Part of a sales associate’s job is to deal with thieves. They, however, should only approach someone if they are sure they are stealing something. This didn’t happen at a Ross store in Vancouver, Washington. A poor woman was doing Christmas shopping for her kids and minding her business when an aggressive employee approached her. Without any explanation, he told her to grab her purse and leave. Of course, the woman was confused. She thought that maybe he believed she was stealing because she had her purse in the cart. To defend herself, she took out the purse and showed him everything inside. In the video the woman shared, she filmed the inside of her purse as well. Despite this, the employee told her to leave again.
Suddenly, the employee heard something in his earpiece. He proceeded to tell her, “Oh, okay, never mind. You can go ahead.” At this point, the Washington woman was even more confused about what just happened. She asked him why he treated her this way, and instead of admitting he made a mistake and apologizing, he decided to kick her out. He took her cart away with what she was planning to buy and told her, “Okay, well, you can leave now since you wanna keep talking.” What kind of employee would speak like this to an innocent customer? When he saw that she was filming him, he took out his phone to film her as well. At the end, he put his phone back and walked away with her shopping cart.
Being humiliated like this made the customer leave the shop in tears. She was forced to send a friend back inside so she could do her Christmas shopping. To make matters worse, the employee made sure she wouldn’t complain to anyone. After she left, she called the store to report what happened, and the same employee answered her call. He then claimed to be management and hung up on her. Unbelievable. Thankfully, someone from Ross admitted that the employee was at fault here. “Update; district manager just called me & confirmed that after checking surveillance I did absolutely nothing wrong and that his actions were completely unprovoked and uncalled for and not policy especially after realizing that he was mistaken,” she wrote in a comment. Hopefully, he will face some consequences for the way he treated her.
People Reacting to What Happened to the Washington Woman
A lot of people were upset on behalf of the Washington woman. Just imagining the same thing happening to them would upset anyone. Immediately, one person told the woman, “File a lawsuit against them!” When someone tried to say that a lawsuit wasn’t necessary, another person wrote, “Because they are owed something for the distress that they were unnecessarily put through. Every shopper in the store contributes to that ‘man’ having a job. Without customers, the store would have to close. What do YOU think victims like this are owed?” A Ross employee also said, “I work for Ross. Call corporate , he’s totally wrong‼”
Some people were quick to jump to conclusions after they saw the Washington woman’s video. At the end of the video, her friend said something about 1 am, so people assumed that this was an employee talking and that the video ended there to “hide” what the customer was actually doing. Even as she explained that the store was open until 1 am and that they went there around 11 pm, several comments still tried to blame her. That was when one person defended her and said, “there are literally so many reviews on Google about this exact manager at this location, for all of you being like ‘this isnt the full story’weird if its not the full story how theres so many of the EXACT SAME STORY OVER THE PAST YEAR. Also it wasnt past closing, theyre open late because its [expletive] christmas. Hope that helps.”
