to be really irked at this shop assistants treatment of my lovely mum ( trivial ).

[MyCannyBairn]

My mum is 81 and a bit deaf but fully mentally capable, not some dithery old dear. She is amazing actually. Anyhow, yesterday she went shopping in our local discount supermarket. Both of us are regular customers, I go in practically every day, so know the staff etc.
Yesterday one of the staff stopped my mum just after she had left the store, and said some guy in the store had lost / had been robbed of a bag from another shop while in the store, which my mother had also visited, and she was carrying a bag from there, and could she prove that was hers. Being a naive compliant old girl, she showed him her receipt from the other shop.
I asked her which guy it was as there is a new one in there who is a bit of a power hungry arse, and yup it was him.
Trivial as it might be, it has really irked me. It shook her a little. I think a letter to the manager about his ( I assume ) illegal and inappropriate behaviour.
I have seen him be randomly awkward before, including to me, but I'm usually a don't sweat the small stuff person, but don't feck with my mum m'kay.
Letter to manager unreasonable ?
I've got a lot on my plate at the mo, and my tolerance for wankerdom is set to incredibly low.

Complain in writing. I am sure he didn't have the right to do that. She didn't have to prove anything. How rude!

Definitely complain. How rude. Mention that you are regular customers, how much you spend and your mums age, and how shaken and embarrassed she was by the incident.

So he actually followed her out onto the street and harassed her? No, that's not on. Putting myself in your Mum's shoes, I would have found that quite unpleasant.
Definitely write a letter to customer services at head office. You'll get the best response that way.

That's horrible (and not trivial). It is not unreasonable for her to have visited the same shop as the other guy. What right did he have to search her belongings?

He has completely overstepped the mark, with a regular customer too. Word that letter strongly!

Depending on his manner (which would have needed to have been excessively polite) I don't see that he's actually done anything wrong. All he did was ask her to check the carrier bag was her one in case there had been a mix up. You'd be glad a shop assistant was willin to do this if it had been your mum who was missing a bag.

There is a difference between 'could you check you've got the right bag' and 'can you prove that's yours' chub.

I would complain...

I would write a formal letter of complaint to the head office.

I am partly with Chubfuddler on this one. He wasn't doing anything wrong by stopping your mum, as she was carrying a bag from the other store and it is his duty to stop everyone he sees with a bag from that store (it could just as easily have been a mistake, rather than a theft).

If, however, his tone was rude and accusatory, and you feel he made your mum out to be some kind of criminal, then that is the wrong way to approach the matter and you should complain.

I can see why you're annoyed, but if it had been her bag that went missing would you have wanted him to ask? I accept that he should have phrased it better.

I'm pretty sure stopping her to search her bag after she's left the store is illegal. She would have been within her rights to decline but its fairly intimidating. I'd definitely complain.

If it wasn't the bag from his store then surely only the police have the right to check it?

Depends how your mum feels now as to what you do. If she is still upset, definitely complain. If she isn't bothered, I would leave it.

He shouldn't have followed her out and challenged her about another store's bag. That is beyond his remit as a security guard for a single store.

I would complain and point out that the security guard may well find himself in a fair bit of trouble of he continues to go beyond his limited powers.

I agree that the bag from another store is none of his damn business.

It's very telling that you knew immediately who this was. A letter might be doing him a favour - he needs to calm down before he really oversteps the mark.

Goodness even the police don't have the power to randomly stop and search people. YANBU - he was way over the mark and your mum is owed a huge apology.

I'm in favour of naming and shaming

Right, so some other random customer mentioned to the manager of this store that he had lost a bag from another store and the manager's response was to accost other customers who appeared to have been to the other store because they were using a bag with that store's name on it that they could have got from there at any point in the past and are, say recycling?

Wow. On so many levels. So many boundaries bulldozed.

YANBU. Don't bother to complain. Hit them where it hurts and stop shopping there.

Thanks so much for your replies. I think I will write to head office. Glad to know my twat radar isn't malfunctioning.
I'm normally so chilled but get a bit mafia when it comes to my family.

In the UK security guards have no more rights than any other civilian. They can detain you if they have good suspicion that the store's goods are being removed without being paid for (eg, which would be the alarm going off, or if they have witness goods being taken and not paid for), but they cannot insist on searching you. To have good suspicion, they have to have watched you go past the last place you can pay before they can act.

If you refused to co-operate, they would detain (but cannot restrain) you until the arrival of the police, who CAN search you. Detaining includes the use of "reasonable force" to do so. In other words, same power of citizen's arrest that anyone has.

In this case, we are talking about goods from another store, that the guard had not personally witnessed going missing, so way beyond his remit.

All he did was ask though. Anyone can do that.

He had the same right to ask as any other person in the street. If someone in the street asked to look in your bag on the offchance it was someone else's, simply because it looked the same, would you let them?

He's hired by the store to protect their goods. If it was thought you mother had the other chaps goods from another store, then the police should have been called. It was nothing to do with this guard.