Obviously threatening sales clerks is unacceptable...it's not their fault that the company they work for decided to go in particular direction.
That being said, Target had to know that there would be some backlash to some of this stuff.
Also per the AP:
At a Target in New York City’s downtown Brooklyn neighborhood that the AP visited on Monday, the same adult swimsuits shown on social media featured the “tuck-friendly” tag, while a kids’ black swimskirt for sale instead had a tag reading: “Thoughtfully Fit on Multiple Body Types and Gender Expressions.”
Per Reuters:
Target Corp (TGT.N) is offering more than 2,000 products, including clothing, books, music and home furnishings as part of its Pride Collection. The items include "gender fluid" mugs, "queer all year" calendars and books for children aged 2-8 titled "Bye Bye, Binary," "Pride 1,2,3" and "I'm not a girl."
Certainly they had to know this was going to cause some backlash.
And I think the part of this that's rather telling (but doesn't seem to be getting discussed) is that a large portion of clientele that shop at Target aren't really the "staunch conservative types" (most of those types switched from Target to Walmart exclusively when Target implemented their Trans inclusive bathroom policies some time ago).
Walmart is more popular among Republican shoppers, while Target does better with Democrats, according to Morning Consult’s Most Polarizing Brands data.
pro.morningconsult.com
So one could reasonably conclude that a lot of this backlash is coming from people who may be moderates or either center left.
Other related polling indicates that while there's certainly a partisan divide with regards to the topic as a whole (when you present it as a simple yes/no question), when you drill down into the finer details, there's a lot of people on the liberal-leaning/democratic side who still aren't crazy about some of this kind of stuff that's targeting (pun intended) a youth audience.
Most favor protecting trans people from discrimination, but fewer support policies related to medical care for gender transitions; many are uneasy with the pace of change on trans issues.
www.pewresearch.org
A recent YouGov poll finds that Americans are highly divided when it comes to issues relating to transgender youth. This may stem in part from the fact that few Americans feel they have a very good understanding of the treatments available to transgender children and teenagers. Those who do feel...
today.yougov.com
While >80% of Democrats feel that trans people should be able to use the bathroom of their choice and favor measures against job and housing discrimination, 40% of Democrats still feel that people should participate on the team that matches assigned sex at birth, only half of democrats support transitioning minors, and a third of democrats aren't crazy about things like teaching this subject matter in elementary schools.
I think it's misguided for any corporate entity to just blindly assume that "we're liberal, our shoppers also identify as liberal, therefore any left-leaning thing we decide to do on this subject will be met with rave reviews and glowing endorsements" or to assume that just because the majority of their shoppers were okay with the trans-inclusive bathroom policy, that that somehow means that they're "100% on-board with everything the trans activists are advocating for"