Female shoppers beware!! You will be targeted and humiliated in-store!! On the 13th of February 2021, I was shopping at Mary Street Marks and Spencer store in Dublin. I bought a few items of confectionary and made my way over to the self-service tills on the opposite side of the store. Along the way, I took a short video of items on shelves and as I did so, a portly male staff member approached me and told me I was not allowed film in M&S. I stopped filming but was embarrassed at having broken a rule I wasn't aware existed. I have been coming to shop in M&S since they first set up in Dublin in 1979! I have never heard speak of this rule. A point I'd like to make in all of this is that I was filming products on shelves and not shoppers. M&S should have been thrilled with someone promoting their products! After buying the items, I approached the man who accosted me and asked him to show me signs, documentation, anything anywhere in store, at any entrance to the store where customers were advised of the 'no filming or photography' rule prior to entering the shop. The rude and snarky man rejected my requests to show me any such notices, attempted to walk away, and refused point blank to tell me the name of his reporting line. What are the odds that I'm going to get a fair hearing if the person I'm complaining to is the same person I'm complaining about? Subsequently, I complained to the executive offices and no less than 4 separate people advised me that I could not film inside the store. I responded to this ridiculous statement by pointing out the hundreds of videos and thousands of photographs on various social media sites online showing customers as they went about their weekly shopping in M&S. I asked the four people I dealt with, to show me this rule and where I could locate it. All staff members I spoke to online, declined to prove the existence of such a condition but proceeded to gamely cover for each other. The same sorry mantra was repeated but remained unproven and none of the complaint handlers were brave enough to break cover and tell it like it is which is that demanding one single customer stop filming while leaving a cornucopia of videos online for all to see, without enforcing the removal of said videos and photographs, is discrimination at its worst. If I can't take films in-store, no one else should be able to do it. I made the final point that in the event I'm in M&S and on a video call, do M&S have the right to ask me to cease the call? Can they take my phone off me? The prospect of such wide-scale threatening behaviour is chilling. What is most frightening of all is that I was specifically targeted and humiliated by a large man as I shopped on my own. It is terrifying to think that the key demographic for M&S, middle-aged women such as myself, can be singled out for a public dressing down. And 6 people, including the burly staff member who approached me, and his manager (whose name I was denied by the instigator of this whole sorry saga) all jumped over the cliff much like lemmings do in their efforts to copy each other with each progressive vocal rebuttal becoming more strident than the last as they chanted 'deny deny deny'. The key person I spoke with when I first raised the complaint, tried very hard, as in VERY VERY hard to dissuade me from writing to M&S Ceo, Mr Sean Rowe. Mr Rowe, if you're reading this, stand by for a missive coming your way and get the tissues out because there will be tears and they won't be mine. I will be boycotting M&S from here on. I cannot and will not take the risk of being singled out and humiliated in this fashion again - my advice to anyone shopping in M&S is to think twice because some staff instore, are wont to bully and a woman shopping on her own is a very easy target. Oh, and on a parting note, Yelp are asking me to post photographs - clearly these images are meant to be of M&S interior indicating to shoppers the joys that lie inside which will include gender discrimination, bullying, public humiliation, threatening behaviour, abuse of power and a stoic refusal to acknowledge (or prove) the existence of a rule stating no photographs or videos are allowed in store. Well actually they are allowed but I've been singled out and denied the pleasure. Mr Rowe, I'd fire off that memo to Yelp to tell them in no uncertain terms that while everyone else is allowed post images and videos, I'm not. Maybe someone you are paying a salary to in the executive office might actually consider how foolish they look when their rather ineffectual edict is to do as they say but not as they do - while they're all busy shooting themselves in the feet, you might ask them to give the elephant in the room a name along with dressing the poor long suffering pachyderm in the emperor's new clothes. read more