Hide and Shriek

Customers say all kinds of outrageous things when they don’t get their way, which makes it easy to dismiss such claims as lies or paranoia. But despite the naysaying staff of one big-box retailer, we found one customer’s far-fetched allegations to be quite near-fetched indeed.

Maxine Albright describes herself as a loyal customer to one Montpelier, Vermont Target, although she’d been feeling her affection for the store wane over her past few visits.

“I don’t know why I even still come here,” she says. “It seems like nothing I want is ever in stock. I always check before I come now, but then I get here and they never have anything! It’s ridiculous!”

“Oh my god, this lady again!?” says general merchandise team leader Beth Fulton. “She’s here all the time with the same complaint, telling us our inventory system is messed up.”

“She’s always asking me to check the back,” says sales associate Mark Leeman. “I tell her nothing’s back there, but she insists we have it. One time I told her I was going to check and just went home.”

“I’d never tell a customer to take their business elsewhere,” says operations manager Carl Jacobs, “but sometimes I kind of wish she’d take her business elsewhere.”

It appears that Albright has been to the store 17 times in the past two years only to leave without one or more of her intended purchases each time. At least that’s what we can glean from her Facebook posts.

For example, in a post from April 19th, Albright says: “Heading to Target to replace those wine glasses (no hard feelings, Diane, lol!!!1)”

Later that day she updated: “Disappointed again. Why does Target NEVER have anything I want?”

Again from September 4th: “Venturing out to Target to get Amy that Paw Patrol dog thing she wants for her birthday. Wish me luck!”

And about two hours later: “Foiled again! Good work, Target! Maybe you can explain to my sobbing niece why she didn’t get a doll of her favorite police dog Chase! #WagTheBlue”

It should be noted that Amy is far too old for Paw Patrol and appreciated not getting another Chase doll this year, but that might be beside the point. What’s not beside the point because it is the point is that Maxine Albright seems to have never visited the Montpelier Target without leaving disappointed.

Some may see this as coincidence and others as an effect of supply issues, but Maxine Albright isn’t making either of those assumptions.

“This is malicious,” she says. “Someone there is purposely hiding everything I want to buy.”

We asked operations manager Carl Jacobs if any investigation has been made into Albright’s claims.

“Not really,” he says. “Her accusations are totally unfounded. I don’t know what company would purposely turn down a sale just to mess with a random customer. She’s just a whiner.”

But when Albright’s whining made its way to the district manager, Jacobs began an investigation in earnest, stating “We’d just hate to lose such a loyal and valued customer!”

We caught up with Terry Ivey from the store’s asset protection team who’s heading the investigation into Albright’s claims.

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for here,” says Ivey, staring at surveillance footage on his computer. “Here’s the day she came in saying the oven mitts she wanted were removed from the floor. Look, no oven mitts, out of stock. Simple as that.”

Ivey closed the video file and brought up a new one.

“Okay, so this is the day she claims the bedspread she wanted mysteriously disappeared,” he says. “Shit, hang on, this is the early morning, let me fast forward to the–”

As Ivey speeds through the footage we can see a full shelf of bedspreads, then an obstruction flash by, and suddenly the shelf is empty.

“Wait, hang on… What was that?”

He scrolls back through the footage until he finds the obstruction and stops the playback.

“Well I’ll be a son of bitch,” he says.

There on the screen, unmistakably, is a Target sales associate with a U-cart removing all the stock from the shelf.

Holy shit.

Ivey saves the clip, but thinks it might be a fluke, like a product quality pull. He brings up footage from the other days and departments where Albright has reported issues. What he finds is nothing short of shocking.

Each day, the same worker is clearing out the exact items Maxine Albright will later come in to purchase. Sometimes he’s in a Target uniform, other times he’s in street clothes. It’s hard to believe, even seeing the footage for yourself, but there’s no denying it now: Maxine Albright was right.

Once we regain our perception of what is and isn’t real, Ivey pulls up a file of employee headshots and identifies the culprit as sales associate Michael Canon.

Management allowed us to sit down with Michael before the “little chat” they had planned for him to ask him why he did it.

“I don’t know,” said Canon. “It was back when I was cashier and she was chewing me out because like the kind of cat food she liked or something was out of stock. I kept telling her I had nothing to do with stocking and sometimes we just don’t have something, you know, information that an adult would just accept, but she was just laying into me. I told her my line was backing up and she said if I did my job right, which was apparently to magically pull out a case of shrimp flavored Fancy Feast or whatever, then there wouldn’t be a line. So when she paid I read the name off her credit card. From there it was just a matter of finding her on Facebook.”

After that, Canon says it was easy to figure out when she was coming to the store and what she was going to buy.

“For serious,” says Canon, “this lady posts EVERYTHING on Facebook. At first it was kind of tedious trying to find out how to mess with her, but after a while I couldn’t go more than a few minutes without looking in on her, seeing what she was doing. Eventually she said she was coming back to the store and needed honey crisp apples for a recipe and I thought it would be funny to come in and hide all the apples. It was such a high to see her reaction and I guess I wanted to chase that.”

Canon’s obsession soon turned into months and months of stalking and gaslighting.

“I honestly can’t believe I kept it going,” says Canon. “I would even go to other stores and mess with her. I put like $700 worth of capri pants on a Kohl’s credit card just to fuck with her. And they only gave me store credit when I returned them, so I had to buy all my shit at Kohl’s for like three months. You ever tried living off the crap they sell at Kohl’s? Also I gave my mom four pairs of capris pants for her birthday.”

When asked if all the effort, careful planning, and risk to his livelihood were worth it, Canon replies “Oh yeah, I’d do it again tomorrow. Maxine’s a fuckin’ jerk. I mean, I do like to check that she’s doing okay otherwise, but you know, I still hate her.”

Maxine has recently returned to Target, using the gift cards given to her by management to make up for the months of harassment, to find everything she wants fully stocked.

“I’m so glad to be able to finally go shopping and find everything I need,” says Albright. “And I’m also glad they fired that horrible employee as well!”

Well, not quite.

“We didn’t think it was necessary to lose a worker over this,” says Jacobs. “We just moved Michael to the overnight stock crew and added a stipulation to his employment that he’s not allowed to have a Facebook account or stalk any customers. But Maxine Albright doesn’t need to know about that.”

When asked how he personally felt about what Canon did, Jacobs replied “Oh yeah, harassing our customers is something we should never tolerate, but let’s face it, we’ve all thought of doing it. Now I would never say out loud I thought that the man was an absolute legend, but… yeah…. You know what nevermind.”

While adjusting to his new job and the loss of a long-time hobby Michael Canon says “Yeah, it’s fine I guess. I don’t miss Maxine or anything. Like it’s weird not to know what’s going on in her life, but I don’t miss her. I mean, she is doing okay, right? Did she ever patch things up with Diane? I was just wondering, I don’t care really if she’s unhappy or anything.”

Okay, buddy. Sure.