Please tell me that what happened to me today isn't the norm across Target stores

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A strange rule in my store is that you have to call in each day, even when they know.

The HR person sounds inexperienced.

If I read correctly, you were fired. If I misread, sorry. But the firing came later. I presume HR was giving a warning on attendance but it escalated.

So sorry about your loss.
 
Who else ITT has lost a loved one to cancer, anyway? I have, and let me tell you, the grief begins way sooner than the memorial service.

It's one hell of a trial that can cause even the most "harden the fuck up" types to shed a few tears. It can drag out for years and in the back of your mind you can often just "know" that it's likely going to be fatal even with treatment. You can buy a mansion in Hollywood with what you'll be paying for the treatments that may not even work. Then the doctor tells you and your family that the cancer has returned for the 20th and final time. That means hospice care, a real throwback to the 19th century when a TB diagnosis ("consumption") meant all you could do is update your last will and then climb into bed to await your fate with a bottle of laudanum.

The drama is real. Relatives are stressed and grieving. Money money money money money 24/7. Going through even a few months of that is enough to make most people swing a fist or threaten to. Get over it.
Lost my mom to cancer after a four-year battle back in 2016. By the time she passed I had probably done the bulk of my grieving, but it still sucked hard. I wouldn't wish watching a loved one go through that on my worst enemy. Let me tell you, seeing hospice care up close was a real eye-opener. Still not sure how I feel about it all.

And as much as I may have complained about my old company, I have to say they were wonderful to me. I called my immediate supervisor to let her know and she was extremely sympathetic and understanding. I was about to take some vacation time in a couple of days anyway, so time off wasn't an issue, plus I believe I received bereavement pay as well. Even the douchebag tool of a store manager was great about everything.
 
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First of all, I’m very sorry to hear about your mother. May she RIP.
Now, I am absolutely disgusted at what I just read. What a cruel, disgusting your ETL HR is. I lost a parent a month ago due to a car accident and every single lead and leader at my store told me to take off as much time as I need and not even think about target. Your etl hr is literally a cold stone bitch as someone stated above. I want you to know that the treatment you got was unethical. It doesn’t matter if you’re within your 90 days or not. Extreme circumstances like those are suppose to ALWAYS be EXCUSED. Please call the target ethics hotline immediately if you haven’t so already. What your etl hr doing is not under company standards. They are simply not allowed to even give you a “warning” about your attendance when it the cause of it has to do with a DEATH in your immediate family.
 
I recently lost my mother, to a disease that normally isn't fatal. I thought it a delusion, I cried, cried some more, went to work because I knew I would just sit in my computer chair and just wither away, was a zombie, and at one point slammed my fist repeatedly into a metal door to hurt myself and when my husband pulled me away I screamed I wanted to cut myself.

But never once did I threaten an attack at anyone, not even asshole guests.

People grieve differently, but grief is not an excuse for verbal assault/threatening harm. We hurt, but we still have a sense of right and wrong.
 
You're lucky to still have a job at all after threatening to assault an employee.



That's not how this works at all. Do they still give out the employee handbook and does it still cover "how to call out"?

They are lucky to have left the job so soon instead of putting years into the store and have this happen to them.

A good amount of people including myself would have threatened or at least cursed out this HR under the circumstances, the HRs treatment of them was a form of emotional abuse. intentional or not on their part the result is still the same. Hopefully this situation has made them learn their lesson for the next grieving employee who walks into their office and this won't happen to someone else.

Also being the employee was new it's normal to assume a higher up knows what they are doing when they say they will take care of the days you are taking off, read the handbook sure but it was perfectly reasonable for them to take their word that it would be handled.
 
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A good amount of people including myself would have threatened this HR under the circumstances,
Then a good number of people including you are just shy of criminals. Remember threatening is assault, a crime. Battery is when you touch, but assault is saying the words. It is never appropriate to threaten harm to someone unless self defense laws are at play.
 
Then a good number of people including you are just shy of criminals. Remember threatening is assault, a crime. Battery is when you touch, but assault is saying the words. It is never appropriate to threaten harm to someone unless self defense laws are at play.
It is in self defense to threaten when you are being verbally abused.
 
Wow sorry for your lost. Target does not care about anyone unless it's a dollar sign. Target is not the last job on earth and it's not worth losing your cool. From previous experience of being done wrong by a job, just know theres a saying "killers move in silence". $13 an hour is not worth going to jail behind. Always remember trust no one.
 
What the law considers "assault" and "battery" is in many cases not actually that serious. If I were yelling at my ETL and gave him a slap on the cheek, it would be treated the same as if I had beaten him to the point of breaking a bone or putting out an eye. You can get the fuck over a cheek slap and just let it go, particularly if you earn $75,000 per year (which SHOULD have bought you a thicker skin anyway). Even if it is technically against the law to smack somebody that doesn't mean you aren't still a bitch for pressing charges over something so minor.

Here's what I would do in such a situation. I'm an ETL-HR and some sobbing TM makes some idle threat under stress and gives me a slap on the cheek. I then remove myself from the situation and inform AP that we'll need a walkout. My cheek is stinging, so I just reach into my pocket and caress my toilet paper sized roll of 100s in my money clip, and smile a little smile to myself. "Wow, what a crazy day," I say as I retire to my spacious home that evening. "Time for a soak in the jacuzzi. I should buy a boat."
 
I’d love to say it’s an isolated incident but... I’ve actually had ETL-HRs proudly talk about firing people. Another one said the greatest misconception was that HR had to be nice.

My condolences on the loss of your mom. I probably would’ve walked out the minute I was challenged on my attendance too.
 
People experience grief and suffer through losses and tragedies in different ways. Some people are still able to contain their emotions, some people can't. Some people, when they are burdened with grief, will sometimes say things that they don't really mean. That's human nature.

You cross a line when you threaten someone with violence.
 
No jury would agree lmao
the only people who benefit from the say nothing and walk away mentality are the higher ups who will to continue their wrong behavior because they know they can get away with it. we will keep seeing posts like this from TMs on the forums in the years to come due to that mentality. I did not post here to argue ethics or the law but what I feel is right which is separate from both.
 
What is right is the lesson taught to small children and reinforced for a lifetime - you dont threaten to hurt people. Ethics is everything, it is a part of every moment of life. Grief is not an excuse to threaten violence. Period, end of discussion. There are many other ways to handle a jerk that doesn't involve threats of physical harm.

Golden rule. How would you feel if someone in emotional duress threatened to physically harm you? How would you feel if that lack of emotional control indicated that a lack of physical control was possible? You wouldn't like it, you'd probably be somewhat scared, so you should know that it's wildly inappropriate, on top of being illegal.
 
What is right is the lesson taught to small children and reinforced for a lifetime - you dont threaten to hurt people. Ethics is everything, it is a part of every moment of life. Grief is not an excuse to threaten violence. Period, end of discussion. There are many other ways to handle a jerk that doesn't involve threats of physical harm.

Golden rule. How would you feel if someone in emotional duress threatened to physically harm you? How would you feel if that lack of emotional control indicated that a lack of physical control was possible? You wouldn't like it, you'd probably be somewhat scared, so you should know that it's wildly inappropriate, on top of being illegal.

Not quite the end of the discussion, I'm afraid. Let's keep bumping this and see what falls out.

The vagueness of your second paragraph makes it tricky to say one way or another. Are we talking about how I'd respond to inappropriate words spoken in an office by someone I've worked with for a year, or how I'd respond to bumping into Adam Lanza in the halls of Sandy Hook one fateful day in 2012? How I'd feel would certainly depend heavily on the specific situation at hand and the context of it. I'm going to judge these situations individually as they come. "You're lucky I don't come across that desk at you right now" are the words of a person whose grief has overwhelmed their judgment and in the heat of the moment they said something inappropriate out of anger. In such a situation, no, I would not in fact expect a person who had to watch their own mother wasting away from cancer to have their childhood Sunday School lessons at the forefront of their thoughts. That's what my own discernment would tell me, anyway 🤷‍♂️

If we mean threats of violence according to that word's actual definition and not the weird self-righteous one being bandied around in here, then yes, I'd say a long stint in the big house is in order. It's true, I do have what you might call a deadly allergy to bullets, so if a pissed off person starts talking about sending me a few so I can store them in my left and right ventricles, we now have a real problem on our hands and it's time for some law. You see, there's this funny little degree of distinction (picture a yawning chasm about 100 miles across) that separates the act of threatening to smack someone from the act of threatening to put someone in ICU or a Chicago overcoat. Obviously, you can't expect to keep your job if you make either of those mistakes. No un-ringing that bell. What I don't like is when folks rigidly argue from principle without taking a pragmatic look at the facts as they are. "bUt ThAtS nOt ThE wAy I tHiNk tHiNgS ShOuLd bE" isn't useful.

The tl;dr version of all that is that at the end of the day, OP didn't inflict serious harm on anyone. She didn't show HR a gun or a nail-studded baseball bat, or imply that she planned on doing so in the immediate future or at all. HR guy is not currently in the ER having high-caliber words surgically removed from his abdomen and is probably at home going over his investment portfolio while sipping Johnnie Walker. Doesn't seem to be anything worth moralizing about.
 
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You raise a lot of good points. However there is one (only one) that I think should be countered. Grief is not an excuse to say threatening things. If someone threatened to come across a desk at me, I don't give a care if they are in a good place mentally or if they just lost their entire family from a cruise ship burning down. Either way, I'd be frightened, especially if "across the desk" means the person is between me and the door. Maybe I'd be doubly frightened from grief, because if they've lost their brain enough to say it, they might lose their brain enough to do it with regrets later. Grief does cause some crazy things, but it is still a choice to not bite the tongue when that sort of statement starts to come out. Plenty of people who just lost a huge part of their heart often run to the bathroom or other private place so they can let the really nasty stuff out where it can't be heard. They don't say threatening things to anyone who upsets them.
 
"You're lucky I don't come across that desk at you right now" tells me this person may BARELY be in control but could snap at any time.
It's not an empty threat &, as Tessa has pointed out several times, grief shouldn't be an excuse to threaten someone.
An understanding employer may write it off as grief but they DON'T have to let you continue to work there.
The fact that OP is verbally attacking anyone who disagrees with them seems to indicate a hair-trigger temperament.

And I know the stress of an unexpected death, of having to identify a family member's body to release it to a coroner but I didn't threaten anyone.
 
What is right is the lesson taught to small children and reinforced for a lifetime - you dont threaten to hurt people. Ethics is everything, it is a part of every moment of life. Grief is not an excuse to threaten violence. Period, end of discussion. There are many other ways to handle a jerk that doesn't involve threats of physical harm.

Golden rule. How would you feel if someone in emotional duress threatened to physically harm you? How would you feel if that lack of emotional control indicated that a lack of physical control was possible? You wouldn't like it, you'd probably be somewhat scared, so you should know that it's wildly inappropriate, on top of being illegal.
We need to stop defending the employees who start the toxicity in the first place. This HR employee is obviously like this normally, it's not just a one off that they are this much of an a$$. Their comeuppance came plain and simple and I hope this makes other toxic team leads nervous and rethink their behavior as well.
 
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I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your mom and for what you experienced. Your HR is unbelievable. I've been where you are but with a different experience. My mother battled uterine cancer and was diagnosed at stage 4b (which is about as bad as it gets). She had a radical surgery and was in the hospital for a month. My siblings are both the main earners in their family and I am not, so I spoke to my lead and told her I had to go home and I didn't know when I would be back. They put me on 2 weeks emergency leave and then gave me the HR's email address and told me to keep in touch with her. They were very supportive. Two years later when my mother passed away, they gave me two weeks to go home and help my father with the funeral arrangements and to be with him and the rest of the family. I cannot imagine facing what you did. Under 90 days or not, that's inexcusable.
 
We need to stop defending the employees who start the toxicity in the first place. This HR employee is obviously like this normally, it's not just a one off that they are this much of an a$$. Their comeuppance came plain and simple and I hope this makes other toxic team leads nervous and rethink their behavior as well.
No. You cannot blame another person for your lack of self control. Ask any therapist. Ask any anger control teacher. Ask any martial arts instructor. You allow yourself to feel anger and you make a choice as to how to express it. No one else is responsible for your emotions.

Honestly, abusers use that same logic all the time. "She made me mad, she pushed me that far, she made me lose control. " A bit more extreme than your stance, but same logic. Don't use words or actions that lump you into that category of people.
 
We need to stop defending the employees who start the toxicity in the first place. This HR employee is obviously like this normally, it's not just a one off that they are this much of an a$$. Their comeuppance came plain and simple and I hope this makes other toxic team leads nervous and rethink their behavior as well.
What comeuppance did they receive? Were they fired?
 
Who else ITT has lost a loved one to cancer, anyway? I have, and let me tell you, the grief begins way sooner than the memorial service.

It's one hell of a trial that can cause even the most "harden the fuck up" types to shed a few tears. It can drag out for years and in the back of your mind you can often just "know" that it's likely going to be fatal even with treatment. You can buy a mansion in Hollywood with what you'll be paying for the treatments that may not even work. Then the doctor tells you and your family that the cancer has returned for the 20th and final time. That means hospice care, a real throwback to the 19th century when a TB diagnosis ("consumption") meant all you could do is update your last will and then climb into bed to await your fate with a bottle of laudanum.

The drama is real. Relatives are stressed and grieving. Money money money money money 24/7. Going through even a few months of that is enough to make most people swing a fist or threaten to. Get over it.

Thank you so much for sharing this. Your post made me cry, because I could tell that you get it and that you know what cancer does to you and your family. I'm so sorry for your loss. Those criticizing me for losing my temper with the obviously insensitive HR prick can get fucked. They don't know what the hell they're talking about.
 
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