Brooks: Smile! Time for mandatory fun on your Target run

Brace yourself for aisles of mandatory smiles on your next Target run.

The Minneapolis-based retailer, fresh from customer boycotts and a round of layoffs that threw at least 1,000 people out of work just before the holidays, has a plan to elevate your shopping experience.

Are you wearing a red shirt? Are you working at Target within 10 feet of a shopper? Smile! Make eye contact. Wave and use “friendly, approachable and welcoming body language.”

Is the shopper walking to within 4 feet of your position? Personally greet that guest. Smile again! Initiate a warm, but also helpful interaction.

“Our team is one of Target’s greatest strengths and they are instrumental in creating the in-store experience for our guests,” Adrienne Costanzo, Target’s executive vice president and chief stores officer, said in a statement. “We know when our guests are greeted, feel welcomed and get the help they need that translates to guest love and loyalty.”

The guidance Target is giving its staff and putting up on posters in the breakrooms isn’t new. Most companies want their employees to be nice to their customers. What’s new is the branding.

They’re calling it the “10-4″ program, not “you’d be so much more employable if you smiled.”

The 10-4 program will be exciting for those of us who are not native Minnesotans and haven’t enjoyed prolonged eye contact with a stranger since 2012.

But why would a Minnesota-based company force Minnesotans to make eye contact? If Target really wanted to initiate a warm, helpful interaction with customers, they’d invite sales associates to stand next to you, gazing off into the middle distance while making infrequent observations about the weather.

Ten years ago, the Minnesota Senate held an entire debate about whether senators should be allowed to make eye contact. In the end, they voted no: eye contact is terrible.

One of the joys of grocery shopping is a fleeting moment of human connection — smiling at someone as you scoot past each other in a crowded aisle; helping someone reach a cereal box on the top shelf; the flash of pride when the cashier compliments your snack choice (SweeTango is better than Honeycrisp, I knew it!).

Pleasantries are less pleasant if one of you is being forced into it. Plenty of retailers do it, but customers know the difference between smiles and pained grimaces.

Smiles are a gift. No one owes you a smile.

Shoppers smiled at each other as they tried to wave each others’ carts through intersections. Workers dressed in red, black and gray had their heads down, doing their jobs. Much appreciated.