Target CEO accuses customers of intimidating employees over LGBTQ-themed products: ‘It makes me angry’

company It was deleted It sold some items from its Pride Month collection in June, which honors lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and claimed workers felt unsafe after a wave of intimidation. Chief Executive Brian Cornell said in an internal memo that the move came after “a difficult day of consideration and decision-making.”

In a memo sent Wednesday and seen by Bloomberg, Cornell told store employees, “What you’ve seen in the last few days has gone far beyond the discomfort you’ve faced in our aisles. It breaks my heart to see what happened,” he told a store employee. . He also thanked the service center staff for “persistence and professionalism, enduring a flood of anger, verbal abuse and threatening phone calls.”

Fueled by America’s culture war, Imbroglio has been consuming Target this week, with some critics slamming the company for its Pride Month collection and others bowing to intimidation in stores and on social media. accused the target of Cornell University said it tried to chart a path between recognizing Pride Month and making changes aimed at prioritizing safety.

“For everyone in the LGBTQIA+ community, one of the most challenging parts of all this is how the adjustments we are making to mitigate these threats to the physical and psychological safety of our teams affect you and yours. It was a matter of contemplating what kind of impact it would have. your Happiness and psychological safety,” he said in a memo earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Target didn’t specify which products it would remove, but one controversial item is swimwear designed for transgender people. Some posts on social media said the swimwear was for children, but Target said it was only available in adult sizes.

Target fell 2.8% as of 2:43 p.m. in New York, its sixth straight drop in five months.