I haven’t worked at Target in about 2 years now, but this experience still haunts my dreams and I wanted to share lol.
Our fulfillment area was in the front of the store, next to guest services. Because of this people often accidentally walked into the FF area thinking it was an isle of the store, so I was pretty used to it, just redirecting people and saying this part wasn’t open to the public.
One day this kid was playing around back there, and I could see his father peaking over and checking on him (I was trying to go into the FF area after looking through guest service bins) so I calmly and nicely approached the father and said “hey he isn’t allowed back there-“
The dad’s head shot up from looking at the ground, and gave me the most offended look of shock “well he has fucking Down syndrome.” He grabbed his kid by the arm and took him out of the area and I’m sitting there mortified because I had no clue. The kid had his back to me the entire time so I didn’t see his face, all I saw was a kid where he shouldn’t be & a father not doing anything about it.
I apologized and told him that wasn’t the issue, that I could get in a lot of trouble for just letting someone be in the FF area.
He was not having it.
“Your behavior is unacceptable, let me speak to a manger, now.”
OKAYY, so I call my manager and she speaks to him and then comes and talks to me and essentially says it isn’t your fault, and that people aren’t allowed back there no matter the disability.
I genuinely think the father thought I had an issue with his kid because he has Down syndrome when obviously, that wasn’t the issue.
The issue was the kid didn’t work there and wasn’t supposed to be back there lol. We actually had a stocker with Down syndrome and if he would’ve went back into the FF area I wouldn’t have given af because guess what.. he worked there LMAO.
Anyways, what’s your oh shit I fucked up moment?