It’s Alberta, which is Canada’s answer to Texas, but your point still stands.
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True enough.
“Fiddlesticks y’all” – fixed
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I imagine it has to do with the age of criminal responsibility in Canada, which is 12. A crappy cost-benefit analysis by a retail consultant probably told them to do it.
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Short and sweet.
- Neither the store manager nor the mall employee had legal justification to detain the minor and could be open to civil torte action from the father. (I think the abduction count just hit +1)
- Any store who retains the services of such an officious blowhard isn’t a store I would recommend we patronize. To support their business is to support their actions.
- Did I mention I just filed for a LEGO Franchise? (I wish!!)
=P
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I wonder what their legal defense was. Where I come from you can kick kids out of your store for violating made-up rules, but you aren’t allowed to kidnap them.
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Duplon, on the other hand, sounds like some sort of elementary particle of overpriced but awesome plastic building blocks.
Odd… I’m getting this weird repressed memory, something about having to build more… Duplons? And a deep sense of terror and respect… for the Nerg?
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Well, we sure as hell aren’t using YOU as an example of what is appropriate or not. Your parents were so bad they let you worship Satan.
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If they just said “children must be supervised”, fair enough-- kids can be destructive, and stores are allowed to impose rules to make their jobs easier.
What’s fucked up is telling someone that breaking your self-interested rules makes them a bad parent. We seem to have lost the ability to understand that sometimes we’re the bad guy, so any time our job requires us to act like a jerk, we warp reality to explain how it’s the victim’s fault. I used to see this all the time when I worked in local government, and my colleagues were all “why are these people so hostile when I’m just doing my job collecting their taxes / closing their library / putting their children into foster care?”
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I worked retail for almost 10 years at a store that caters to a very similar demographic as the Lego store. Here’s some things I noticed:
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We’re reading one side of the story. The customer is just as likely to be wrong as the employee. I’ve witnessed conversations between customers and coworkers and overheard one side retelling the story a minute later and changing everything. These quotes from the manager are more likely to be based on how the father felt rather than based on what was actually said.
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Having unsupervised children in your store sucks. Some parents treat retail employees like babysitters, and will blame the store if their child is hurt or gets lost. I watched a man scream at my coworker for an hour because his unsupervised child (who was at least 12) lost an iPod in our store and it was stolen by another kid. This father may believe the rule is unnecessary for his son, but he shouldn’t be treated differently than everyone else.
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It’s very likely that the store’s standard procedure for lost or unattended children is to call mall security. Again, this is because a store is not a babysitter, not because they suspected the kid of shoplifting. If the dad didn’t show up when he did, security’s most likely next step would have been to call the dad on the mall PA system to pick up his kid.
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He claims his son was “detained”, but I smell hyperbole. They were still inside the Lego store, not in a back room at the security office. The guard was called there to watch his son so the Lego employees could get back to their job. If the guard wasn’t letting his son leave the store, it’s because most parents would hold the store or mall liable if something happened to him. I can’t speak to the legality of the guard’s actions, but Lego really has nothing to do with the policies of mall security at this point.
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Stores are allowed to have rules that aren’t posted. Asking a store to post every rule on the door is a common request from customers who are told “no” for any reason. Most parents don’t leave kids under 11 at the store, so there’s no reason to alert everyone to this rule. There wasn’t a rule posted on the door to my store that said “No urinating on the walls of this store”, but that didn’t stop a fully-grown adult from doing it while his wife and kid browsed, and it didn’t stop us from kicking him out of the store. Posting every rule would require the largest door in the world.
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A specific cutoff had to be set for the age so it could be applied equally to everyone as a consistent policy. Any age they chose would be subject to the same criticisms. “No children under 9? What’s so different between a kid at 8 and one at 9?”
TL:DR: Store policies are often the sad but necessary result of the actions of other customers. This reads like the same one-sided overreaction I’ve seen from many customers when they are told that they can’t get their way.
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…okay, I’m stumped. what’s that a reference to?
Welcome to the BBS. Thanks for sticking up for the retailer, they need all the help then can get!
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"If I have to explain THAT to you, then you shouldn’t be a parent.”
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I hope the Germans come and brick up the door.
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One might argue that if the policy is germane to who is or is not permitted in the store and under which circumstances then the policy should be presented at the door.
Or this: “We don’t serve your kind in here”
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You’ll have to excuse me for not believing a customer’s indemonstrable claims on the sole basis that they’re mad at a retailer. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon with your help - after all, the customer is always right!
Or you could do research and see that not only has the same store been letting him shop there alone for two years, the staff jokes about how he’ll be able to get a job there. This kid was a known quantity with two hundred dollars to spend.
http://candydirectnews.com/lego-store-detains-11-year-old-boy-for-shopping-without-an-adult-calgary/
What’s being taught here is to lie to storekeepers next time when the real problem is arbitrarily establishing rules after the fact to cover your ass.
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Why would a store clerk have to “look after” an 11-year-old or any kid old enough to be on their own?
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Thank god the British import store that used to be in Chinook Centre didn’t have that same policy 20 years ago, or where would I have got my Panda Shandy fix?
Also, I’ve lived in Calgary for over 30 years, I don’t recall EVER hearing of a kid getting abducted from Chinook Centre. Which isn’t to say it has NEVER happened, but it’s certainly not an epidemic.
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Totally meant to reply to the main post and not aikimo’s post. Whoops.
*Results may vary depending on skin color
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