Target’s Wedding Registry Conspiracy

Prior to planning my wedding, my experience with wedding registries had been quite limited. I knew they existed and I occasionally used them for the brides and grooms I know.

As with many gatherings, our guests would come from around the country so we opened a registry with Target Corporation. I felt like we would be part of something cool and trendy – turns out it’s a not-so-secret-society called Club Wedd.

When a purple rubber ducky randomly appeared on our registry, I took the blame. I assumed an item at the store had been tagged incorrectly, so I went online and removed the item from our list.

The next week my future mother-in-law got a call from someone asking about the Pampers diapers on our gift registry.

“Is someone trying to tell us something?” the inquisitor cooed.

No, I am not having a baby, even though Target is trying to sabotage a joyous event by inserting another. One thing at a time, Target, one thing at a time.

A mission to clear the Pampers from the online registry failed – the diapers didn’t even show up on the online list. I had to make a special trip to the store, print out the registry and there on the very top of the print out it stared me in the face: “Baby Care: Pampers – Baby Fresh.”

I marched to customer service and explained the situation.

“Oh yes,” the woman in red and khaki said. “That happens a lot. Sometimes wedding items will appear on baby registries too.”

She let me remove the diapers and that was it.

A Google search with the words “Target registry glitch” produced a few links. One bride venting her frustration at www.WeddingBee.com called hers a “horrific story” as baby clothes and feeding items appeared on her registry. She sent a letter to corporate headquarters and deleted the registry due to Target’s lack of care over the situation. Many of the links included similar words from store managers who said, “There’s nothing we can do about the glitch.”

This baffles me. Is Target trying to further stress out future brides? Maybe forcing them to enter the store to remove bogus registry items is a way to lure future brides into the snack section. They will be tempted to stock up on Pepperidge Farms cookies in an effort to sooth their stresses with sweets. After all of this, if I’m going to eat my way through the stress it certainly won’t be eating Target food, it will be on the Girl Scout cookies from the freezer.

And thank you Target for the reminder that my pant size has increased since high school. I certainly don’t need help with that. That has nothing to do with having a baby, but more to do with my addiction to lattes and Mountain Dew – oh, yeah, and probably the Girl Scout cookies from the freezer.

It’s possible that the corporation simply has a glitch in the system. But I think a company ranked number 28 on the Fortune 500 as of 2009, should be able to fix such a Web programming problem. I found out this happened to at least three of my friends, one of which got married July 7, 2007.

My theory is that one disgruntled employee who works in the Web department thinks it’s a funny prank. He doesn’t strike everyone so the problem is kept relatively quiet. My only wish for him is triplets.

And, Target, I’ll skip the baby stroller for now, thank you.