My coworkers and I, all in town for work with a prestigious company, walked in, excited to shop... We were asked to leave our personal bags behind the counter. The old lady said as we were handing them to her, "Thanks for not making a big deal about it." Hmm...
I proceed to walk around and notice *every* single customer on the main floor with their own personal bags... including a large backpack. One had 2 personal bags. And my friend mentioned seeing an even larger, personal bag kept by someone when she was downstairs. It needs to be said that for a THRIFT store, which receives DONATED product from the community and does NOT PAY FOR its inventory, to enforce any kind of "bag policy" is absurd. Given that this place is staffed by volunteers and all of their product is GIVEN for them to sell at zero cost beyond operational. There is no "value" to the product beyond the scribbled price they decide to charge because, well, this is a thrift store.
So after passing the 6th person allowed to hold on to *their* bags I decided to speak up and call her out on singling out myself and my coworkers/friends. I approached her at the counter as every customer I passed was lining up to pay, with their bags, seemingly ready for me to illustrate this classic racial profiling bullshit that old, white people feel empowered to enforce. Ours were the ONLY bags behind the counter, of ALL the people in the store and we were a quad of design loving minorities.
She didn't appreciate being called out and, I'm sure, didn't like my aggressive tone but this staff needs to wake TF up. If you're not applying your arbitrary "bag policy" to EVERYONE, irrespective of the size of the bag, you're not allowed to single out individuals who give you a "bad feeling." It's prejudiced AT BEST and I wasn't one bit concerned with disrupting your store's environment to stick up for myself and for my friends against your GARBAGE policy. It's 2022 and I'm definitely not looking to make America great again. Plus which, I can't imagine this place is insured should an expensive bag be left behind the counter with some random volunteer and suddenly gets damaged(our bags were left on the floor) or goes missing...
I did not record this interaction and it is not on social media(at least, to my knowledge) and I don't think we were being recorded. But I hope this makes her think twice before making someone check their bag especially if that person oh, "just happens" to be a person of color. Total BS. WAKE UP! Racism is NOT the move and you racist businesses need to be called out and embarrassed for such antiquated concepts of loss prevention.
Finally, the size of one's bag has literally ZERO connection to one's interest in stealing. Like, who thinks this stops shoplifting??? Idiots. read more