To complain about security in this store?

[hippowithsuncreen]

I appreciate security have a job to do but I resent being stalked around the store, it doesn't make a pleasant shopping experience! I visited a branch different to the one i usually use this week to buy a specific product and general shopping. I picked up two products of the same type of different brands to look at the ingredients to check which one didn't contain a product i am intollerant to. The security guard came and stood literally at the side of me. I walked over to the till after a couple of minutes and he too went over that way and stood near the till. I paid without doing any other shopping and started to make my way towards the exit when i saw some sales products that my child had been asking for and he appeared again. I started to look at the sales products even though he was partially in the way of the shelves and didn't move when he could see me looking and he said goodbye to me despite the fact i was still looking. I picked up the sales item and paid for that too before leaving again past him.

It made me completely uncomfortable and i left without looking round the rest of the store.

Aibu?

No you're not. I know they have a job to do but that was intimidating, unpleasant and over zealous. I'd email the store manager.

I suppose you complain by writing a letter addressed to the manager - you don't need a name - and explaining that you were made to feel intimidated and uncomfortable by the behaviour of the security guard on X date and time.

But it is weird, though. Do you look young - the teenage girl shoplifting demographic? Did you have a pushchair?

Ynbu. There's doing your job properly but then there's abusing his power. I mean I could understand if you had form for stealing.
You were either the only one in the shop, or he singled you out because he can't have been following everyone around, can he.

There was hardly anyone in the store, I only saw two other people both elderly. Ibam almost 40, was in office clothes with no pushchair.
He made me feel uncomfortable tbh.

He might of fancied you!!!

Maybe you look like a previous shoplifter?

You were a woman alone. Enough said.

I'd complain. This happened to me recently, but it was the manager doing it!

'Maybe you look like a previous shoplifter?'
That is the only thing i can think of but surely a previous shoplifter would have been banned from the store already and asked to leave if seen?

Not necessarily. Somebody who has been acting suspiciously before but has always managed to slope off with or without her (by definition a woman if the OP is as I assume) ill-gotten gains may be watched carefully.

He said goodbye to you, while you were still browsing the shelves?

How rude!

I'm like sootica & would have asked him outright what the problem was. Yes I think you should complain as he was clearly over zealous & saying goodbye to you whilst you were still browsing is so bloody rude.

Yes Marcipex!

I was in an aisle that led to the exit at this point but still a way from the door. I wasn't expecting the gift sets to be where they were but because it was a final reduction type display from Christmas they had put them there hence me stopping to look again after i had paid for my product.

Tbh i had intended to look properly round the store before paying for the first product but felt uncomfortable!

My Grandad (at the age of 79) went off to the DIY shop once. We got really worried when he was gone for four hours for what should have been an hour at most. When he got back he had a good chuckle about how he had been followed by plain clothes security so decided to wonder around aimlessly and see how long it took the bloke to get bored. He saw it as irritating since he was doing nothing wrong and it was more entertaining than coming home and fixing the TV aerial.

And when he said goodbye i had actually stopped to pick up a sales item so it was clear I wasn't leaving yet.

I used to play hide and seek with over-enthusiastic shop security in my youth.

Passes the time anyway.

CandOdad

The last security guard to do that to me in a shop fancied me and we later hooked up he was very handsome

A friend of mine got so pissed off with the security guard following her round the other day that she decided not to point out to him someone else she saw shoplifting pretty blatantly. It was somewhat obvious that his main reason for following her was that she is Asian.