Wore a red hoodie to Target. You can guess what happened next.
I know, I know. I've heard the joke a thousand times, everyone warns you, "never wear red to Target." I genuinely thought it was one of those exaggerated internet things that doesn't actually happen in real life. I was wrong. I was so wrong.
It was a saturday afternoon, I'd just come from a friend's place and needed to grab a few things - dish soap, some snacks, a phone charger because mine had finally given up. I was wearing a red zip-up hoodie and dark jeans. That's it. No logo, no name tag, nothing. I'm walking through the home goods section kind of zoning out, comparing two different dish soaps like that's a decision that requires serious thought, when a woman probably in her 50s walks up to me with this very purposeful energy and goes "excuse me, where are your Keurig pods?"
I look up, look down at myself, look back at her and say "oh sorry, I don't work here." She does this thing where she kind of tilts her head and smiles like I've said something silly and goes "I just need to know if you have the dark roast in stock." I said again, slowly, I don't work here, I'm a customer. She looked at my hoodie. Looked a t my face. Looked at my hoodie again. "Can you just check in the back?"
At this point I genuinely didn't know what to do. I said ma'am I really am just shopping, I don't have access to the back, I don't know where anything is, I'm looking for dish soap. She made this little huffy noise and said "well you could have just said so" and walked away to find an actual employee. I stood there for a second just holding my dish soap.
Found my charger, got my snacks, checked out. The actual Target employees at the register were wearing bright red polos with the logo on them. I was in a plain zip hoodie. I still think about what she thought was going to happen if I had actually gone to check in the back.