Disclaimer. I'm not bashing Target as a corporation, as I know not all Target's are this way, and some have amazing leadership and team work. This is my experience at my Target. I need to let if off my chest, and to tell you all that if you're in a situation that's abusive in anyway then don't subject yourself to that. People can tell you all day long to grin and bear, but nothing is worth losing your sanity, happiness and peace of mind over. And you deserve more than that.

I started working at Target in July of 2016. I was excited because it paid so well and I was inbetween jobs and needed one, and everything seemed so... nice.

I was quickly proven wrong.

Throughout the months that I worked there, I met some great team members who were amazing, but the leadership at this store were absolutely terrible. 

I'm not an emotional person, but I am prone to anxiety. I've had depression since I was little and anxiety that was manageable before. This job made it unmanageable.

The first incident happened when all of the leadership teamed ganged up on me at once and told me I was "too slow" when I had literally only been working there maybe a week or two. And, they did it in front of the entire store. Stuff like should happen behind closed doors, not in a way to subject someone to humiliation, because that's not how you motivate someone. That's what made me start dreading going to work every day.

Time passed, my (amazing) team members stood up for me because they knew how hard I worked and knew they were only saying that because they wanted to motivate me to reach my "maximum" potential. 

After that, all but one team lead let off of me. Realized I worked hard and depended on me. But, that one continued to bash me in front of customers and coworkers almost every single shift, and she would always end what she said with "I'm not trying to make you feel bad."

Lies.

I wasn't the only team member who felt this way. I wasn't the only one who had been bashed by her, and she had to get talked to multiple times by our store manager and had many team members call corporate on her, but to no avail. 

I started having anxiety attacks just from the sound of her voice. 

She was mentally abusive to not only me, but other team members, despite how hard any of us work, and was the reason for many of us quitting.

Recently hours had been cut, which means that less people could work, yet they still expected us to get the workload of three people done (which almost impossible with those three people) done with one, and if we didn't we got written up or "talked to" and threatened to be fired.

It would go from them giving me 18 hours to over 40 the next week, not a single day off, and then if I told them I was tired, they would tell me anything I said wasn't valid and I needed to it up.

The last day I was there, that woman who gave me anxiety attacks every single day she was there basically called me stupid for misunderstanding something she said (when in reality she didn't listen to what I originally told her, so when she gave me a reply I was applying it to that and not what she was talking about) and then said "well, that's okay. We don't need you. It's fine." and then proceeded to ignore everything I had to tell her the entire day.

And then, an incident happened with a customer right before I left. I was having a conversation with my coworker about a sale sign, and someone hard part of what we said and were upset about it, started yelling at us, and then when up front to tell the manager that we cursed them out, called them vulgar insults and said that all of our customers are liars.

And my manager - who should have talked to us before doing anything, and got ALL sides of the story - took their word for it, did not let us explain anything and then wrote us up and said that the possibility of getting fired is on the table, all because... and these were his exact words "they left without purchasing a single thing".

We were verbally abused by those people, but did he listen to us? No? Did he check with other people who had witnessed the entire thing? No.

He valued the store making money more than us and told us that when we come back to work, we would have "a talk" and by talk he meant that he may or may not fire us.

I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't take getting treated like a slave and belittled every day, and letting my anxiety kill me and make me hate being alive even more than I already do.

I have a small job lined up that won't pay a ton but will hold me over while I look for another one.

I'm sorry for all of my dark posts recently. It's just been a dark time in the last few weeks.