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“Attention, bargain-hunters: The circle on our shirts is not a bulls-eye. Please direct your frustrations elsewhere.”

If that announcement could play regularly at 133 Target stores across Canada, thousands of employees might be happy. Or at least, less unhappy.

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Already facing the loss of their jobs as the U.S.-based retailer abandons its ill-starred northern expansion, staff now must deal with the umbrage of shoppers disappointed by a lack of deals as a court-appointed liquidator begins selling off Target’s scant stock.

“It’s just the lack of respect, and the confrontations,” says Bill Cox, 28, a stock worker at a Target that opened just last year on St. Laurent Boulevard in Ottawa.

Cox says nasty exchanges with the “unruly mob” that pushed in Thursday to seek savings left coworkers in tears or suffering anxiety attacks.

Some customers who fill a cart with items and then learn that they won’t save much “just dump the cart wherever they are in the store, make a few lewd, hurtful comments as toward their disgust, and walk out,” he wrote in a letter to the Citizen.