Chased by Target!

This week has not been a good week for me and Target.

In a land that bleeds red bullseyes, news coverage of corporate giveaways, volunteer opportunities, long lines, and job stories pertaining to the big box store routinely come our way. You'd think they'd cooperate well with the media in their home state. Not so. It's been increasingly difficult and frustrating on a basis I've never encountered before.

As a reporter, you can expect to get chased away from property pretty routinely. I've been chased off apartment complexes, church parking lots, retail parking lots, malls, whatever. For you non-reporters, if you are on their property (parking lot) you have to move or you are trespassing. If you are on public property, such as a sidewalk, they have absolutely no authority and can't do much about it....because you are in a public place and shooting a building that all the public can see with their naked eye. But they don't know the difference too often and seldom stop to ask. More often than not, some smart assistant manager hopped up on their own power and Diet Coke will barrel out the door, waving fingers, turning red, and acting like a rude idiot. I daresay they are sometimes nicer to shoplifters. But everybody likes to hate the media. So anyway.

A week ago I did a story on 400 Target volunteers standing on the hot pavement for 6 hours and sorting clothing donations for a local nonprofit. The nonprofit asked us to come. A simple volunteer feel-good story, right? Not this time. We started shooting the story. We interviewed the nonprofit honchos. But when we asked to interview volunteers, some Target manager told us we couldn't. They didn't send anyone out to deal with the media. Okay. Your call.

But it doesn't end there. As we continued to shoot the story, different Target managers would come up to us and verify that we'd hadn't interviewed any volunteers on why they were donating their time. More than once. THEN, we got our wide shots and were packing gear in the car when yet another manager came running a good distance across the parking lot, waving her arms and yelling WAIT! She just wanted to make sure, once again, that we hadn't interviewed any Target employees. Really?!

Fastforward to Today. We are working on a story collecting school supplies, comparing costs, and donating the supplies to a local elementary school. Some local station does the story every year. We shop in the store, we grab some shots of the exterior of the store, and get out. We might stay in the parking lot 5 minutes. Surprisingly, we had no trouble at other stores, like ahem, Walmart.

But as I loaded bags up into our marked news car at the back edge of the parking lot, my photog said, "Uhhh.... Shannon..... I think we're being chased off." I looked up to see MORE THAN TWENTY Target employees advancing toward us like a red army on a mission. They were led by two overzealous managers who started yelling a good 30-40 feet away, "Give us your tape! You can't be here! You have to go through corporate!" They were being all hot-tempered and authorative and I guess they came out to show us who was boss....and brought their posse as a threatening tactic or to show off how awesome they are as assistant managers. I have truly never seen anything like it.

We didn't give them our tape (our property) and I'm pretty sure they don't own that parking lot bc there are lots of stores in that shopping center.... but whatever. We do plan to go back tomorrow and shoot the same shot from the sidewalk.... same shots, about 20 feet back.

But it will be awhile before I voluntarily step foot in a Target or spend any of my money there. I've about had it, and my opinion of their managers has about dropped through the basement.