My Mother and I walked into this store early in the morning around 6am. While there were numerous employees standing around talking to each other, none of them offered us any help or acknowledgment. We decided to shrug off the poor customer service and continue shopping. We like being able to shop good organic selections without the crowd of some organic food stores. However while in the store we were almost run over by an employee with a large hand dolly with a pallet on it, who never said excuse me or apologized for almost running us over or nearly forcing us out of the aisle we were in. He just came charging down the aisle we were in and if we hadn't noticed him he would have hit us. Then when we asked a cashier for help she blatantly ignored us. We were walking around with arms full of groceries (because we ended up picking up a few more things than we intended) and while looking for the baskets and asking for a cart we asked employees twice and none of them would answer or help us. It sounds too crazy too be true, we know, we were thinking the same thing while it was happening.
After receiving such terrible service we decided that we didn't want to give an establishment with such bad customer service our money so we took each of our 15+ items neatly back to their original locations on their store selves, put back our basket, and left the store. We didn't make a fuss or even let them know we were offended; we were civilized and decided to leave respectfully even though we weren't offered the same courtesy.
Upon reaching our vehicle we looked up to see who we later found out was the store's assistant manger, franticly and overtly writing down our license plate number. On top of all that poor customer service we were now being treated like thieves. We left our car and went back into the store to ask why our license plate number was being taken down. Upon re-entering the store an employee came up to the assistant manager and said "Is something wrong? Is everything ok? You were moving like you were chasing someone down." At this point we knew what was going on, but decided to remain polite. My mother kindly asked the assistant manager if there was a problem and asked why he was taking down our license plate number. The manager then denied that he was taking down our number and faked like he was making a coffee order, which he wasn't, so the coffee clerk was visibly confused. Even though he had been in the window clearly looking at our license plate and then back at his paper (repeatedly and in a hurried manner), he claimed that he was simply taking personal notes. He refused to show us the proof that he had only written down a coffee order or said personal notes, and not our license plate number. The man said they were his personal notes (how personal is a coffee order?) and that he felt threatened and then told us to leave his store. There was an extremely tall man who had just taken down our information for no reason and was now visibly angry toward my soft spoken mother and he was the one feeling threatened? No. The situation was quite the opposite. However, this entire time we never raised our voices or made a fuss. We had never entered within his personal space, or caused a scene in any way.
So far we were ignored, almost run over, treated like criminals, and now we were being kicked out of the store. We asked to speak with the store manager, but the assistant manager told us he was the only one there.
We made sure to calmly and politely tell the assistant manager all that we had experienced thus far under his watch as the supervisor. He seemed to listen to our concerns at first, but as soon as our adventure arrived at our interaction with him writing down our license plate he got defensive again.
We are nice people so we decided to just leave the store and never give them our money again.
Upon leaving a sheriff's car pulled into the store parking lot, slowed to look at our plate, then drove toward the front door of the store. On top of all that we had experienced, though we remained graceful and polite the entire time (despite the rudeness we had encountered from management down), they had called the police on us.
Needless to say I will never shop here again, My Mother and I are both african american and I believe this is why we were treated this way at this establishment. We experience small things like people often hear about when we are shopping many places, but never something this offensive or such obvious racial profiling. Again, I will never shop at Hy-Vee and will encourage those I care about to do the same. read more
