Had no idea a boycott was happening.
Ooh! I haven’t been to Target in a while. Time for a shopping trip.
“Yes daddy lick those boots. Go buy $11 eggs and a $40 hdmi cable from target. Mmmm the leather tastes so good”
- you probably
Just curious as to why you would want to shop there now because of this boycott? Not judging just curious.
Like it seems you didn’t shop there but now it’s contrarian to do you want to.
I work at the Target warehouse that supplies the northwest, should be interesting to see if this actually noticeably changes our daily product volume. Gonna hazard a guess at no probably not. I should have some idea within 24 hours thanks to just in time logistics but seasonal product could fuzz the numbers a bit.
Works for me though, I’m mostly here for the tuition benefit and I don’t lose benefits eligibility unless I dip below 20/hr/week average which I can’t imagine happening.
My wife told me we are boycotting, so lets do this!
I have 3 trans friends and as a super straight middle aged privileged all to hell white dad, fuck these corporate assholes.
Hive mind, why are we mad at you target? Did a rich asshole make a shitty decision?
Why are people boycotting a company that tried and took a step back due to backlash instead of supporting them when they tried?
Putting a time limit on a boycott undermines the boycott.
Saw this with the Loblaw’s boycott here in Canada, it was very ineffective because they can just wait it out.
From the point of view of the boycotter, having a time limit helps mentally.
I think more people are ready to think “just buy somewhere else for a bit”. If it becomes “forever” might seem daunting.
My two cents, not sure if this is the real reason.
Instead if 40 days, let’s try 40 months.
I used to pretty regularly shop at target. When they rolled back DEI proactively for trump, I stopped.
Using gift cards is OK if you’re boycotting a place, right? I mean, Target already has the money and you’d just be helping them out if you didn’t buy anything with them.
I’m a school bus driver and I always get a lot of tips (Christmas and end of year) in the form of Target gift cards. BTW yes, I agree that tipping school bus drivers is fucking weird. We already get paid and it’s not like we’re going to drive the kids into a tree if we don’t get tipped.
Those are Christmas gifts. The parents are just showing appreciation for you already not driving their kids into a tree, not bribing you lol.
No, it’s definitely bribes lol
Not really. The explanation is somewhat complex.
Although target already has the money once a gift card has been purchased, they will not recognise the money as revenue until you use the card.
Suppose my lawn mowing guy charges $50 each time he mows my lawn, and he comes 12 times a year. In January I just transfer him $600 because I don’t want to muck around with smaller payments all the time.
When he calculates his “revenue” for January, should he include the whole $600? It would be more accurate to set aside the $550 he hadn’t really earned yet, and recognise that once he actually does the work.
There’s more geaky accounting stuff I could say, but in summary if you want to send a message to Target management, refrain from using gift cards during the boycott.
I’ll allow it.
We already get paid and it’s not like we’re going to drive the kids into a tree if we don’t get tipped.
You might not do it, I however am always looking for revenue streams. If it’s for profit, it can’t be illegal.
Looks at the health insurance industry
Every time I’ve gone into a target in the last 5 years, they legit looked like they were closing down. Idk why people are boycotting them in particular when Walmart and Amazon are way worse.
i can tell you why - because it’s easy. this is slacktivism. it changes nothing about policy. it exists exclusively to make people feel better about capitulating and doing nothing to prevent their country from becoming a fascist dictatorship
Every Target I go to is nicer than Walmart and has a more curated feel of products. I agree on the last part but it’s because Target was advertising itself as being more in touch with things such as DEI and then backtracked, where Walmart and Amazon never positioned themselves as much.
Target’s thing has always been to be “Walmart but fancy”. Fun fact, the last “T” is actually silent, and you’re supposed the pronounce it “Tar-jay”
you’re supposed the pronounce it “Tar-jay”
Lmao, no you’re not, that’s just something people started doing to literally make fun of the “Walmart but fancy” image they cultivated for themselves.
Same, I get major K-Mart in its final days vibes: lots of empty shelves, stuff in dented and torn packaging, hostile and surly employees etc. etc.
Browsing through the Target grocery section has always mystified me. Not great selection and everything costs about 50% more than the local grocery stores. I have never understood why anybody would shop there for groceries.
Yeah, Kmart vibes is accurate.
There was a time when Target had a middle class demo they…targeted. But that demo is too small now. They’re either going to need to shrink and market to the top 10%, competing with Whole Foods, or lower their standards and compete with Amazon. Oof, gotta love monopolies. Starting to think this boycott was Bezos’ idea.
The Rite Aid near us actually was 3/4 empty all through the pandemic. They put up a sign saying they were remodeling, but closed a few months ago.
Drug stores are so fucking weird. It’s a business model that apparently supports a store on every corner, yet they often go out of business too. And it’s always Rite Aids going out of business, although I couldn’t say what the difference is between those and the other chains.
Our Target is in pretty good shape, always busy. Wonder what the difference is…locale? Management?
you don’t have to go in my wife orders in the app and they text when it’s ready and bring it out to the car. usually the order is ready within a few minutes.
we are both autistic and do much of our shopping this way it’s soooo much easier I dunno why anyone would go in.
I mean besides the time that doesn’t seem much different from the other 2. Walmart I’ll place my grocery pickup order, select a time (usually right when I’m coming home from work so I know I won’t be doing anything else) and they’ll bring it out to me. Amazon obviously delivers right to my front door. Walmart means I need to order maybe 12 hours in advance and Amazon a couple days, but otherwise is there a difference?
It couldn’t come at a worse time for the company
Neither could their capitulation to Trumps bigoted rhetoric.
I got a lot of flak and eye rolls from my liberal friends a few years ago when I, as a queer woman, would criticize their Rainbow Capitalism. But Target is not an ally, they never were. They are simply a corporation that got some easy publicity in liberal spaces by showing the bare minimum decency.
Fair weather allies, aren’t.
Just to build on this. No publicly traded company is an ally to any group but its shareholders.
That’s why it’s our responsibility as consumers to align their shareholder interests to doing the right fucking thing. Boycotts and other consumer action are part of their calculations on what the shareholder interests are, so a large population of informed consumers who vote their conscience with their wallet will provide pressure to do the right thing.
So we must become the shareholders?
Target is under more pressure than companies like Walmart, John Deere or Tractor Supply, because Target went further in its DEI efforts, and it has a more progressive base of customers than those competitors.
This is wild move for a company on its arse anyway.
Can we add bigger offenders like Wal-Mart and Amazon?
That is the part that pisses me off so much about this. Yes. Target capitulated. Yes, Target needs to be told that’s not good.
BUT WALTONS FUND THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION!
This can’t be said enough, yet we can’t get a days boycott on them for fucks sake!
People need awareness, motivation and organization. If you can help with that, go for it.
Right? And why not just boycott all pubkically traded companies forever? 40 days doesn’t do much
Because if you propose that, no one is actually going to do it.
Doing something is always more impactful than shooting for everything and ending up doing nothing. This is a great example of a smartly thought out mass movement; it has a specific goal, and a clearly defined set of terms. Remember, you can always expand or extend. It’s far better to get a small thing moving than try to build a big thing that you never finish.
Also, 40 days is long enough that some people are going to change their shopping habits on a more permanent basis. Creating even a longer impact on Target.
I don’t get why anyone complains about fixed term boycotts anyway. You can just add another 40 days if Target doesn’t get the message. It’s not like you’re signing a contract or something. Boycotts are a negotiation, and in negotiation you always leave yourself wiggle room.
People love to get into this “Only the biggest possible action and nothing else” mindset, and then never actually take any action at all.
Further, a lot of dirt poor people literally rely on Walmart because Walmart was successful at gutting every other business out of their already dirt poor areas. That was literally Walmart’s business model to undersell the competition until they were the only game in town, it’s how they got so huge so fast. Large swathes of the South are like that. There’s a reason they teach their employees how to sign up for food stamps.
100%, perfect is the enemy of good. But it makes little logical sense to give any of these corporations any money or data
If you’re on the highway, need a coffee, and Starbucks is the only thing around, buy the Starbucks.
If Amazon is the only place you can buy that thing you need, buy it from Amazon.
There are plenty of times when the bad option is the only good option. If we teach people that boycotts have to be all or nothing - if we get into this mindset that a single latte means you’re an evil monster who supports genocide - we just engineer a state of despair.
But if we encourage people to reduce rather than cut out, we set an easily achievable goal. And that means it’s a goal that a lot more people will strive for.
If you want to cut out every big corporation entirely from your life, that’s an admirable personal goal, but not one that seems easy or achievable to most people.
I’m definitely with you on that in spirit. I would starve if I actually practiced that across the board. I figure if we start from the top down, maybe we can get the co-ops to come back. Our neighborhood co-op grocery closed down not too long ago, and all that’s left are national chains.
I think it’s fair to commit to reducing your purchasing from these large entities significantly. By design, these companies have made it basically impossible to get certain products except from them, so do what you need to do in those cases. But you can get a lot still from alternatives.
I’m a huge advocate of what I call “soft boycotting.” You don’t have to all or nothing this stuff. If a million people reduce their spending on a company by only ten percent, that’s just as much damage as ten thousand people dropping them entirely. And it’s a lot easier to get a million people to reduce their spending by a little than it is to get ten thousand people to go cold turkey.
Remember, perfect is the enemy of good. A small action taken is worth far more than a big action only imagined.
Yeah co-ops are amazing, I’m always astounded when I find cities that don’t have any
Better than these one day protests that LITERALLY do nothing. At least a 40 day boycott would hit a fiscal month, vs a single day outlier protest.
Join me, I’ve been boycotting them for years.
There is supposed to be a weeklong boycott of Amazon this month, I forget the exact date.
March 7-14
Already been boycotting target
My partner and I had our first children (twins) about a year ago. They’re great.
Before then, I rarely if ever went to this type of store. We don’t have a local Target but we have K-Mart which I think is comparable in Australia.
Honestly I think we’ve done pretty well at buying most of what we need second hand, and then selling it on once it’s no longer required. We also get toys from a local toy library which is amazing.
That said, I’ve sadly become a semi-regular K-Mart shopper because I require some of the cheap plastic junk they sell. A good example is shoes, I can buy a pair of shoes for the kids for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
The thing is, everything about the store is repulsive. It’s basically a plastic shop. They sell plastic. Even the clothing and shoes is polyester and nylon and plasticised rubber. Also, since we’re here, if I’m really honest about it I would have to assume that the person who made my kids shoes is probably being exploited. That sucks.
Anyhow, I don’t really have a point, just having a whinge and acknowledging that target / kmart is definitely the worst part of having a child.
There’s a boycott? I just don’t shop there because it’s the same crap as everywhere else for more money and a worse experience.
I know right I can just buy it on Amazon /s
Nah Amazon is cheaper and a better experience. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of reasons not to shop at Amazon, but price and shopping experience are above Target.
I was boycotting them from the point where I quit the job in logistics. That job was awful.
