My 14 year old son and his friend went to buy a few items from our local Morrisons supermarket, which is something they have done many times before, however this time they were turned away at the entrance and told that any child under 16 was not allowed in without an adult.
When I rang to ask why I was told that school children steal from the shop and are abusive to staff. When questioning the store duty manager further it turned out that they knew the children concerned but had decided to ban all children as it was easier to maintain the ban.
My son and his friend are good kids and would not do this.
There are no signs up about this new policy, just the embarrassment for the children being turned away.
To me this is a very sweeping generalisation of what a generation of people are like.
We live in a small town so the local supermarket is also the same as your local shop.
This now means that children can no longer run errands for parents/grandparents, this will also affect those parents who have a disability/illness and rely on older children to help out.
I pointed out that in the local paper it was usually middle aged women or drunken 30ish men that were reported on for causing problems in the store, were they going to ban them too??
I have no problem with the store suggesting that children can't use the store just before school or for say the first hour after school, when you would probably get large numbers descending on the store but a complete blanket ban seems ridiculous and unfair to me, especially when there are no notices up.
What do you think??