Target worker shows how many people swap out their old shoes for new ones in the shoe department

Photo by@lightmagiciangirl/TikTok @lightmagiciangirl/TikTok John Hanson Pye/Shutterstock

A Target worker makes a game out of rating the old shoes people swap out for new ones in the shoe department. The number might surprise you.

On Saturday, TikTok user Light Magician Girl (@lightmagiciangirl) shared a video from her shift at Target. A part of her job involves finding and getting rid of the old shoes that customers exchange for newer models in the footwear section.

This task isn't particularly exciting, but Light Magician Girl (LMG) doesn't let it bother her. In fact, she makes it into a sort of game show. In this game show, she evaluates the quality of the items (free of charge) that customers leave behind. "Rate the shoes that customers exchanged and left for me today," she mentions in the caption.

How she rates the old shoes

Cue “What Dreams Are Made Of” by Hillary Duff.

The first shoes are a pair of black flip-flops that someone clearly wore for a while before deciding to discard. “5/10,” Light Magician Girl writes. “Not horrible. Footprint really tied it together.”

Behind those is a pair of well-worn sneakers. “10/10,” writes LMG. “Hope you got away with some nice ones. You needed them, girly.”

Next up is a black pair of plastic clogs. The bottoms are worn down after what looks like miles and miles of use. “0/10,” says LMG. “Disgusting. Really hated all the circles. I’m glad you left them behind.”

Sadly, the last contestant is a single black sandal with a stain on the strap. LMG’s rating? “2/10. Only found one. Is she coming back to leave me the other one today?”

Viewers react to the rating system

As of now, the video has garnered over 712,000 views. In the discussion area, viewers shared their opinions on this behavior and the possible motivations behind shoe theft.

“When I was a kid, we would do this right before the new school year,” wrote one viewer. “It was the only way we were getting new shoes because my mom couldn’t afford it.”

“My and my family had class back in the day and would do this at Kohl’s,” wrote another viewer.

Someone else said, “I work at a shoe store and I would be so fine with it if people did this. Get your bag. We all need good shoes. I just hate finding them unexpectedly in a box.”

This isn't a totally novel way of stealing. A Redditor posted their experience a couple of years back about discovering a pair of unattended shoes. In the ensuing comments, people shared numerous tales of stumbling upon discarded shoes while browsing for footwear.