Target Practice

I am grateful for something very specific today. This became abundantly clear to me at 8pm tonight in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Let me explain...

• I am incredibly grateful for Target.

I was especially aware of this after waiting for nearly two and a half hours for pictures to be printed at the Wal-Mart photo center. Let me take a few steps back. First, as a proud Midwestern gal and my loyalties coming into college were obviously with Wal-Mart. It was almost a cultural touchstone in my community. It was not unlikely to go to Wal-Mart and literally see dozens of people that you knew. I am not too proud to admit that if there was nothing to do on the weekends my friends and I would drive to Wal-Mart and just walk around. It was a big deal when Tiffin started building a Super Wal-Mart and it was an even bigger deal when they decided to build one in Upper Sandusky which cut our travel time from Sycamore in half.

When I went to Witt during Orientation weekend they bussed first-years all over Springfield to shop for last minute class supplies or decorations for our rooms. This was when I was introduced to the gloriousness of Target, or Tar-zay as my friends started calling it. It was bright and cheerful and colorful and it seemed as though everything from bedding to t-shirts to wrapping paper were designed with a college student in mind. This is where my love affair began. I'll admit that I cheated (albeit briefly) with my two years at BG. The only shopping option was Meijer which combined the loveliness of Target with a full scale grocery store which was especially wonderful at 3am when I was still up writing papers and my RAs had a hankering for craft supplies and spinach dip at the same time. However, when I moved to LA and had a horrible experience my first week at a Wal-Mart, I decided that Target was the only way to go.

I confirmed my love affair tonight. I needed to get some pictures printed and Target didn't offer the options I needed so I reluctantly sent my photos in late last night via the Wal-Mart website. I got a confirmation e-mail saying that they would be ready to go by 11am. Knowing full well that I wouldn't even be awake by 11am I thought it would be perfect. How wrong I was! I called around 4pm and asked if they were ready to be picked up because I wasn't going to drive all the way there if they weren't ready. After being put on hold for six minutes they said that there was a problem with the machine and that they would be ready by 5:30pm. No big deal. I got in my car around 5pm, made it there a little after 5:30pm and was greeted with blank stares and looks of contempt from the workers at the photo lab. They said they never received the order, never received a call from me and that none of them had been printed. I took a very deep breath, asked when they could be ready and then got myself some dinner. I returned an hour later only to be greeted to the same blank stares. One very long story later, I got all 40 photos for free after I pitched a small (and very unlike me) fit after being kept waiting for almost two and a half hours.

This brings me back to my intense love of Target. I love the dollar section which has provided many a prize for McCarthy or staff development supplies for my staff. I love that I have bought both board games and bathing suits within the same shopping trip. I love that people register there for weddings and baby showers. I love, love, LOVE that all of the employees were a different kind of red shirt as their uniform. I love going into a "Target coma" and ending up at the check-out line an hour after you got there not realizing how you stopped in for one item and somehow now have a cart of items that you simply must have. Basically, Target is everything that you could ever want from a shopping experience. Target is everything that Wal-Mart is not. Viva la Target!