to complain about a supermarket banning all school children??

[JW12345]

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??

Why don't the children involved apologise and agree a code of conduct? This would be a way forward

Flanbase - I'll put your suggestion to the manageress when she rings, I am also going to tell her to read this thread too.

base Wed 15-May-13 00:57:56
"So I agree with the supermarket on banning under 16yr olds as it must have been a hard time for them having abuse ad stock being stolen. They are making sure their shop makes a profit and their jobs stay."

One of our local shops has had real problems with middle-aged women shoplifting, also with drunken and abusive middle-age women. Of course they are only a very, very few middle-aged women compared to the entire population of m/a women around. But to your way of thinking the store would still be justified in banning me and every other m/a woman on the grounds that the shop had to protect its profit.

In real life, the shop staff simply learn to recognise the odd adult who causes trouble and keeps a close eye/bans them from the shop. But children are clearly not seen as individuals.

Middle-aged people do not move & act in packs the way teenagers do. That's a ridiculous comparison. They also are not all released in one giant wave every day at 3.30.

I'm surprised at the reaction in this thread as well. Maybe the kids in my neighborhood are particularly badly behaved, I can believe that. I have to have a firm word with a kid at least once a month for using unbelievably bad language (loudly) around my kids, or attempting to cut in front of me in line, or similar. In fact I avoid these shops at this hour, and that's probably what the shopkeepers fear most.

Ds1 and 2 (17 & 15) often go for a wander to Tesco at the weekend for an ice cream or bottle of coke (I don't keep these thing in the house). They get bits and pieces I need as well. I would be furious if they were turned away.

Dd doesn't move in packs either. She is not an animal, she is an ordinary person who needs to pull her weight when it comes to the household shopping, and who occasionally needs to do shopping on her own. My life would be very difficult if I couldn't send her or her younger brother down to the shops occasionally.

Round here, young men in their twenties very often go into shops in groups. You could call it packs if you like. Some of them are drunk and abusive and many of them use very bad language indeed. Would you really feel it acceptable if the shop put up a sign that young men between 20 and 30 are only allowed into the shop if accompanied by an older person?

not fair as some kids dont go to school so are allowed to go about their business in the day,must be annoying for them.

This isn't just about theft though, the OP mentions that kids have been abusive to staff.

If it's sufficiently bad abuse, then staff (and other customers') welfare trumps teens' rights to use a particular shop.

The ire should be directed at these kids, their parents and possibly even the local constabulary, not at Morrisons.

I doubt the blanket ban was a decision they took lightly.

If there were a way to ban the packs of 20-something yobs, I'm sure they would. No one wants this kind of stuff going on in their shops.

Like I said before, it's exacerbated by the fact that they all emerge from school at the same time. In fact, I can think of a similar "ban": They just opened a Byron nearby me (YAY). It's also very close to the Chelsea football stadium. They have a guard posted there to prevent these 20-something yobs from coming in afterwards; not the kind of crowd Byron wants. I can't blame them.

This isn't just about theft though, the OP mentions that kids have been abusive to staff
If it's sufficiently bad abuse, then staff (and other customers') welfare trumps teens' rights to use a particular shop

Well in that case, what the staff really need to protect their welfare is for their employers to bother spending a bit of time and money on security and building a case for the successful prosecution of the 5 or so kids causing the problem. Then they can be banned for life from Morrisons, the other local kids will get a very good lesson in how misdeeds can have unpleasant consequences, and the law-abiding shoppers carry on as normal.

Actually deciding to ban a townful of teens rather than crack down on the perpetrators is the kind of lazy equivocating that lets people get away with petty crime more and more.

It's not the shops job to police the town and teach manners to the yobs involved. The shops role is to protect it's employees and it's stock.

Who says they have to police the town? Just ensure staff and customer security in their own shop. A bit of energy to tackle this through liaison with local police would probably go a long way.

They've done this by banning under 16yrs. I can only imagine the huge probelm it must have been. The shop has the right to do this.

Ormskirk has Edge Hill doesn't it? Many of these banned students will pole up at the local university and then refuse to shop there, and tell their friends on their courses / house mates.

Southport has a good Tesco. Just saying

Flanbase The whole point is you can't discriminate a whole group because of a few bad members. Morrisons wouldn't even think of doing this to any other group, but they see teens as an easy target to discriminate against. Your attitude is ageist and disgusting.

I imagine the store has no signs up as they know this is a discriminatory policy, and if they were challenged on it, they would not be able to uphold it. I know age is not a protected charictaristic in quite the same way say, race, sex, sexuality etc. due to things like serving alchohol legislation, but it is not as simple as just being able to discriminate against all teenagers and ban them from a space. It is also discriminating against families with a disabled member as they are more likely to rely on a teenager doing the shopping.

I hope Morrisons head office take note of this.

Perhaps the local teenagers could encourage others to boycott the store (difficult if it is the only one in town) because of its discriminatory policies.

lol - never been called that before SlowLoris.

WTF? Morrison's believe that ALL teenagers are thugs and shoplifters?

No, shoplifters and thugs are come in different guises not just teenagers. Maybe they should ban everyone

What a ridiculous policy and like someone above said, alienating their future customers.

Oh I agree Eldritch that it's a lazy, clumsy way of doing things.

I'd hope that it was a temporary measure designed to protect staff prior to taking proper action against the actual culprits.

Now obviously this isn't a great inconvenience in the way that a supermarket ban is, but what about places like All Bar One who have a ban on under 21s?

Is that ageist? Is it unacceptable?

I just thought I would let you all know that the Manageress from Ormskirk Morrisons has phoned me this afternoon and apologised for what happened.

Apparently this was a policy that had been in place for 1-2 weeks and we were not the only parents to complain about it.

The ban has now been lifted and children are once again allowed into the store.

She said that if anybody is abusive to staff or steals (whether a child or adult) in future they are just going to call the police, which is what they should have done in the first place.

She has asked my son to go into the store tomorrow so she can apologise to him.

Thank you all for your comments and advice it has been very helpful.

Very good!

Good news

It's good news for you that your kids can go and shop at the supermarket but not for the shop floor staff who will have to deal with abuse and stealing again from the yobs that caused the situation

Oh flanbase you make it sound like all teenagers are criminals.