I’m posting here because I want to know if there’s anything we can do in her scenario. My fiancée worked for Target for about 3 years and took a break for about a year to work somewhere that had a higher pay.
We found out that she was pregnant in January of this year and she decided that the job was not a good place to work since they work with a lot of cleaning agents and there was mold on the walls and all sorts of other nonsense (that’s another story).
So she decided that going back to Target was in her best interest. It’s a job she knew well enough where she felt comfortable being able to do it. But the thing was we moved to in the meantime and her original store was too far. So she applied to a Target close to my work so we can make commuting easier.
They went ahead and placed her in a department (produce) that she didn’t apply to and was not at all familiar with. She was transparent with HR in the interview process that she was pregnant and would not be able to do heavy lifting. We did eventually get them a doctors note that confirmed pregnancy to see if they could potentially move her to a different department. They basically just said “Oh well there’s not too much heavy lifting in produce so you should be okay.”
Fast forward to when she starts working. In addition to a toxic and hostile work environment, they did not train her well and, lo and behold, she was doing lots of heavy lifting. That first trimester is crucial in being careful about things like heavy lifting because she was most at-risk for a miscarriage. They had scheduled her to close of work alone and do all of the work by herself two times a week, while telling her frequently, “Oh just ask for help if you need it!” (there’s literally nobody there to help her or nobody would bother to) & her boss was apparently complaining about her not performing well.
An old co-worker from her previous Target, who certainly knows her stuff, is adamant that she should take some sort of action against Target. We aren’t sure if we would actually be able to get anything done but I thought I’d post here to get some insight.