Internet Cheers Store Manager Banning Customer in Her 80s: 'Rude'

The internet has backed a grocery store manager who banned a woman in her 80s from their store claiming she is "rude and entitled."

Poster u/WreckItOuch shared the story on Reddit's popular r/AmITheA**hole forum where they asked: "Am I the a**hole for banning an old lady from a store?"

The Redditor explained: "There's a customer who I will call Sharon [in her] 80s who comes into a grocery store that I manage daily. She's rude and entitled. One of my cashiers was in a car accident. She's part-time so there's no medical leave and she has a broken leg and [is] on crutches. She also has a nasty seatbelt burn that kinda looks like a hickey. Super nice person and is great with customers."

The poster explained that when Sharon came into the store that week, she was rude to the cashier. "Sharon starts saying stuff to this cashier about her hickey. Insults her until she got up from her register on crutches crying. I finally told Sharon never to come back to this store. I refused to check her out and said I'm not going to hesitate to call the police if she comes back—80 years old or not."

The annual Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) survey asked over 3,000 retail staff in the U.K. about their experience in customer-facing roles. In statistics released earlier this year, 90 percent of retail workers said they had been verbally abused, while 64 percent reported being threatened and 12 percent said they had been physically assaulted at work.

After the woman was banned from the store, her son came in to complain, the poster said. "Sharon's son comes in and tries to say his mom can't drive and it's the only store within walking distance from her place but the owner and I aren't serving her anymore," said the Redditor: "He threatened to call the local news and I told him he can but they can see the footage of her arguing with staff members almost every day."

"She's not too old to learn she can't go around treating everyone like s**t and she's not coming back to the store," said the Redditor. "He left mad but no one wants to deal with Sharon anymore."

With the backdrop of what has been dubbed the "great resignation" in which more workers are moving and leaving jobs, commenters on Reddit were quick to side with the store manager.

One commenter said: "As a store manager, your job is to look after your employees. If this customer disrupts your team, insults them, constantly argues with them, and makes them feel uncomfortable then they don't deserve to be served. Sometimes the customer doesn't come first."

"As a longtime retail and lifetime customer service person, you did the 100 percent right thing and you're not the a**hole," said another reply: "Way to support your employee by firing this rude old woman—I would've done the same thing."

Another Redditor wrote: "Glad to see a manager (I assume you are) standing up to a bully and defending an employee. Too many of my bosses were willing to give in to empty threats."

Newsweek has reached out to u/WreckItOuch for comment. We were unable to verify the details of this case.