Shoplifting Accusations

My husband wanted me to title this post "America's Most Wanted". But I'm sort of a literal kind of gal, and this is a story about false shoplifting accusations.

It all started with this little unassuming kitchen set that I got for Kumi's birthday and the broken green door in particular. After Kumi played with it three times, the green door came off and when I checked the product, the drilled holes were worn out and clearly defective from the start. So last Thursday, I went back to the store to find out their return policy (but didn't have the product with me) and had this unbelievable conversation:

Owner (glaring at me fiercely): "I can give you the manufacturer's phone number but I'm not comfortable doing an exchange for you."

Me (confused): "But your store policy says that you do exchanges and store credit..."

Owner: "I'm going to be honest with you. I don't want you to come to my store any more because you've been stealing from me. I've seen you."

As you can imagine, I was shocked and appalled. So shocked and appalled, I was momentarily stunned into silence.

I need to interject a little history here and in some ways, I am embarrassed by my own foolishness of repeatedly going to the place. This particular children's store is located about 10 blocks from my home. Because of proximity and a good selection of toys, I have shopped there frequently in the last few months. However, I had noticed that the owner seemed to follow me around the store and that she would often respond to my questions in a curt and unprofessional manner. It made me uncomfortable, but I assumed that she was paranoid and lacking in customer service skills. It never crossed my mind that she had pegged me as a shoplifter. In fact, I often thought it was my imagination. This had been going on for months, but again, I was too focussed on the toys than on her.

The one time I couldn't ignore it was when -- after I had purchased the kitchen set -- I was in search of one of those inner tube/float things to take to the local wading pool. I tried all the other stores but no one seemed to carry them, and thought I would cover my bases by asking at the uncomfortable store. I was outside of the shop and saw an employee right by the door so I asked if they carried what I was looking for. The owner immediately came out and yelled "NO!" at me. Her answer was so hostile, her employee flinched as well.

Back to the false accusation. What was reeling through my head was "I wasn't imagining it! She really was horrible to me all those months!" and "She is calling me a thief!!!!!!!" At this point I found my voice and told her how immensely offended I was and that her behavior was unacceptable and that her accusation was completely untrue. She looked at me and said "You know, I'm still not sure. I know someone is stealing from me and I'm just not sure about you. I want to believe you but I just can't."

The whole scene was quite ugly. The worst part (aside from the tears that were now pouring down my face) was that this woman was accusing me in front of my daughter. Kumi was visibly shaken by how upset I was. "I want to go home!!!" she wailed.

The owner went on to claim that she saw me put a pair of shoes in my pocket months ago. She also implied that I had stolen from her multiple times. There are no cameras in the store. There are rarely other customers. Neither one of us could prove anything.

You know, I really tried to understand her perspective. She is a business owner. She has been subjected to shoplifting. She thought she saw something and so decided to keep an eye on me. Yet, when I look back on the way she treated me for months, the way she confronted me, the way she humiliated me and wronged me in front of a child -- my child -- I felt that a very basic sort of human decency was missing in her.

In the end she said she believed me. She apologized. As I stood there racking with sobs, shaking from anger and shock, she offered to exchange that toy.

And then she tried to call the police on my husband when he went to exchange the toy. He left puzzled and even more offended. We still have a broken green door.

So bizarre. Then when I talked to several of my friends about this strange situation, I found out that others had been trailed from room to room at the same store. What was disturbing was that they are all non-Caucasian. Including me. I am still talking to a lot of people, still trying to figure out how someone could possibly accuse a regular customer who has spent hundreds of dollars, still trying to wrap my head around whether this could be some throwback to a pre-Civil Rights era.

I debated whether to write about this. I mean, it's a children's store for crying out loud. It should be a place of wonder and imagination and nostalgia and not a battleground over racial discrimination. After the incident I read about a young woman who died of cancer and I cried big sloppy tears. I know that what happened to me is so minor. I actually feel sorry for that store owner. But I keep going back to that idea of human decency.

What should I do?