At 11:55 on 7 April 2025, I purchased some items at the Leamington spa store and waited in the…read morequeue to pay. There was a lady in front of me with a horizontal baby buggy blocking the aisle to the other checkout, forcing me to squeeze through to the other checkout. There was an older lady with her, (who may have been her mother). When I managed to struggle through another customer jumped the queue ahead of me. When I told this customer that she had just jumped the queue, she insisted she didn't, saying that the baby buggy was in the way, so she went around the other direction. In other words, she was at the back of the queue and decided to bypass those in front of her and go straight to the accessible route. The staff member who served her, interupted me and defended her saying "Actually she did not jump the queue". They both proceeded to chat, accusing me of being rude while I had to acceptt it and wait behind her. When the customer left, I apologised to her and stepped forward to pay for my purchases. The young lady staff member then blatently abused me, telling me that there was a queue and would have to wait. This was after she saw me struggle through the blocking baby buggy. When I got home, I attempted to contact superdrug customer services, only to be informed that they no longer accept calls from customers. I then tried contacting them through the webchat. No response there either. It is obvious that Superdrug has deliberately put measures in place to avoid customers and be held accountable. Their head office equally do the same.
Since Superdrug avoid contact, I called the store manager. I explained the situation to her and added that if I had been a woman, the situation would have been treated differently. Before I could get any further, she rudely interupted me, saying, "I'm going to hang up now because I am not going to accept that comment!" She tried to justify herself by telling me that the store had male staff, obviously avoiding the point being made. (There actually were no male staff present). I asked her to explain why:
1. No staff asked the girl if she would mind moving the baby buggy to a spot where there was more space so that customers could get access to the other checkout.
2. The young lady on the till should have told the lady who jumped in front of me that I was at the front of the queue and that she would have to return to the back.
3. Instead, the staff member defended the customer and proceeded to bad mouth me with her.
4. Since I was forced to wait behind this customer, the staff member then confronted me, telling me to go to the back of the queue.
5. The lady manager then refused to accept that this was blatent sexism and aggressively interupted me for suggesting it, threatening to hang up the phone and accusing me of expressing an opinion.
When I asked the manager if they had CCTV in the store, she confirmed they did. I then asked her to view the footage. I asked her why she was being so aggressive to me for suggesting sexism, she accused me of raising my voice, which I obviously was not. I informed her that as she was clearly biaised, I would escalate the matter to Superdrug head office, she said, "Go ahead". It would seem that the manager is confident that her superiors would ignore the incident.
Many businesses record calls for training purposes, so this too may provided evidence along with the CCTV footage.
