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Monday, March 29, 2004At Summit Mall last month, it was the day a ruckus over a sliver of chicken sandwich sent a regular shopper into yearlong exile and sparked a call for reinforcements from Fairlawn police that authorities have since tried to keep quiet. But Jean Coleman -- the 71-year-old Akron woman at the epicenter of it all -- has a different idea. She wants the whole world to know that the threat that brought nearly half of Fairlawn's fleet of police cruisers to the mall's defense began when her 68-year-old sister asked a restaurant worker for a second helping of a chicken sandwich sample. The paper presents a completely one-sided version of the incident, complete with crazy all-capital letter writing: All of a sudden, this woman was yelling: `YOU ATE THAT! YOU CAN'T HAVE ANOTHER ONE!' '' Coleman -- who is 5 foot 4 and 130 pounds -- rushed to the aid of her little sister. Both women took their stand in front of the sample lady who was guarding what remained of the chicken sandwich slivers. And Coleman admits, she yelled right back. ``I told her, `I DON'T CARE IF YOU GIVE IT TO US! YOU'RE NOT WORTHY TO GIVE IT TO US!' '' More than a month later, Coleman is still seething. She sure is. Seething so much she's managed to convince the newspaper to publish her wrath in a big above the fold page one story. It's a story the newspaper loves to tell. The little guy vs. the big bad corporate meanies (the mall, in this case.) There's got to be more to this story than the little old lady is telling, though. She must have been pretty abusive if the security guard asked her to leave. And she must have been doubly abusive to the security guard if he had to call the police to get her to leave. And as it turns out, she was: Actually, even shoplifting isn't sufficient misconduct to cause a customer to be banned from shopping for a year, said Summit Mall Manager John Vavrus. ``If something happens in a store,'' he said, ``it's usually between the tenant and the customer.'' Fairlawn police were called to the fracas, Vavrus said, to end the very public confrontation because ``we were trying to be compassionate.'' ....At Charley's Steakery, a woman who said she was a manager but would identify herself only as ``Rose'' said she was not sure she could talk about restaurant rules regarding free samples. ``I do respect all the older people,'' Rose said. ``They're our customers and our job is to be nice to them.'' But she said Coleman ``went berserk.'' ...The Fairlawn police report describes Coleman as an ``irate customer'' who was ``very argumentative with both officers.'' Although the paper treats this as a little guy vs. the big guy story, this woman was actually abusive to several people who are probably lower on the economic food chain than she is, (The mall in question is in a very high-priced neighborhood) - the restaurant employee, the security guard, and the two policemen. Now, there is absolutely no reason that any business should allow customers to abuse their staff. This woman deserves to be banned from the mall. There are plenty of other places to shop around here and maybe, just maybe, with the knowledge that she can be banned for bad behavior from shopping in any of them, she'll behave herself next time. posted by Sydney on 3/29/2004 08:04:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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