Today I am taking a break from education to give a bit of a rant. This past Sunday, I was sitting in the Target parking lot at 7:55 a.m. on a gray and rainy morning. I felt really ridiculous waiting for the chain store to open their doors at 8, but I was on an unfortunate mission imposed by a small group of people that have ruined the common sense once held by many.
Let me explain:
About six years ago, Target began creating collaborations with well-known designers. These clothes and accessories keep the designer’s aesthetic but are made from different materials to make them affordable for the mass consumer market (…think polyester instead of silk) and they are only available for a limited time. As a high schooler, these collections could not have been any more exciting for me. I felt like I could be the fashionista I dreamed of being on my part-time job salary. It was a tradition for me to get up really early and be ready for the store to open so that I could have the first pick of what I wanted. I would say that 98% of the time I was the only person there and the cashiers looked at me like I was crazy, but I had so much fun feeling like I was ahead of some trend.
Then came Missoni.
To any person who reads a lot of news or shops at Target, the name may sound familiar to you. Missoni was released in the fall of 2011 and was promoted as Target’s largest collaboration to date. I had stopped bothering to go early to Target when I got into college because I felt I had to grow up and I didn’t have time to do silly things. After I got out of class in the early afternoon of the launch date, I decided to go to my local store and just see what they had from the ads that were in all of my magazines. When I got to the store, the racks were empty. The only trace of merchandise was in the children’s section. Confused, I went home and looked online only to find that Target’s website had been crashed. Stories began to come onto the Internet of people buying THOUSANDS of dollars worth of merchandise and having to use multiple cards as soon as the store opened. Over the next few weeks, these items began to surface on eBay for nine and ten times the retail price… and people were actually buying them. It was incredibly confused and disheartened that someone would pay ridiculous prices for Target quality items.
Back to present day.
Sunday was the launch of the Jason Wu for Target collection. There were a couple of tops that I thought would be perfect for school and so I decided to try and get them. When the lights cut on at 8, I got out of my car and walked into the building. There were already people who had run from the other door snatching up everything they could. One woman took everything in my size and I was left to grab only one thing I was even remotely interested in because it would fit. Women were on the phone with their friends at other stores coordinating who had what and looking at lists of clothes and sizes they needed to grab. It was insane and I honestly felt sick about what was happening. This is what eBay has done. It has taken away the joy of the people who want to enjoy the clothes and given it to the scalpers who are making a profit by preying on the fact that the items are limited edition.
The situation made me stand back and think about how sad it is that we are being oppressed not only by corporations, but also by our peers. I would never ever buy a Target item off of eBay and I just want others to feel the same way. I am tired of being taken advantage of by vultures that care nothing about me as a person. I think the world needs a large dose of kindness and hospitality. If we don't look out for each other, who will?
In conclusion, I’ll leave this post with a video of the Jason Wu launch in Miami where two people ran in and cleared every single rack before any of the people who waited in line could make purchases:
Moral is: If we were all considerate, we would have a much kinder and happier place to live.
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