Target worker of 8 years hasn’t taken a sick day in over a year. Then the company rewards her by cutting her hours: ’$17/hrs after 8 years is wild’
A Target employee who has worked there for over eight years just got her hours cut. The worst part? She hasn’t taken a sick day in over a year and is a consistent high-performer.
TikToker Kaitlin (@kaitlinsonday), a prominent Target employee with over 100,000 followers on social media, posted a video saying she was “done with Target.” Her video got over 250,000 views.
The large-scale retail company had cut her hours down, directly hurting her ability to pay her mortgage and other bills. The experience exhausted her, leading to her posting a dejected video expressing her frustration with the company’s practices. Kaitlin felt as though her efforts were underappreciated and that Target was dangerously close to losing a strong employee.
Her experience working at Target
Kaitlin has worked for Target for eight years now, performing extremely well as a beauty consultant. But she still had her hours cut down, directly impacting her base pay.
In her video, Kaitlin stated that she wasn’t quite at the point to call Target a toxic workplace, but that she felt underappreciated in her role. She also said she hasn’t felt comfortable calling out for “over a year” because “everything just gets dumped on me when I come back anyway.”
Kaitlin stated that she’s been pushed to the breaking point multiple times by the company, with overt punishments for small things taking a toll on her. Her video came across as defeated, dejected, and worn.
How much is she getting paid after eight years?
Kaitlin mentioned in her video that she was making around $17–$17.50 an hour, which is higher than most states’ minimum wage, but still quite low considering how long she’s been at the company.
“[Eight] years and only $17 dollars still,” one user said.
Later, Kaitlin posted a budgeting video for a paycheck before her hours were cut. At the time, the influencer was only making around $935 bi-weekly. In 2025, she made $31,892.42. That’s lower than or equal to most states’ median income. She also stated that it’s extremely difficult for her to break $1,000 bi-weekly while working at Target.
It can be very difficult to survive on a paycheck of $31,892.42 a year. While Kaitlin appeared to have another job at Ulta, she does have a house mortgage that she pays every month. Cutting her hours, then, could force her and others like her to have to work double or even triple shifts across varying companies.
The working culture at Target, too, doesn’t match up to how much its employees get paid. Commenters described Target as a place where “You do the absolute most and get no recognition, but when you make one slip up, it’s public humiliation from TLs.”
Reviews on Glassdoor refer to Target as a “needlessly stressful but secure job.” A reviewer added that locations are “always understaffed” and that employees were “micromanaged for everything.” Tasks were almost always timed and were “impossible.”
“Target is just a bunch of grown adults that still have a high schooler mentality,” another commenter said. “It’s all about favoritism and that’s it. Left after [four] years of trying to work my way up to Fulfillment TL.”
Why is good work rewarded with more work?
In many modern workplaces, employees have noticed that working hard and being good at their job can lead to more work getting added on. That was something that some commenters noticed about Target, specifically when it came to specific departments like fulfillment.
The phenomenon isn’t uncommon, and it actually exists in most modern work structures. “They might see it as giving their top employees more opportunities. The high achievers see it as poor performers getting away with less work,” Dr. Ruth Gotian, a Forbes contributor, noted.
But it pushes away high achievers and incentivizes poor performers. That was something that Kaitlin even noticed while discussing her work in her video.
“It’s like the amount of efficiency you lose when you push the overachievers and the people who actually give a [expletive]. As a leader, you’re gonna see and notice once they’re gone, all of the things that they do,” she said.
@kaitlinsonday Appreciation goes FAR.?? if anyone can sum up why I’m even crying please do because I’m rambling?
♬ original sound – kaitlinsonday
We’ve reached out to Kaitlin via email and TikTok direct message for comment. We’ve also sent an email to Target’s press team.
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