The Target Shopping Experience

https://www.instagram.com/p/C5o0llFvOHY/?igsh=YmQ0b2Qxc3YzMWph

Sales associate I asked for help from as to where to find the item I was looking for was very friendly and gave me clear and easy to follow directions. Much appreciated. Sorry, I didn't notice her name tag, but she was very short. Maybe 4 foot something? Long dark hair and beautiful dark skin. It was on the lower level of your Manhattan Herald Store at around 1445 today: 11 April 2024. Thank you to her.

I have never been into a Target store before today. Store is huge and overly bright. Thankful for the human sales associate who was able to help me find what I needed.

Thankful you still employ humans at the check out. I am certain that the automated machines cost a whole lot to install, monitor, and upkeep—especially with all the extra cameras and such for "safety and security". Also, with all the electronic parts and cameras associated with them, I am certain that this causes further exploitation of humans and resources in places such as the Congo, whose Indigenous peoples mine much of the essential components for electronic devices and batteries required for these big fancy automatic check out machines.

Further exploitation and harm befalls many peoples in China as well, where many legitimate Chinese citizens, and especially those that the CCP, et al, consider to be "lesser human beings"—such as the Uyghurs. They are still being systematically targeted, sterilized, and often mysteriously "disappear"—especially when they do not appropriately adhere to their "re-education" in camps. They are also still being used as slave labor to put together most of our electronic devices in big factories in China, which do not have safe working conditions nor do they provide their "employees" with appropriate breaks, food, or other necessary conditions for humans to appropriately thrive. They are treated poorly and compensation is negligible, if you can even call it compensation.

I am also certain that it is far cheaper for your corporations and businesses, and much more sustainable for humanity and the environment, to give people opportunities which allows them to sustain themselves as they work at very necessary front line jobs, which teach them skills so that they may thrive in this world and interact with other human beings, and even develop social skills as they must communicate with the public. This is essential to being human because we are innately a social species and cannot thrive in solitary and unsanitary conditions for long periods of time.

Also, providing humans the opportunity to support and sustain themselves actually feels really amazing and gives them purpose to their lives and helps them to feel useful and like they have worth as opposed to the alternative, which is to have some authoritarian dictator who doles out food rations and other items that they feel is appropriate and "necessary" for a human to survive and thrive.

Michael was the cashier who checked me out. He could use some more social skills, but perhaps he was just having a bad day. He was very impatient and barely acknowledged me. I tried multiple times to get him to relax and communicate, but he didn't smile or communicate back at all. He definitely heard me, as I made eye contact, but he looked away and was not interested in acknowledging me as human or speaking to me as a legitimate customer. As soon as I paid, he just yelled out next, and I hadn't even packed up what I had bought or put my change away.

I even said that I would make sure to fill out the survey on the receipt as I hope that is somehow a way you still acknowledge your employees as more than numbers on a spreadsheet. I joked that perhaps if I gave him a good review, that perhaps he would get his name on an employee board of the month. No smile or even a hint of a chuckle from him. The cashier next to him didn't seem to be sure if it was okay to smile or laugh or react, though he did seem to at least have a slight grin about my obvious joke about the employee of the month comment.