According to the store’s surveillance footage and the saleswoman’s account, the young mother manoeuvred a stroller around the store. The saleswoman asked the customer not to push the stroller around the store. She explained that shirts and suits were hanging low and that the stroller’s wheels could soil them. She therefore asked the customer to leave the stroller a little farther away, where it would not touch the clothes.
At the time, the saleswoman was serving two customers who testify that she was kind to the mother, behaved very professionally and confirmed that the customer was the rude one.
The surveillance footage shows the young woman taking the stroller out of the store and returning without it. Witnesses say that she had someone to leave the child with.
The customer describes what happened differently.
Hello, I wanted to share with you the sad story that happened to me and my eight-month-old daughter today. I went shopping at the shopping centre intending to buy a bow tie for my fiancé’s suit. After entering the store, the saleswoman informed me that I could not enter with a stroller because clothes were hanging near the floor and I might soil them. She told me to leave my daughter at the entrance and go shopping by myself. At that moment I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. It was the first time I had encountered such treatment. I asked whether the saleswoman was joking; in response, I heard that I could not stay there with the stroller.
I asked for the store owner’s telephone number so that I could ask whether such rules applied in her store. I did not see any sign saying that strollers were not allowed inside (I would avoid such a store by a wide margin). The woman refused several times, replying that she was not authorised to provide it.
[...] in response to my questions about whether the woman would take responsibility for what might happen to my daughter. Did she not realise that a child might become frightened if I were not within her line of sight? What if, God forbid, a stranger approached the stroller? The woman merely replied that I could not stay there with the stroller; she was very rude. I find it incomprehensible that young mothers should be treated this way in the 21st century. Do I have to arrange childcare just to go to a store? I said that it would be difficult for me to shop with my child in my arms. I left the store with nothing, apart from the unpleasant feeling that remained. In my view, such a ban violates one of the fundamental constitutional principles: equal treatment. No one may be discriminated against in political, social or economic life for any reason. The laws in force in Poland expressly prohibit discrimination in access to goods and services.
The shopping-centre management responded to the customer’s complaint immediately, apologised to her and offered her any bow tie. The customer declined the gift; as she wrote to us, her intention was to draw attention to the poor treatment of mothers in the 21st century.