It was early on a Thursday morning and I needed twinkle lights. Like the kind you string up on a Christmas tree. A bizarre thing to be looking for, it was nowhere near Christmas. But I needed a string of lights to act as lighting fixtures for my group’s scale model for a school wayfinding project.

The only place near my apartment that I figured might have them and would be open at that time was Target. A little tingle of excitement rushed through me.

I have a confession to make. I freaking love Target. Which is strange because I usually abhor the “big box store” shopping experience. It’s stressful. It’s crowded. It’s sometimes a little smelly. But I don’t feel that way about Target. The stores are bright, clean and airy, not crowded like most other box stores, and colorful. Target’s use of color inside and outside their stores makes me feel like I’m being transported to some magical carnival land of fun and savings. Even the logo, the happy red target, reminds me of a ferris wheel. They even have popcorn there! For me, Target turns the mundane shopping experience into a fun and transportive little getaway.

(I don’t even get upset when kids cry around me at Target. The tears just roll off my back. That is how you know I love Target.)

So I hopped into my car, my keys merrily jingling in my hand, and headed to Target on my way to school. I was in a hurry so I went directly to the electronics department. The place was bright and empty and had that quiet hunger of an empty store first thing in the morning. Most of the staff were stocking shelves. The girl working behind the electronics counter wore her blue hair in short pigtails and looked round and happy. I asked the girl where I could find twinkle lights, she whipped out her tablet and looked them up and a minute later she was showing me to the seasonal lighting department. As we were walking the freshly polished and gleaming white path, she told me that my twinkle lights were on sale and asked me if I had ever tried the Target Cartwheel app. As a student of all things mobile and a new mobile user, I got excited. She told me it was free and gave me a brief synopsis on how to use it. I am not going to lie, I was pretty stoked to check it out.

I looked the item up, added it to my list, got my discount at the checkout and I was on my way. Pretty slick.

Skip ahead a few weeks. I was doing a little late night shopping and brought my four items up to the cash register. However, I had forgotten to search for these items on my phone to find out if they were on sale. The cashier told me that she thought at least one of my items was on sale, but to get the sale price, I had to pull up the deals on my smartphone.

“You’ll have to do a search. You’ve got two Merona tops and one pair of Denizen jeans,” she said over her shoulder, as she was ringing up my order.

“Wait, um. Where’s the search function again…?” I muttered, as I fumbled with my phone. The cashier politely waited while I jabbed at my phone with my sausage fingers until I found the search icon. “Okay, got it. Just a sec, how do you spell ‘Merona’?”

The cashier walked me through the scan function on my phone (which I learned pretty easily), with which you can scan your items to determine whether or not you get a discount. I stood in the bagging area, digging through my stuff to find barcodes.

The man behind me in line looked either confused or irate, or both. He just stared at me. I apologized to him and asked the cashier to suspend my transaction while I juggled my wallet, cash, car key and phone, and proceeded to dig through my items to find the tags. It was a little embarrassing. I realize this was my problem because I should have remembered to look the items up before I got to the register, but it brought up a bigger question: didn’t these discounts used to just come off automatically? I never remember having to clip coupons at Target before. I also thought there simply has got to be a better way of streamlining this process. I can’t imagine how frustrating this would have been if I had been purchasing more items. Or, heaven forbid, I had been shopping with children.

I finally got all my items scanned and checked for discounts, and saved myself a cool 4 bucks, which was totally not worth the effort.

As the cashier was handing me my receipt, she said, “You should download the app for more savings.”

“Um, I thought this was the app,” I replied, confused.

Then this was the kicker: “Yes, but there is another app for coupons.”

Wait, what? Two separate apps? This can’t be true.

When I got home I did some research. I discovered that Target has their main app (just called “Target”), which performs functions more in-line with the brick-and-mortar store, where you can make online purchases, locate which aisle a product is in, access the weekly flyer, find store locations and look for coupons. In June of 2013, they launched Cartwheel as a separate app and microsite (cartwheel.target.com) that just takes off additional in-store discounts. There is also a Facebook app, which I believe performs the same function as the Target mobile app, but I am unclear about the value of having a Facebook app for this purpose.

As a new mobile user, I am also confused about why everything isn’t all in one app. It is hard enough for me to remember to check one place for savings, and now Target is asking me to sign up for two. This is definitely taking the fun out of shopping.

Sure, it’s easy enough to add items to your savings / coupon list, but the search function isn’t great and the fact that the customer needs to remember to browse multiple apps in advance of a visit to the store in order to take advantage of savings doesn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong, this won’t stop me from shopping at Target. I still think it’s a carnival fun land of amazing savings, but this app issue is a head scratcher. After all, they have robots that return your shopping carts. I am really surprised a company of this size doesn’t have a more integrated system. We can only hope that Target does some further revisions and works out the kinks soon.

Target, I think a wheel just fell off your cart.