Target Under Fire After Latest Store Change Has Customers Furious: 'Pieces of Garbage'
Embattled retail superstore chain Target is under fire — again — as it continues to test its customer base’s patience.
According to Fast Company, Target will be deploying a new fleet of shopping carts to better serve the customer through increased size and better maneuverability.
The new models are “beefier,” as Fast Company put it, and can carry more stuff, as well as come equipped with cup holders for those that like to imbibe while shopping.
“The cart for us is the first touchpoint that the guest meets right when they walk in the store,” a Target executive described. “It’s the most used item in our store, and then also it’s that item that carries you throughout the store.”
Of note, the carts have an all-plastic design, and are meant to maximize customer usability as they get rolled out over the next few years.
“You’ll see guests, they’ll have their phone in one hand, beverage [in the other], and they’re pushing it with their elbows. Or they’re pushing it with one hand,” the executive said.
“We are doing a million things while we’re shopping, so maneuverability and what they called ‘ease,’ ‘smooth ride,’ and ‘a cart going straight’ was more important than anything.”
According to the New York Post, early reviews of these new carts are saying that the beleaguered company would have been better off doing nothing.
“Any others stores get new shopping carts recently? The ones my store just got are pieces of garbage that are falling apart,” one review of the new carts described. “Day one we were finding pieces of them on the floor and in the parking lot. All the same piece that’s kind of integral to the cart.”
Another review took umbrage with the fact that the extra cart space may have come at the expense of space for the child.
“Every cart attendant says they are harder to push,” the review claimed. “And the little child seat in them is L.I.T.T.L.E. Like a chunky 3 year old probably wouldn’t fit.”
Target customers threaten to boycott store after controversial ‘upgrade’ to shopping cart https://t.co/mKw25mBPJ4
— Daily Mail US (@Daily_MailUS) May 14, 2026
Employees are also anonymously grousing about these new carts.
The biggest issue, they claim, is that these new carts do not conform to the cart pushers used when employees collect them from the parking lot.
“They just slide like on ice and will not steer,” one employee said.
Apparently, pushing stacks of these new carts by hand does not resolve the conformity issue.
This latest headache comes after quite a period of tumult for Target.
After over 10 years at the helm, Target CEO Brian Cornell stepped down from his post in August 2025 after a string of PR disasters that had damaged the company’s reputation.
Those incidents included a number of boycotts amid customer outrage over a myriad of issues — chief among them being the company’s since-rescinded diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — followed by layoffs.
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