Target CEO Apologizes For Father’s Day Weekend Outage

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — The CEO of the Minnesota-based Target Corp. issued a public apology to customers Wednesday for two Father’s Day weekend technology glitches that affected stores nationwide. During an interview with CNBC, Brian Cornell said a two-hour cash register outage on Saturday and a credit card glitch on Sunday — both of which prevented sales at stores — made for what he called a difficult weekend.

“Obviously a tough weekend,” Cornell told CNBC, according to a report by the Star-Tribune. “Tough for our brand and really disappointing to our guests. So I need to apologize to the thousands of guests who were shopping our stores on Saturday and again on Sunday.”

The Target cash register outage Saturday left shoppers unable to purchase any items at stores for about two hours. In an emailed statement, Target said the temporary outage was because of an internal technology issue. The company said the outage was not a data breach or a security-related issue and no guest information was compromised. According to reports, the outage likely cost Target anywhere between $50 million to $100 million in lost sales.

Multiple posts on social media showed people waiting in long lines at Target stores as customers waited in the midst of the outage. However, several customers were able to make light of the situation through humor on social media.

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