Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows that it’s a thankless job. The money usually isn’t all that great, the hours can be stressful, and dealing with the public on a daily basis is enough push anyone over the edge.
This woman works in a shoe store and had a customer there looking for shoes while her baby fussed and cried.
I work in a shoe shop, and as you know almost all the shoes are alarmed. Yesterday a woman came in and got a couple of shoes.
While she was looking for the shoes, her baby started crying but she didn’t care and spent 20 minutes in the shop.
She got busy with another customer so when the alarm went off signaling a possible theft, she stopped the woman with the crying baby, she didn’t know whether or not she’d checked out or what she had bought.
I didn’t see her going to the cashier since I was at a different part of the shop. When she got out the alarm went off so i stopped her and asked to check her bags. She told me that her baby was sick and they had to go to the hospital as soon as possible.
She asked to check the woman’s bags and the customer freaked out, saying that her baby was sick and she needed to get to the hospital right away.
OP promised to be quick and found a tag that hadn’t been removed. They took it off and the customer was on her way – but not after making OP feel terrible for the baby.
I told her that it wont take long and asked to see her bags. She refused and kept on telling me her baby was sick. I called my manager and our manager told the woman that as an employee, I had to check the bags since it was the procedure.
She started crying, shaking and screaming telling me her baby’s situation is going worse and i was the reason for it. The security came in and looked at the bags, turns out there was an alarm left on the shoes. (It didn’t take more than 2 minutes to remove and check the bags.)
While she was leaving she kept screaming “If my baby dies, its on you.” Which kept me awake whole night.
The following day she learned that the woman had called or come in to yell at her for causing her baby to stay longer/overnight in the hospital.
Today is my free day and turns out the woman came in to the store telling her baby has been kept in the emergency room for the whole night and day, and if they could help the baby earlier they would be home in the night.
My coworker told me all which made me feel horrible. I’d get fired if I didn’t check her bags and the baby was crying while she was shopping, and she didn’t care. But I still feel like I did the wrong thing
OP lost sleep over the whole thing and is wondering whether or not she should have just let it go, even though the baby was crying long before the woman tried to leave.
i’m not in the US, our policy is supported by laws, we are allowed to check the bags has our logos on them, if it has a different brand’s logo, we ask for that shop’s employees to come and check
update: as my manager informed me, she stayed in the shop two hours and waited for me to come, cops were called.
Reddit’s weighing in on this tricky question below!
The top comment points out that if she was really a concerned mom with a baby in the hospital, she wouldn’t be in a shoe shop yelling at employees.
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Most people feel as if the mother lost any argument she had when she ignored the baby herself while shopping.
Image Credit: Reddit
Her behavior is not that of a concerned mother.
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Retail workers see their fair share of entitled customers.
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Everyone is honestly a little bit confused.
Image Credit: Reddit
This woman is just weird even if she wasn’t trying to steal anything, right?
Is there any world in which OP should feel badly here? Let us know what you think in the comments!
