So Long, Farewell…

A lot of familiar places shut down last year. The most shocking to me was the abrupt closure of all Sprinkles cupcake stores on December 31. To be honest though, I hadn’t patronized them much lately ~ as I age, I find my tummy gets unhappy with fat bombs. Delicious no question, but Sprinkles were super high in fat. It may not even be an aging thing, as even in my 30s I would get nauseated from sour cream based dips and too many nuts or seeds. That reminds me of the time in high school when I pigged out on sunflower seeds and was in so much abdominal pain my mommy worried that I had appendicitis. Nope, TG, just the inability to digest a mountain of fat all at once. Anyway, I don’t know how well other cupcakeries are doing, but I haven’t been to them in years.

JoAnn Fabrics closed all locations last year, but this was not surprising. Whenever I ventured into one, there were hardly any other customers. Who even has time to sew? And if you want craft supplies, Michaels has a much wider selection. I browse there for creative and fun kids’ gifts too. 

Party City was a great place for themed party supplies, balloons, wrapping paper, goodie bag items, etc. They also had a nice variety of costumes and accessories for Halloween. All gone.

Forever 21 was a mall staple for my daughters and me. We bought tons of stuff there back in the day. No more. Claire’s, another mall shop the teen girls liked for junky jewelry and such, is teetering on the edge of failure as we speak.

Bunches of other retailers and restaurants closed some of their locations due to (I assume) over-saturation. We don’t need a Starbucks and a CVS and a 7-11 on every corner of every city. It was becoming ridiculous. My gas company is asking for permish to shutter their physical locations, since no one wanders in these days to pay their bill in cash.

And now we come to Target. When the right howled at Target for “Happy Holidays” and transgender swimsuits, I shrugged. Doesn’t affect me. When the left howled at Target for dumping DEI practices, I shrugged. Doesn’t affect me. All the while, I had a warm spot for them in my heart because Target Bank was the only place I had credit when my ex-husband cut me off. But now my heart has turned to ice. 

Recently, I had to deal with an ID theft scam, and I had to open a new checking account and update all my auto-payments. My cable company was all hey no problem! However you want to give us money, we’ll take it. Gas company? Same. Electric company was a little more cautious, but finally said yeah we are cool with your new account. Even the bank that holds my mortgage, after sending a little test to my new account, announced yep we’re good. But Target? Omg no! We won’t accept this new account. It’s way too scary, so you have to pay by phone. WTF? I paid by phone and used the exact same information they rejected online. Went right through. I tried again online for this month’s payment. Nope! 

I am so enraged. After all these years of being a great customer, they treat me like crap now, including when I called customer service and they were incredibly rude. After this payment, I am done with them! I will save their card in case of an emergency (like if my main card gets stolen), but I won’t shop there again. It’s laziness anyway to place orders for pickup when I should get off my butt and go into a regular grocery store… besides, their produce sucks. All the household goods I’ve been getting from them can be obtained on Amazon for less, yada.

Reader, I deleted the Target app. Goodbye.