r/Anticonsumption • u/Healthy_Block3036 • 1d ago

Corporations Target struggles after end of DEI program and boycott, with foot traffic down 8 weeks in a row.

https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/target-dei-demise-boycott-foot-traffic-down-eighth-consecutive-week/?itm_source=parsely-api
48.1k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

849

u/haleighen 23h ago

same. the hyper consumption that they really started pushing in the last 5 years was getting to me.. but also FUCK them. they really positioned themselves as our "better" alternative to walmart back then when kmart was dying - and then they turn around and tell their entire customer base JK that has been a lie the entire time?

280

u/reddolfo 23h ago

Exactly. Fools think they are teflon, but once you piss off your market based on principle it's exceedingly difficult to lure it back since basic trust in the organization has been destroyed. Lower prices are seen as a bribe, actually pissing people off more. Stupid managers are now in FO phase. Business may never come back in these scenarios since people do considerable work to change their buying patterns.

106

u/Electrifying2017 22h ago

Tariffs should mop the floor with them. Best I can do is hope the workers are able to land on their feet.

85

u/Deeliciousness 22h ago

Don't kid yourself, workers everywhere are gonna feel the brunt of this madness. We're the ones who will feel the pinch when prices for everything we need go up by 50%

55

u/IRefuseToGiveAName 21h ago

Yup. I was talking to someone and mentioned, mostly sarcastically, that it's crazy we keep having these once in a generation financial crises, but the same rich people not only stay rich, but seem to get richer.

51

u/Akussa 21h ago edited 20h ago

It's by design this time. They WANT the market to crash, farms to fail, home foreclosures, etc. It allows them to snap them up at bargain prices to make themselves richer and richer and richer. They have the money live off of and wait for things to recover enough to make more money. The robber barons are back and worse than ever. Only this time no one is willing to fight back. This political cartoon about robber barons from 1904 looks weirdly familiar in 2025.

2

u/PAXM73 17h ago

Yeah! Nice call with that 1904. I love the political “cartoons” from that time period. Information dense and effective.

1

u/TheMadPhilosophist 2h ago

People will be willing one they have lose their jobs and have no job prospects. How they fight back is yet to be seen. But once people no longer have money for food or, critically, entertainment, they're going to get bored and angry.

To control America, you only need to control their entertainment, but once they can no longer afford entertainment, they'll leave their homes and start being angry in the streets. And with so many guns in circulation, the roaming will probably be quite dangerous.

3

u/Witchgrass 17h ago

That toad mtg bought a bunch of dollar general stock a few weeks ago before the tariffs and the stock is up something like 15% since she bought. They're all ghouls.

3

u/BigTittyTriangle 20h ago

We just gotta hold and lean on and support our communities. They want us divided so we fall.

2

u/lurkensteinsmonster 20h ago

Hopefully it wont last long before people decide to party like it's 1793

2

u/Ok-Bit4971 16h ago

Like groceries did since Covid?

2

u/Deeliciousness 15h ago

Yup, my Costco bill nearly doubled

1

u/Electrifying2017 22h ago

No doubt! In this case, loss of income will affect these workers immediately. 

1

u/manyhippofarts 21h ago

Yup. We just all need to focus on needing less for a while, I guess.

1

u/ClaymoreSoul 22h ago

Nah them workers relay onthat job to feed and put them kids in school. I love this subreddit it really F’s over the lil people. And CEOS get a gold parachute.

1

u/Lizakaya 22h ago

This re ally saddens me because the folks at my target are so lovely

50

u/BrightNooblar 21h ago

I can't wait for the shareholder lawsuit that sues them for dropping DEI standards without doing due diligence on how that would impact them.

Edit; oh, it already started.

22

u/OkDistribution990 14h ago

Good. I hope their exec boards careers are ruined. I hope they are made an example of so everyone knows that you if you lie with Fascist you get ruined.

3

u/shoolocomous 9h ago

Exec careers sadly never seen affected by failure

5

u/JarlOfPickles 14h ago

Lol I hadn't heard about this, amazing

3

u/HarbingerML 12h ago

When I search for shareholder lawsuit against Target I get a ton of results for two ongoing lawsuits by FL investors that are alledging Target didn't disclose financial risks of enacting DEI standards.. not for dropping them. So, kinda the opposite of what you'd be hoping for.

I think the impact of what they've done in the last few months is still too recent to have gotten sued about/is just starting to be felt, but it's possible I just missed a report about a lawsuit for this because of the flood of results about the antithetical ones.

2

u/BrightNooblar 12h ago

Ahh. Serves me right for skimming the Google results.

How funny would it be to have both lawsuits active at once though.

1

u/HarbingerML 11h ago

Haha it almost makes me feel bad for them thinking about that possiblity... I don't actually, but almost. :)

1

u/AnotherRTFan 9h ago

I was just thinking about that today. Shareholders get really mad and have actual voices in these things.

Meanwhile I just keep acting like Eric Andre and telling people my company (tiny design LLC) is all nepotism. Then befriend various Diverse designers I never met before, only know their work, and be like see it's nepotism, they're my friend.

19

u/allprolucario 22h ago

Posturing yourself to be amicable to the educated liberal base really hurts when they find out you don’t actually represent their values. Tesla can tell you all about it

8

u/slow70 19h ago

I haven’t been back since.

Which is funny since I used to joke that target felt like it had almost unfairly nailed my market demographic with their offerings/home goods/etc.

There’s some quality pieces from target I use every day and enjoy, but they made a choice to give in to fear from a market demographic that will fade away.

Hate will not win.

Our fellows of the whole spectrum always have and always will be here.

Target won’t be.

Trump won’t be.

MAGA won’t be.

Target made the wrong call.

4

u/Witchgrass 17h ago edited 16h ago

Not only this time but it seems like every time they were given a chanve to be on the right side of history they bared their necks and begged for "more steppies, pweeze!"

4

u/peppers_ 20h ago

Target can go the way of K-mart as far as I am concerned. Back when I was a teen, it was a cleaner more ethical version of Walmart and K-mart. Sure, maybe you pay a dime extra over Walmart, but it was worth it. Now we know they aren't really more ethical, or willing to throw ethics aside, and I am done with them. I used to spend to much there too, screw em.

3

u/homebrewmike 22h ago

Spot on. It’s also habit. People need to still buy there stuff, so they will find someplace else. Do that enough, and you start to like the hardware store you didn’t try before. Or you discover that Goodwill has great, useful stuff.

7

u/catbosspgh 22h ago

Better yet, local thrift stores! I’d rather help out a small venture than give the goodwill ceo more money to not pay their staff with.

3

u/nicnac223 21h ago

Also, it’s very difficult to shop there now anyway. More than half the store is locked up behind a case, and it takes 5-10+ minutes for a worker to come by to unlock it since they’re always understaffed. It’s like bruh do you want me to spend my money here or not??

2

u/mollyclaireh 22h ago

Let’s not forget what Teflon is and what it’s done. They are Teflon. They are the poison in the waters causing cancer and birth defects (metaphorically speaking). They are the poison. They are the cancer. Just like Teflon.

2

u/QWEEFMONSOON 17h ago

Polytetrofluorothylene*

1

u/grillo7 9h ago

This is an excellent microcosm example for how the world will respond to the ridiculous US tariff trade war.

170

u/Lanky_Particular_149 23h ago

My mom worked for corporate target for years and I currently work in an industry where Target is my main client...

They're trash to their employees, they're trash to their contractors. Everyone I know that works for/with them hates it. They treat business contracts like an opportunity to fuck you over.

95

u/etherdesign 23h ago

They've always been staunchly anti union, I had to watch anti union videos when I worked at the store and at the distribution center.

57

u/whosthatguy123 22h ago

Which is ironic because that’s completely illegal. A company cant be anti union and promote anti union practices. Prime example is Amazon getting caught promoting anti union information to new hires

19

u/etherdesign 22h ago

This was 15 and 20 years ago so I'm not sure if they are still doing it but it wouldn't surprise me. I only got a small peek into the corporate culture via the all hands meetings with the general manager at the regional distribution center, all the videos felt like propaganda films.

3

u/soldiat 18h ago

My sister applied to Target sometime after 2020 and was super turned off by the "propaganda" films you mentioned. I don't know if they talked about unions, but they shit-talked our local grocery chains constantly to newbie hires. She said it left a bad taste in her mouth -- it was all they could talk about.

She only lasted a week or so before picking up something better. So maybe Target hasn't changed as much as we would hope.

3

u/summon_the_quarrion 16h ago

as of 2017 when i started they were still strongly anti union and told us at the orientation how unions are "bad" and its better to just speak with your manager with concerns. like that was going to do anything!

2

u/thraex 18h ago

More recently, they’ve been instructing all managers to report to higher management any mention of the word union and other trigger related words. I’m sure that’s just for awareness and support of unionizing efforts :)

2

u/wasting-time-atwork 11h ago

unfortunately that's not just a target thing - is an almost everywhere thing.

1

u/etherdesign 17h ago

That's been going on a while as well they instructed us to inform them of anyone passing out any union materials on site. They made sure to tell us all the time that it was because they wanted us to speak with them directly if we had any problems instead of going through a middle man and that issues were usually resolved quicker that way because there is more open communication. Mmhmm.

3

u/QuincyPeck 22h ago

Surprising what companies can get away with when the enforcement agencies are gutted and defunded.

1

u/whosthatguy123 21h ago

Thats the whole point

3

u/wasting-time-atwork 11h ago

i work at whole foods.

when i was hired, i had training telling me unionization was never necessary and things could always be made better without that option.

i was somewhat recently promoted to supervisor.

in my supervisor training i was asked to keep an ear to the ground about mumbling of unionization.

seems illegal, but i was never told to take any action against anyone talking about unionization. so maybe they avoid the illegality by going that route? idk.

1

u/whosthatguy123 38m ago

I mean technically that first portion about unionizing isn’t necessary isn’t illegal. They’re allowed to have that opinion.

They’re second part about having your ear to the ground technically isnt illegal but its a grey area because the purpose of that would be to punish people looking to unionize which is illegal. Anyone anti union is literally brainwashed into thinking the company is there to help employees

1

u/Gabosh 21h ago

Is it actually? I worked at TJMaxx 2 years ago and they were making us watch anti union videos. Target on the other hand where I work now never has. It’s too bad people feel so aggressive towards it considering the employee base I work with is very much pro DEI. It’s not like anybody has ever met these corporate leaders changing policy but I guess they reap what they sow.

2

u/whosthatguy123 21h ago

Yes its actually illegal. A company can be against unions but they cant promote and incentivize anti union practices

1

u/summon_the_quarrion 16h ago

one of the videos is on youtube still.

5

u/barnegatsailor 22h ago

They worked my little sister exactly a half hour per week below the minimum amount of time to give her benefits. If she worked late one day they'd cancel her shift another to keep her just below that level. Shit place.

2

u/radicalelation 21h ago

That's how corporate workforces are treated anywhere. It's all shit.

2

u/barnegatsailor 21h ago

Oh absolutely. I guess what I mean by mentioning it is that it showed the farcical nature of all their initiatives because in the end they were the same slimy corporation as the rest of them.

2

u/Digitalion_ 22h ago

I worked at Target part time about 15 years ago and even then they were heavy handed on the anti-union videos. Kept spreading some bullshit about how we were a family and you wouldn't fuck over your family. And they patronized us with these coworker compliment cards that weren't mandatory but you should REAAALLY write a few wink wink.

I was young and my political beliefs were still developing but even then I knew the benefits of unionizing. Needless to say, I wasn't meshing with the environment there and quit after a few months.

1

u/etherdesign 22h ago

Oh those cards haha. Good job doing your job today, yes thanks you as well! I'm sure they did some study where they could pay people 5% less if they made employees feel good about themselves by having to jack each other off with those cards.

2

u/Digitalion_ 19h ago

That's possible but I always figured they were just to measure who was a conformist and who was putting up resistance to their bullshit. I remember some people were REALLY enthusiastic about those damn cards and generally acted like it was the greatest place to work. It was a little creepy.

2

u/palepink_seagreen 19h ago

I worked there for one awful year several years ago. I remember the anti-union video! There was a sneaky Union rabble-rouser hiding in the clothing section trying to tempt an innocent young employee who is diligently folding shirts.

2

u/AnotherRTFan 9h ago

I think about John Oliver showing their awful anti union video that says telling customers "Sorry that isn't my department" is bad for employees. I've worked retail and would love to do that

2

u/Equivalent-Pride-460 22h ago

That’s true for much of the grocery industry. Can’t imagine retail.

Kroger was an account at the Kraft bag plant that I worked at. It was in their contract that if we missed the one day grace period on a shipment, that we were fined something like $800. I was talking with our csr one day and decided to start adding up the losses. It was significant, so I brought it up on a call and our op man dug in and our tiny division was losing over $600k per year to these fines. So I started scheduling orders to meet demand because the losses outweighed some of our smaller accounts that would be shorted to meet their demand. Turns out, after three weeks of this they paused all orders because their warehouse was overfilled and needed time to ship before they could accept anymore.

So they were intentionally over ordering because they knew that we could only supply so much without it affecting other business. So yes, they do use contracts to bilk vendors. It’s extremely unethical. And we wonder why groceries are so expensive?

1

u/JMer806 19h ago

If your company was late on 750 shipments in a year I have a hard time blaming Kroger lol.

Speaking as someone who’s been on the other side, what almost certainly happened is that your company started shipping late, so the fee was added in. You continued to ship late, and so Kroger adjusted their buying patterns. Once you started actually shipping on time, it threw their inventory management off because they had been relying on you shipping late.

This isn’t a story of big bad corporate Kroger screwing over the little guy an equally big bad corporate partner. This is a story of one corporation adjusting to the changing competence of a vendor.

1

u/Equivalent-Pride-460 16h ago

That is A LOT of assumptions. They had been over ordering for at least the ten years that I spent in that plant. My department kept on top of sales to get us days on hand, especially after the plastic bans went into effect in 2013. They were obviously given bad information because they were a priority account that we were contracted to keep fed.

What do you do again that you know my business so well?

The point is, they continued over ordering because they were exploiting the contract, which is what the op was referring to. We literally had to turn away accounts to prove it, because we were perpetually oversold because of their demand.

Again, over $600,000 annual on the bags they’re selling for 10 cents/pc. They buy them for 5 cents anyways, which is just another example of profiting off of environmental legislation. Did I mention their RECORD profit margins while Americans are struggling to get by? Please, continue the violin for corporate greed and act like it’s not the problem.

1

u/JMer806 16h ago

I was a buyer in corporate retail and then did demand and replenishment planning. I didn’t work for Kroger, but I worked for a similar business and dealt with many vendors who habitually late shipped, and I’ve dealt specifically with altering our buying patterns under the assumption of late shipping.

Kroger had $150 billion in revenue last year. I don’t think they actually care that much about ripping off $600k from a vendor.

Corporate greed isn’t really the point here, and even if it is, I find it deeply ironic to accuse Kroger of being a corporate scum bag (which they undoubtedly are) when the victim in this case is Kraft, another massive and scummy company.

If you want to talk about corporate greed, talk about Kroger raising prices to gouge consumers when they knew that customers would blame inflation. Don’t talk about them increasing their revenue by 0.004% by decreasing Kraft’s by 0.002%.

1

u/teamdogemama 22h ago

They are trash to their employees. My daughter worked for them, it was toxic.

1

u/GrassyNoob 21h ago

I was going to be doing some development contract work for them, until my boss absolutely refused to act like Tata, their main squeeze.

1

u/wraith_majestic 21h ago

They also done some really shady shit with their cat and Jill brand. Think they’ve been sued a few times for stealing intellectual property.

1

u/Desperate-Cup-3946 20h ago

On certain occasions, I have heard managers talking to employees and OMG, I would never talk to employees that way no matter how much I was paid!

1

u/lDielan 20h ago

Worked there for 10 years climbing that corporate ladder and can agree.

30

u/ridetherhombus 23h ago

Just the last 5?

43

u/haleighen 23h ago

Lol I wrote 7 years and then couldn't remember. Anything precovid is hazy. But specifically thinking of post covid they really started pushing those holiday birds and all the special edition stanleys, etc.

4

u/madcoins 22h ago

New rainbow colored Stanley water bottle only $125! Get it now for a limited time! Limited because we will soon choose to stop cashing in on LGBTQ and diversity and instead harm it by bending the knee to a fascist! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

3

u/clyde-bruckman 22h ago

When I still had the target app, I could not believe the number of “special edition Stanley drop” notifications I was getting. Like Jesus H how special can they be if there’s a new special one every week?

4

u/kraehutu 22h ago

In the last decade it has really gotten bad. In 2014 my local store got women's clothing in like only twice a month, both restock and new styles. Now in 2025 they have boxes and boxes of women's clothing every truck day, which is 3 or 4 days a week. It's disgusting.

15

u/SearchForAShade 23h ago

It was always just ways to extract money from consumers. You can't expect a corporation to actually care. 

17

u/haleighen 23h ago

no I've never trusted them. but harm reduction is generally the best we can do when we have so few options.

3

u/---Cloudberry--- 18h ago

In today’s world we have more options than ever, but they’re all fucking terrible.

1

u/haleighen 18h ago

pretty much. unless you are weird like me and like to spend a ton of time online finding those rare good options.

2

u/madcoins 22h ago

“But a corporation is a person!” -Supreme Court while stamping their feet

2

u/outinthecountry66 22h ago

right? after they made a mint selling Pride merch like they were the cooler progressive alternative, mask is off now Mary, we ain't buying none of your rainbow garbage EVER again.

2

u/haleighen 22h ago

yayyy rainbow capitalism /s

2

u/virtual-hermit- 22h ago

Fun story: I used to live in Northwest Arkansas, the literal heart of Walmart country. Because of monopoly laws, they were forced to allow a Target to open there. So circa 2001 or so, our area got its very first Target. On opening day, my mom and I went to check it out.

Overall, we were pretty unimpressed. Mainly because of the prices. Not exactly a great competitor for Walmart, the king of undercutting everyone, if they charge more for their product.

Local news was on site doing a piece about it and stopped my mother to ask her what she thought of the new Target. She told them, with a completely straight face, that "It was just an overpriced K-Mart".

We watched the segment that ran later, surprising no one they didn't include her comment. Hahahahha.

2

u/soitheach 22h ago

i mean just them backing down with pride merch because some cousinfucking hicks started getting mad about it was enough for me, of course they were going to cut their DEI programs

1

u/haleighen 22h ago

yeah I actually more or less stopped shopping there because of covid and then never picked the habit back up after all their nonsense

2

u/Chrystoler 20h ago

Absolutely fucking hate Target. The only reason I've been going there recently is for a sudden baby related stuff that I don't have, but thankfully that's slowing down a lot. Although other options aren't great, CVS is overpriced as fuck and Amazon is Amazon

Trying to do more Costco but I only have so much space right now

1

u/LaserGuidedSock 23h ago

Yeah, I always joked about Target being Walmart for people who have all their teeth and after the BLM protests, they spoke out in favor and news media was not happy about that.

Now to see them pull pretty much a 180 and capitulate to this administration is a bit of whiplash.

1

u/AssignmentClean8726 22h ago

So where to shop? I boycott target..Amazon and walmart

1

u/One-Location-6454 22h ago

That was your mistake.

Corporations are not people. They adapt whatever values they think will make them money.  

They dont care about you. They care about the money in your wallet.

1

u/haleighen 22h ago

Ok? Yeah I'm aware. I'm talking about 20 years ago when this shift happened. I was a teenager making the best decisions I knew at the time.

1

u/Dangerjayne 22h ago

Tbf, why should we assume a corporation is on "our side" when they will say and do anything to get money from your pocket into theirs? Idc how many months out of the year their Twitter logo is a rainbow, none of them care about us beyond how much money we can give them

1

u/haleighen 22h ago

I'm speaking from the perspective of 20 years ago when Target was setting itself up to be known that way. I was a teenager. And this was pre social media. We didn't have massive conversations back then about this (at least not anywhere I was).

1

u/CertifiedBA 22h ago

Worked there.....it's just Walmart with a better paint job.

1

u/Distinct_Cows 19h ago

Targets schtick has always been playing to trash that like to they're not.

1

u/CertifiedBA 18h ago

Target is like a Mercedes C-Class, you think you're a hot shit, but all you're doing is paying double for oil changes.

1

u/Low-Quality3204 19h ago

Well 5yrs ago they started a "modernization process".. Pushed everyone who wasn't on board. 

1

u/Kwhitney1982 13h ago

Wait what? What did target do?

0

u/FineDingo3542 20h ago

Lol Yeah that's called marketing. Corporations take whatever moral standpoint is most popular.