On Easter Day I went over to Target on Coleman Avenue in San Jose. The first thing I noticed that the parking lot was empty, which made for a strange contrast to the full parking lots in the shopping center. Three rows of red shopping carts barricaded the front doors, as if to prevent a gang of shoplifters−or the zombie apocalypse−from crashing through. The same company that required workers to cut short their holiday to open the stores on Thanksgiving Day, and later let hackers stole 40 million credit card numbers, wasn’t open on Easter Day.

A quick Internet search revealed that Target had a 50-50 chance of being open for Easter. What prompted Target to give their employees a day off on a major religious holiday?

I would like to say that Target turned over a new leaf after the disasters with Thanksgiving Day and the data breach, and decided to put employees and customers first over profits. Uh, no. Let’s be real: Target is no Costco (i.e., closes on major holidays, pays their employees a living wage, and provide excellent customer service). Target is very much a Wall Street corporation, where increasing shareholder value at the expense of employees and customers is a paramount priority.

An alternative explanation is that Target as a “corporate person” got religion. With the Hobby Lobby lawsuit at the Supreme Court trying to define the corporate entity as a “person” with free speech rights (i.e., spending unlimited money on political campaigns) and moral consciousness (i.e., denying female employees access to contraception under health insurance policies), some companies will get right with God to become Christians and observe all the religious holidays. I doubt these “born again” companies will be less hypocritical than before.

Anyway, I went over to Safeway to pick up what I needed for this shopping trip.