The Watching and The Watched: A Tale of Target Runs Gone Wrong
The Prices and the Paranoia are Finally Lower.
In the American lexicon, there are few phrases as universally understood as "Target Run." It's not just shopping - it's a ritual, a sanctuary for the modern mother, that revered super-consumer. A moment of reprieve after school drop-off. A simple pleasure in the chaos of child-rearing.
Or at least, it was.
The Three-Strike Rule
There I was, on a quiet Monday morning, wandering the near-empty aisles of my local Target store after dropping the kiddo off at school. A moment of peace. A chance to breathe. Until I noticed him.
First encounter: Housewares. I was examining throw pillows when I caught him in my peripheral vision, pretending to browse kitchen gadgets while stealing glances in my direction.
Second encounter: Beauty products. This time, there was no mistaking it. The same man, now feigning interest in facial cleansers, positioned perfectly to maintain line of sight.
Third encounter: Children's clothing. At this point, my years of binge-watching "Monk" kicked in. I've always prided myself on being a master observer of human behavior, and the pattern was undeniable. This wasn’t an organ-snatching, human trafficking crime about to happen. And it certainly wasn't a coincidence. This was surveillance.
By the third encounter, I felt genuinely threatened. So threatened, in fact, that I started taking photos of my pursuer - evidence I later submitted with my complaint email. I found myself mentally calculating escape routes, gripping my red plastic shopping cart with white knuckles, prepared to ram it into his tattooed shins and scream for my life if necessary. What should have been a peaceful morning errand had transformed into a fight-or-flight scenario.
In a near-empty store, running into the same person three times isn't happenstance - it's policy. Store security had deemed me suspicious, and suddenly, my sanctuary had transformed into a place where I was the presumed criminal.
The Betrayal of the Primal Consumer
Let's be clear about something: mothers with children are the backbone of retail. We're the ones who keep the lights on at these establishments. Our weekly (sometimes daily) pilgrimages to these consumer temples should earn us VIP treatment, not suspicion.
There's something profoundly insulting about being followed around a store when you're the demographic they should be courting, not criminalizing. It speaks to a fundamental betrayal of the unspoken covenant between retailer and consumer.
Target, with its bright lights and red bullseye, has long positioned itself as the slightly-more-upscale alternative to Walmart. The place where overwhelmed moms can feel good about their purchasing decisions. But what happens when that same establishment treats you like a potential shoplifter? The illusion shatters.
And here's the kicker: They didn't even deny it.
I sent two separate emails about the matter - to different store locations in the same metro area - and received eerily similar responses. The first came with the cheerful subject line "Thank you for your feedback. Can we connect?" The body read:
Hi
,My name is [Team Leader Named Mary], and I'm the Service and Engagement Team Leader at the Happy Park Target store. Thank you for sharing your experience. I sincerely appreciate your feedback about your recent visit to our Happy Park store. I am glad to hear that your interaction at the registers was good and our staff was friendly! I am, however very sorry that you were being followed around the store by our asset protection team. I will definitely forward this to the ETL so he can look into it. We value you as our guest, and we do appreciate your feedback, it helps us to know how we can do better, and what we are doing right, so thank you for letting us know! I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday and I look forward to seeing you soon on your next Target Run!
Thank you again, [Team Leader Named Mary] Service and Engagement Team Leader
No denial. No "there must be some misunderstanding." Just a casual acknowledgment that yes, their "asset protection team" was indeed following me around the store - and an invitation to return for another Target Run, as if I'd simply complained about a long checkout line rather than being treated like a criminal.
Like, literally, the only criminal thing anyone could literally accuse me of is my beloved Birkenstock sandals. The Mayari style are my favorite and I have 4 pairs. Yes, they’re ugly as fuck. But after three years of babywearing the same not-so-tiny human, my back hurts.
The fact that it happened, that I let it happen, yet again four months later at a different store in the same metro was not lost on me. The title of the second email was “Thank you for your feedback.” It was followed by an establishment of Enrique’s authority via greeting - he’s also a Service and Engagement Team Leader, bless his heart. And then, “I want to thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention, and would like to apologize that you felt you were being profiled and followed. I would be open to discussing this further with you in hopes of being able to get more details about the situation. If you’re open to further discussing how we might do that, please reply to this email. You are also welcome to call me at [insert generic store phone number leading to the phone tree here]“.
I didn’t want to discuss it further. You got the free feedback. The rest of it is commissionable. On Tuesdays through Tuesdays, when I’m not plotting how to lift delicious granola bars from Target, I am an actual consultant, and folks pay me for my feedback. So no, Enrique, I do not desire to call the store to discuss it further. My people have given enough.
And then, when I least expected it, there was a third incident. I didn’t waste my time submitting a complaint. (Corporations should know that you’re losing a customer when they cannot be bothered to submit feedback. If I whine or fill out a survey, it’s because I care.) I switched to pick-up service and refused to enter their physical stores for over a year. I should have quit Target altogether after that, like a shitty president.
The Economic Exodus
Which brings me to my next point: the economic inversion happening right before our eyes.
Since then, we have relocated to Central America, and in a twist that would make economists raise their eyebrows, have discovered that many goods will now be significantly cheaper there than in North America. The irony isn't lost on me that soon, people might be visiting me for their "Target runs" - a complete reversal of the traditional cross-border shopping experience.
It reminds me of those currency-advantaged trips people take when their home economy tanks. When they devalue the dollar, it costs like 27,800 currency-name-after-a-colonizer-coinbits for a Coca-Cola. Like catching a cheap flight to Margarita Island from your Caribbean island paradise in the eighties to go shopping for clothes because OPEC reigned supreme and everyone knew the price of a barrel, but not the price of the US dollar that day until the newspaper got printed, and the import taxes (aka in 2025 as tariffs) were suffocating. We only had imported apples and grapes at Christmas time, and they smelled divine. Except now, Americans might be the ones seeking retail therapy abroad. Coming to scratch-and-sniff our mangos.
Rebranding the Run
Perhaps it's time to rebrand this whole concept of the "Target Run" anyway. When a ritual becomes tainted, we need new rituals. New sanctuaries. New spaces where we're not presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Maybe my new version will be "Mercado Mornings" through local Panamanian shops, where the aisles are clean, brightly lit and well-stocked (like Macy’s three decades ago and not the bargain basement dump it is today), the sales staff acknowledge you but never, ever hover, and the proprietors greet you with a smile instead of suspicious side-eye, not moving from the checkout stand to shadow your movements all over the store. A place where the experience of shopping feels personal rather than persecutory.
The Watching and The Watched
There's something deeply unsettling about realizing you're being watched. It transforms an ordinary experience into something sinister. Your movements become self-conscious, and your browsing becomes less carefree. You become acutely aware of how you might appear to the watcher.
Is this how I want to spend the precious hours while my child is at school? Under surveillance? Being made to feel like an outsider in a space designed supposedly for people like me?
The answer is a resounding no.
And I can't help but wonder about the uncomfortable truth lurking beneath the surface. None of my white American (distinguishing from my white friends of other nationalities) friends have ever reported being followed in Target. Not once. When I've shared my experience with them, their reactions ranged from shocked disbelief “are you sure…?” to uncomfortable recognition of a pattern they've been privileged enough to never experience themselves.
Let's call it what it might be: racial profiling dressed up as "asset protection." The reality is that retail theft occurs across all demographics - wealthy, middle-class, and low-income individuals alike. Studies consistently show that shoplifting isn't limited to any economic class, age group, or racial background. Yet Target's security deemed me, a mother shopping after school drop-off, suspicious enough to warrant surveillance, which speaks volumes about the stereotypes and biases that inform their security protocols. It's a sobering reminder that even in spaces marketed to families, mothers, and everyday consumers, some of us are still viewed through a lens of suspicion based on how we look, regardless of our actual behavior or intent. And we all know how such prejudgment can escalate quickly and tragically.
The Last Target Run
So here's to my final Target run for a while - or rather, a run FROM Target. A farewell to overpriced, freshly tariffed home goods and suspicion-laden aisles. (I don’t even want to talk about TJ Maxx, where they don’t pretend to be following you. I quit that one outright.) We are heading back to Panama for a while - to watch and wait. Like the rest of the world, we will be watching America and waiting to see if it comes to its senses from whatever this is. (I called it a coup, but I might have been hangry that day.)
The bullseye in my rearview mirror serves as a reminder: sometimes the target isn't worth aiming for after all.
To Target corporate: When your customer service team responds to complaints about surveillance with an invitation to come back for another "Target Run," you might want to reconsider your training protocols. When the same thing happens at another location, it's not an isolated incident - it's a pattern. And your cheerful non-denial only confirms what we already know: the watching is by design. You've lost not just a customer but a believer in what Target once represented. And based on recent events, I don't think I'm the only one.
To America: We seem to be sliding steadily into a surveillance state where watching has become normalized. From retail stores tracking our movements to cameras on every corner, we're becoming a nation where some are always watched while others walk freely, where suspicion falls unevenly across our diverse population. The promise of equality feels increasingly hollow when the presumption of innocence is distributed based on appearance rather than actions. Until we collectively reject this unequal scrutiny and demand accountability from institutions both public and private, we continue down a troubling path. Under His Eye.
This article reflects personal experiences and perspectives. Have you ever felt unfairly targeted while shopping? Share your experiences in the comments below.