Woolworths Lakeside staff in Pakenham confront young mum in front of other shoppers
A humiliated mum ordered by an overzealous Woolworths employee to pay for groceries bought elsewhere in Pakenham has received an apology, with the supermarket giant conceding “no one deserves to be treated like this”.
South East
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A distraught mum says she was “humiliated” when Woolworths self-serve checkout staff suggested she’d stolen food from the store.
Megan Rogers told Leader an employee at the Pakenham lakeside supermarket made a big and public deal about items at the bottom of her pram that she’d earlier bought in nearby Coles.
Ms Rogers said she was embarrassed and distressed by the incident in which the staff member told her to pay for the items or forfeit them when she couldn’t present a receipt.
“I didn’t have a receipt as I never get them when paying for items,” she said.
Ms Rogers said she visited Coles Village at Lakeside Shopping Centre on Wednesday at 11.30am, to buy some allergen-friendly snacks for her children as she was taking one of them to a doctors appointment nearby at Lakeside Square Medical Centre.
“I quickly grabbed them some snacks so it would get them through until lunchtime,” she said.
“Afterwards at 1pm I went to Woolworths on my way home as I wanted to grab some items for lunch,” she said.
“When I was going through the self-service checkout and about to pay for my items the attendant asked me for a receipt for the others in my pram.”
She told the employee they were from an earlier visit to Coles but said she told her to empty everything from the pram and scan them.
“I was incredibly embarrassed as everyone was watching on and my kids were also screaming,” Ms Rogers said.
“The items did scan up but I kept pleading with them and explaining I bought the items from Coles.
“I also had sunscreen from Aldi and kept saying this is from Aldi – you don’t sell this here.”
Ms Rogers was then told by the worker she had to pay for the items or leave them.
“I asked the worker to please check the cameras as I didn’t even walk into the aisles of the items she was asking me to pay for again,” she said.
“My children were screaming and I was crying my eyes out – I ended up just walking out feeling humiliated.
“The worker then chased me out of the store and gave all my items back to me and said she was just doing her job.”
The mum said she hoped no one else had to go through the same experience.
“It could’ve all been avoided. I hope that no one else has to go through this experience – they need to learn that their customers are human too.”
Woolworths said in a Facebook statement the company was extremely concerned and sorry to hear about Ms Rogers experience at the store.
“We take incidents like this very seriously. We expect the highest level of professionalism from our team so we definitely share your disappointment in this matter as it gives us an insight on ways to improve,” the company said.
“We’ve brought this to the immediate attention of our management team to prevent this from happening again, nobody deserves to be treated like this, we want everyone that comes in to have the best experience.”
A Woolworths spokesman said the retail giant had arranged to meet with Ms Rogers “face-to-face” to apologise and hoped to welcome her back into the store soon.
“Like many retailers, our teams may ask to check customer bags or similar storage devices from time to time in line with our conditions of entry,” the spokesman said.
“We always aim to do this in a respectful and professional way, and we’ve reiterated the importance of this with our team.”