Brandishing her own scissors in front of guest services in a Target store in south Florida, the customer chopped up her store credit card while lambasting the retail chain for carrying Pride Month merchandise. "I am never shopping here again," she warned.
This episode - recounted by an employee to supervisors - was just one of several tense encounters that workers have reported over LGBTQ+ items at the South Florida location, said the manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fear of losing his job. Target is the latest brand to be engulfed in culture wars, as polarizing social issues spill into store aisles and shoppers become more emboldened to engage in confrontational, even threatening, behavior.
Though Pride Month and other inclusivity initiatives have been around for years, they've increasingly become litmus tests for consumers, forcing companies to fully commit on social issues or yield to critics.
Retailers such as Kohl's, Walmart and PetSmart have also felt backlash from the far right for stocking items that extol equal rights and acceptance for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.
In Target's case, though, it has pulled its Pride merchandise and promotional materials back from store windows in recent days after a string of threats and harassment against employees. The move then sparked multiple bomb threats, targeting stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah, from people claiming to be angry about the removal of merchandise.
"It's not like any of this is all that unpredictable," said Lindsay Schubiner, who studies violent movements for the Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog. "We don't always know exactly where these sort of anti-democracy actors are going to point to next, but the increase in threats and harassment from anti-democracy movements in the U.S. has become so frequent that this is something that absolutely just needs to be planned for."
At the Target in South Florida, shoppers have called employees "child groomers," a far-right slang term for pedophiles, and accused them of "shoving your woke agenda down our throats," according to the manager who spoke to The Washington Post.
When he donned a bright safety vest over his company-issued Pride-themed T-shirt to help a customer carry goods to his car, the shopper looked at him and said, "Oh, is that so I could shoot you easier?"
That interaction leaves the supervisor with conflicting feelings about Target's decision to pull back its Pride merchandise. "It's 50-50," he said. "I hate it, but I kind of understand it."
On one hand, he felt the company had abandoned its LGBTQ+ employees. But he also can see reasons for backing down because the harassment from customers makes him feel unsafe.
Target, one of the largest American general-merchandise retailers, said it has offered products celebrating Pride Month for more than a decade. Chief executive Brian Cornell has touted his company's efforts regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. Initiatives in that area have "fueled much of our growth over the last nine years" and "added value," he told Fortune's Leadership Next podcast last month.
Target representatives did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The Target controversy follows the backlash and boycotts that Anheuser-Busch faced in April over its Bud Light partnership with transgender actress Dylan Mulvaney. Republican lawmakers chastised the brand and angry consumers posted videos on social media of themselves dumping the beer into the street.
The company later pulled back the campaign, and chief executive Brendan Whitworth posted an open letter on the company's Twitter account: "We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer." But the reversal also angered the LGBTQ+ community, and sales have dropped.