motorists and pedestrians, or  a split-second malfunction in the machine or a split-second hitting the wrong button on the machine.


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## Tessa120 (May 6, 2020)

It is disturbing, yes.  But this is a world where someone can post something on social media that is 1% truth and 99% lies, and it will reach a wide audience so fast with the right words chosen to garner a deep emotional reaction.  Complete strangers, truly believing the post to be truthful, will work in solidarity to punish the "wrongdoer" by boycott and convincing others to boycott.  Some companies are responding by eliminating the visible source of the problem, so they can tell the public everything is fixed to avoid the boycotting and people getting in the habit of shopping elsewhere.  Companies that don't respond in that manner often put out a statement where a single word or two can be twisted to fan the flames.

All it would take is one pregnant woman to demand both payment for doctors' bills and a ridiculous amount for emotional distress compensation, if what she is given is lacking in her eyes she turns to social media.  1% truth about what parking lot she was in, 99% lies that she was hit deliberately, she nearly lost the baby, Target won't pay for all her medical needs, local store management wouldn't even listen to her complaint, she's never going to Target again, she hopes that no one else will go to a company that thinks so little of their staff deliberately hurting people, and she's having flashbacks from the incident.  At that point, corporate will demand blood so they can go back and say that they've fixed all the local store's problems that led to this.


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## Amanda Cantwell (May 6, 2020)

Also we don’t know the full story or if there were other issues.


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## Captain Orca (May 6, 2020)

As I stated earlier.  Witnesses?


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## Amanda Cantwell (May 6, 2020)

Captain Orca said:


> As I stated earlier.  Witnesses?


Target has eyes on the store inside and out. There’s definitely video evidence.


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## 60SecondsRemaining (May 7, 2020)

jackandcat said:


> In the past, I worked for an insurance company handling premises liability and personal injury claims, some of which went into court.  Here's info from the other thread:
> (bold added for emphasis)
> You can read more on this from the other thread. The cart attendant TM had been performing the job for 9 months and I take their comments about the abnormal parking lot traffic as reflecting several months' experience.  "*Massive PR liability*" would be the Target Credit Card Data Breach of 2013, not a truly unfortunate but isolated accident involving premises liability. Target has plenty of insurance coverage and lawyers. With a huge company, *this is a risk of doing business*. This kind of stuff does happen. I think it's quite disturbing that the TM has been fired over this, given that no cart attendant in the world can absolutely predict the behavior of nearby motorists and pedestrians, or  a split-second malfunction in the machine or a split-second hitting the wrong button on the machine.



Target is not an insurance company.  Your argument is outside the bounds of the situation.

You have a scale, on one side you have PR, on the other you have the team-member.  The scale always tips to the PR side because to a major corporation, the value of PR is much higher than that of a single employee, regardless of the employee.

The cost of replacing an employee is quantifiable - the sunk cost of a terminated employee is essentially the cost to onboard them.
The cost of repairing PR is not inherently quantifiable - this represents a much larger risk.

*The risk of negative PR in this situation calls for pre-emptive risk mitigation, and that mitigation is removing the source of the potential risk.  *It's really that simple.


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## jackandcat (May 8, 2020)

60SecondsRemaining said:


> Target is not an insurance company.  Your argument is outside the bounds of the situation.


 *I strongly disagree*. When companies are sued, the company shares the cost of legal defense with the insurance carrier because in 99.99% of cases.  The number-one reason big companies will NOT volunteer up-front to pay claimants anything is because of their obligations to their insurance carrier. The insurance carrier ultimately pays for the pre-trial settlement OR, in the statistically rare cases which go to trial, the court ordered judgment.  IT'S ALL ABOUT THE INSURANCE MONEY!



60SecondsRemaining said:


> You have a scale, on one side you have PR, on the other you have the team-member.  The scale always tips to the PR side because to a major corporation, the value of PR is much higher than that of a single employee, regardless of the employee.


 *Not "always".*  An aggrieved employee who successfully gets the ear of major news media, or whose story ultimately "goes viral" in social media, can cause enormous PR damage to the company.  You are underestimating the risk to the company of bad publicity. Think about how a few seriously aggrieved employees at Wells Fargo ultimately got the fake-accounts scandal covered in the Los Angeles Times, followed by investigation and findings by the Consumer Financial Protection agency, and the enormous negative publicity, legal and regulatory punishment Wells Fargo has taken since then. The 24/7 media news cycle and enormous power of social media have made it far riskier for a company from a PR perspective to exterminate (that was not a typo) an employee than in the past.



60SecondsRemaining said:


> The cost of replacing an employee is quantifiable - the sunk cost of a terminated employee is essentially the cost to onboard them.....  The cost of repairing PR is not inherently quantifiable - this represents a much larger risk...........*The risk of negative PR in this situation calls for pre-emptive risk mitigation, and that mitigation is removing the source of the potential risk.  *It's really that simple.


  Read above. *You and I may disagree on which is the more serious risk*. The insurance carrier might well take a very, very dim view of a company which terminates an employee for a bona fide accident, due to the secondary liability which the company may face via employment law litigation and compliance with whistleblower complaints to State and Federal workplace safety regulators, labor regulators, and extremely negative coverage on news media and social media. And if the company fires an employee who is considered in a "protected class", what happens when some very public adversarial figure like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Alexandra Occasio-Cortes or Bernie Sanders goes public on the employee's behalf and really put's the company's management on the fire with *TOXIC negative PR*.  How's this going to affect Target's stock price, Wall Street scuttlebutt, and (cough, cough) insurance carriers, who might even issue a "Reservation of Rights" when the company reports a claim issue.


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