Target employees are taking their outrage online after the store unexpectedly redirected its popular Circle Week sale promotion to coincide with Amazon Prime Day. Why the last-minute switch? Employees say it’s all due to Jeff Bezos.
On the r/Target subreddit of Reddit, workers are grumbling about how the change in scheduling left them overworked and understaffed in the stores. One worker compared the disarray to a tax-free weekend, stating, “We clearly don’t have enough people because Jeff Bezos made us flip Circle Week after they created the schedule.”
Originally planned for July 13–18, Target’s Circle Week was rescheduled to July 6–12 — a situation that rather conveniently overlapped with Amazon’s Prime Day sale, July 8–11.
Target vs. Amazon: A battle of the sales
Target revealed the new Circle Week dates on June 30, the same day Amazon also revealed its Prime Day schedule. The timing was intentionally “chosen to provide customers with greater flexibility and one-of-a-kind deals,” according to an Amazon spokesperson.
But most Target staff think their employer rushed into it without careful planning. “Once Target’s top dogs resolved to push Circle Week, they resolved to NOT give stores extra payroll. Genius,” posted one user cynically on Reddit. Another added, “You can’t compete with Amazon—why try to ride along with them?”
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Too little notice, too much pressure
Several employees reiterated that all of them were surprised by the switch. The rosters had already been in, before it was confirmed with the new dates, and there were never any additional staffing hours approved.
One of the contributors wrote, “They are telling us that the date is changing on the Thursday or Friday that the rota for this current week was due.” Another wrote staff were then asked if they wanted to work extra hours, but the budget for the entire next week had already been cut.
For some workers, the stress went beyond logistics. One team leader shared, “The plan was for me to train for two weeks before being fully in role for Circle Week, but then they moved it so my training time effectively got cut in half.”
“Just deal with the hand we’re given.”
In a post to Newsweek, the original Reddit user said they were “90% sure” that the change was done simply to rival Prime Day. “Corporate knew when Prime Week was, so it was weird they didn’t design Circle Week this week initially,” they wrote.
The employee explained that although last-minute changes don’t happen often at the store, this one was especially frustrating. “It would be nice to have more notice, but they told us as soon as it became official. We just have to deal with the hand that we’re dealt, store-wise.”
While Amazon and Target duke it out, it’s clear who’s being squeezed: the store workers in the middle.
