A very unpleasant incident happened to me while I was shopping in the Village Grocer in 1 Mont Kiara on Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 2:00 pm.
While
I was looking at the Olive Oil selection in the store and trying to make a selection, a member of Village Grocer's staff came up to me and said
something to me in what seemed to me as almost incomprehensible English (he seemed to be of Indian/
Pakistani/ Bangladeshi origin).
He looked like he felt he was very important, walking around with a walkie talkie on his belt and he apparently thought that I was doing something “wrong” (pray tell, since when was taking one's own sweet time to try to make a decision on which olive oil to buy very wrong???). Anyway, because he wouldn't go away and leave me alone to make my decision, and was being quite a pest, I had no other choice but to try to understand what this annoying little Indian man was trying to say and after quite some time only did I understand that he was accusing me of doing something which he
deemed was “not allowed”.
Apparently, he thought that I was “taking notes” of the
products. While I do not understand the relevance of the accusation (so what if
a customer wishes to take notes of the products if that is going to result in a better purchase decision on the customer's part and since when is taking notes
of products in a store a crime?), I was, in fact, being the smart consumer that
I am and was using the calculator app on my phone to compare the unit prices between
the different brands of olive oils to help me come to a decision (something which I'm sure is not done in the land that that ill informed Indian man comes from).
I was no doubt discriminated against (fancy being discriminated against by a foreign worker in my own country!) as I’m sure such an accusation
would not have taken place had it been a person of western origin in the same
situation. Having been a loyal shopper of Village Grocer in 1 Mont Kiara, I feel that the incident that took place today is a huge disappointment.
Perhaps it's time I take my business to Cold Storage in Solaris the next time around. At least Cold Storage doesn't employ people just to stand around a accuse customers of whatever they deem inappropriate behaviour. Yes, Village Grocer employs all these Indian staff whose jobs are to just stand around and stare at you (kind of uncomfortable at times trying to shop when your every move is being monitored as if you're some shop lifter). It's a grocery store and not Tiffany's for goodness sakes!!!
