Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

I almost broke up with Target this weekend. We’ve been teetering on the brink for a while now. When I first started shopping at Target, I was in love with the innovative products, the clean stores, the wide aisles lined with neatly arranged merchandise, and—perhaps most of all—the smiling, happy people sales associates, who were eager to walk to the other side of the store to show me where to find the obscure brand of whatever I happened to be looking for.

But lately, the fairy tale has been much darker. Particularly in the D.C. area, the stores are always a mess, the lines are long, and the people who work there are apathetic at best and more often outright surly. Yesterday, as I tried to maneuver a cart with a broken wheel through a store that looked like a tornado had just blown thrown, I was ready to throw in the towel for good. “If I can’t get it online,” I thought to myself, “it’s not worth having.”

Then . . . I wheeled the cart around the corner and came face to face with the vintage-esque Mountain Dew T shirt I’ve been looking for forever. (Yes, I admit to having an unhealthy relationship with Mountain Dew.) As I snatched up the T shirt, I was suddenly back in love with Target. And as I waited patiently, ninth in line to check out, I admired my new find, and all of the crowds and noise and confusion faded into the background.

It wasn’t until much later that I paused to ask myself: “Am I really that fickle?” Guess so!  Should I be ashamed of myself?