I normally don't leave bad reviews, but what happened to my sisters and me at Shara's shop was so…read moreupsetting that I feel like people should know.
To preface, we love thrifting and Vintage shopping. We go all the time and wanted to check out Antique Row. My sister has been to this area before & has purchased many items at various shops & wanted to show us around. Today, we were simply browsing for some rings. Shara, the owner of Red Studio, was very friendly at first, but the moment she noticed that we took interest in a few items, we noticed her entire attitude changed. We could sense something was off, so we made certain to put items that we tried on right back in front of her just to avoid any possible misunderstandings.
The girls continued to try on the rings to see which ones they liked, but I left to browse another small book shop right across. That was when my sister called me on my phone to come back because Shara had accused us of stealing 8 rings. She also said that we stole some gold ones too, which made zero sense because none of us were interested in gold, period. First, she said we took 8, then looked around and said 6, then 4, then suddenly 2. Her story kept changing every time she spoke. We were even looking around, trying to help her find the rings she thought we stole. Another important note, there were at least 3 other customers in her shop while we were there. Just older and probably fits her typical customer demographic.
So then she said she was going to call the police. Which was totally fine for us; in fact, we calmly offered to call for her. The moment I told her that I was going to call, she told us that we should just leave. If she genuinely believed that we stole anything, then why would she tell us to leave rather than tell us to wait for the police?
We did leave her store, but not the area. We waited right outside for 40 minutes in the 40-degree cold with another nearby shop owner because we didn't even want to get into our car and have her accuse us again of "hiding" something. When the police finally came, we all went inside, and they talked to her.
The police officers even noticed that she couldn't keep her own story straight. She went from "they stole 6 rings" back to 4 again. She was extremely defensive, uncooperative, and refused to give the police any form of ID. She even started to yell at them and came outside to take a picture of us just quietly standing there, even after being told not to by the police. She said she was going to post the pictures on Facebook. Earlier, she mentioned that she had recorded us, but when the police asked for video footage, she said she didn't have any.
When the officers asked her what was supposedly stolen and where from, she claimed that she had already "refilled the items," Which also makes no sense. If something was missing and she knew the police were coming, then why would you refill the spot instead of keeping it "empty" and showing them the evidence? It honestly seemed like she misplaced things herself and/or did not realize there were other customers who had been in and out of the store. She insisted we were the only ones inside when there were definitely other shoppers coming in and out. She probably did not notice since she was so fixated on us.
The part that really hurt us the most was when my sister had mentioned that she was planning to buy a few rings that she thought were cute, and Shara snapped back and said, " No, you weren't, you were just going to take them." The implication was extremely clear. She judged us based on our age, our race, and especially our appearance. The entire situation made us feel targeted and was extremely biased.
We walked into Antique Row excited for a relaxing day of antiquing. Instead, we left her shop feeling humiliated, stereotyped, and disrespected for absolutely no reason at all. No one deserves to be treated like that.
