Rant: The Target Cafe

Why are the people who eat at the Pasadena Target cafe so unbelievably tweaky?

I mean really.

The people who shop at the Pasadena Target are not tweaky.  They appear to have regular jobs and regular families and regular lives and things to do.  I see them buy shampoo and Advil and diapers and Tostitos and apple juice, just like regular people.  Then they flip their sunglasses back down, steer their carts through the parking lot and stack their regular bags into their regular cars, just like the regular rest of us, and drive away.

But God Forbid you step past the cash registers and into the Target Cafe because I promise you, all the regular people will disappear and you will be surrounded by total creepiness.

This happened to me today.  I had to run into Target over lunch time and I was starving, so I slipped into the cafe for a quick sandwich.

Oh my God.

There were masses of unshaven men.  There were ladies with obvious wigs and darker-than-their-skin-color stockings that ended above their shins but below their dress hems.  There was a man (also unshaven) rocking back and forth and spinning something metal and shiny.  There was a man talking on an invisible cell phone (no ear bud) who would not stop bouncing his knee.  There was another man with very few teeth who was leaning over his lunch and eating with such fervor that it appeared as if he was afraid that one of us might steal if from him any minute. There was a woman walking around asking for change.  There was another woman who would not take her angry daughter out of the back of the shopping cart.  Amid all this, there was a pair of normal people trying to conduct an interview for a job at Target.  And me, snarfing down my sandwich and becoming nauseated.

When I had finished, I flipped down my sunglasses, slipped into the parking lot and back into the sunshine with my regular cart full of regular Target goodies.  And I smiled at the rest of the regular Target shoppers.  Until somebody gave me the stink eye because she wanted my parking spot.