Target, the retail store giant, which had enjoyed a favored status among Black shoppers because of its practice of helping advance the careers of Black entrepreneurs, has been largely avoided by Black shoppers this year after announcing that it was ending its vaunted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Now that its shares have plummeted more than 30% year to date, what is the beleaguered brand doing? Ordering its employees to smile.
You laugh, but the musicians kept playing while the Titanic sank, right?
How embarrassing for a company named “Target” to miss the mark so badly.
USA TODAY, after speaking to Target brass Monday, reported that the store’s new 10-4 policy “requires employees who are within 10 feet of customers to smile, make eye contact, wave, and use friendly, approachable, and welcoming body language” and employees within 4 feet of customers “must personally greet the guests, smile, and initiate a warm, helpful interaction.”
“We know when our guests are greeted, feel welcomed and get the help they need that translates to guest love and loyalty,” Adrienne Costanzo, Target’s executive vice president and chief stores officer told the newspaper in a statement.
How embarrassing for a company named “Target” to miss the mark so badly. The Minneapolis-based retailer isn’t suffering lower sales because its employees have a reputation for being rude or unhelpful to customers. Sales are suffering, at least in large part, because the company disrespected a significant portion of its customer base. “Until you do right by me,” Celie tells Mister at the end of the movie “The Color Purple,” “everything you even think about gonna fail.”
Before he stepped aside in the summer, then-Target CEO Brian Cornell penned an op-ed for Essence Magazine, in which he claimed, “This year, we will complete our commitment to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses, more than doubling the number of Black-owned brands on our shelves. Through our Accelerator program, we’ve supported more than 500 entrepreneurs, helping them scale and succeed in retail.” Cornell also wrote that Target was “completing our $100 million investment in Black-led community organizations.”
But the person who spearheaded the Target boycott — the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of Georgia’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church — told PBS that Target hadn’t provided any documentation to support its claims and that it would “continue to hemorrhage” if it didn’t. Between January, when Target announced that it was ending its DEI policies, and the Aug. 22 publication of that PBS interview, Target’s stock price had fallen 28%. Since Bryant’s prediction that Target would “continue to hemorrhage,” the stock price has fallen another 7%.
The likelihood that the smile policy won’t stanch Target’s bleeding out, isn’t the biggest problem.
But the likelihood that the smile policy won’t stanch Target’s bleeding out isn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that when Target employees aren’t happy, their employer will be forcing them to project happiness — and giving certain meddlesome customers a new reason to tattle on employees who don’t smile.
“When a customer is unhappy, it really makes your heart race, that was my experience,” Allison Wiltz told me Wednesday. She’s a psychology Ph.D. and freelance journalist who previously worked as a server, as a bartender and as a manager in restaurants. “There are some people who can be a little mean to service workers, and so it does kind of give the customer another tool to say, ‘Well, you know what? I’m about to make your day even worse.’”
An op-ed Wiltz wrote in 2022, “Never Make Black Employees Smile At White Customers,” addresses a history of Black employees being forced to smilingly absorb racist abuse. She also points out in that piece the sexist expectation, particularly from men, that women smile at work.
During our conversation Wednesday, Wiltz pointed out that a 2019 report from the National Center for Health Statistics found that in 2019, “18.5% of adults had symptoms of depression that were either mild, moderate, or severe in the past 2 weeks.” Wiltz is right when she says, “They shouldn’t lose the ability to make money or provide for themselves or their families just because they can’t muster up a smile.” Also in 2019, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper called “Perceiving happiness in an intergroup context,” which Wiltz summarized as finding that “white people struggle to identify genuine smiles on Black people’s faces.” A consequence of Target’s new policy, then, could be, Wiltz said, that “white managers may actually think that a Black person isn’t trying to be genuine and smile when they really are.” Neither customers nor managers are wrong to appreciate good customer service, but mandating smiles isn’t the way to accomplish that. “I had a friend cry before because of this,” Wiltz said. “She was working at the restaurant, and this woman was trying to make her smile.” As tears began to form in her friend’s eyes, Wiltz said, the customer continued to complain, “She’s not smiling at me!” “I said, ‘Ma’am, has she done anything wrong? Has she brought you everything you need? Did she say anything disrespectful?’” The woman couldn’t point to any problems with the service. “And I said, ‘We’re just gonna have to let it go. I’ll wait on you from here on, but I’m not about to make her smile.’”
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
