Et Tu Target?

I think my issues with Wal-Mart have been well documented but so far I haven't had problems with Target - until today.

All throughout the health and beauty area they had deals for buy X# of items and you would get a $5.00 Target gift card. Cool. So I bought 3 different sets of products that should have qualified me for 3 gift cards. The first one went through without a hitch. Then we got to the vitamins and it didn't work. Hmm. Then the toothpaste didn't work either. The cashier said, "It will tell us automatically when there is a deal." Well, there are 2 more deals there that we're missing. So, she calls her GSLT or GLTS or some other dumb acronym over to help. Well the dumb acronym comes over and says, "It comes up automatically on the register if there is a deal" then she leaves. Thanks Ms. Acronym!

At this time I'm starting to doubt myself. I'm thinking - that computer really should know what it's doing. I'm probably wrong. I pay and ALMOST leave. Then I think, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer or as one of Katy's friends used to say, "not the brightest bulb in the light bulb store" but I really think I have this right. I go to customer service and ask to leave my cart (because it was one of those damn squeaky ones) so I could go check some prices. I go check and I take pictures of the offers. When I did this I realized that on one of them I had bought a bottle with the wrong quantity - it had to be a quantity of 65 instead of 80 (they were mixed together on the shelf) but that was easy to fix. Of course the customer service girl had to call Acronym over to help.

5.8 + 5.8 does not equal 11.6 because you can't add them.

According to this offer if I buy 3 2-pk (11.6 oz) Crest etc...then I will get a $5 GC. You might not know this but toothpaste doesn't come in 11.6 ounce tubes. Until today I didn't know nor did I care about that. Of course, it doesn't have to because when you get a 2-pk of toothpaste (5.8 ounces each) that equals 11.6 ounces. But you can't add them. This is what the acronym told me. She insisted that it had to be 11.6 ounces and therefore I needed 3 2-pk with the tubes being 11.6 ounces each. To this I reply, "OK, where are the packages of 11.6 ounce tubes?" Hint: she couldn't find them because they don't exist.  Any time I said that 5.8 + 5.8 = 11.6 she would say, "no, you can't add them." Well, it seems as though we are at an impasse because I bloody well CAN add them. She continues to look for the cagey 11.6 oz tube (a 2-pk no less) but it continued to evade her. I'm waiting somewhat patiently for her to come to the same conclusion that I had reached that you could in fact add 5.8 + 5.8 and that everyday, all day it would equal 11.6. Maybe the sign was worded poorly but I caught on to it fairly quickly and I'm the customer not the acronym. The print is really small but it says *Free $5 Gift Card when you buy 3 select hair care, skin care, OR personal care items as signed. So she asks me if I bought any hair care items too. No, no I didn't. I didn't have to because it says OR not AND. Finally, she gives up. I want to add that throughout this experience we were both very cordial and friendly (yes, even me) but I wasn't leaving without my GC! She takes me back to customer service and I leave with my 3 $5.00 Target gift cards! And 3 X 5.00 = 11.6!