My complaint:
This afternoon while shopping at Tesco at Surrey Quays Shopping Centre in Rotherhithe, I was innocently waiting in a queue minding my own business, waiting for my turn to pay for my shopping. I was even still wearing a face covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as I got to the front of said queue awaiting a free till, a youth came by and asked if he could jump the queue.
Now earlier in the day, I shopped at another establishment where people had continuously jumped the area where the queue is supposed to be and was still reeling from what happened then, this however did mean that I lost my temper somewhat and yelled at the youth, to jump the queue. I have autism and felt very conflicted about the situation. Really, he shouldn’t have asked me to jump the queue and should have waited his turn like everyone else. However, feeling pressured I allowed him to jump it, before yelling out he was an ‘idiot’. This in turn made the youth’s father approach me. When he angrily confronted me, I did the same, asking the man that if he could actually see the long queue of people behind me. This was when Tesco staff finally stepped in, to assumingly depend the queue jumpers, with a working telling me to calm down or I’ll have to leave.
This was the last straw, nobody could see that I was the victim here, so I threw down my shopping basket unto the floor and walked away from the queue and headed for the exit. Though due to there being many people at the store I had to take a long way around to avoid any confrontation from other shoppers, of whom I did not want to disturb, as well as to get my head together over what happened. When I got to the exit, I asked staff how I could make a formal complaint, before being told to leave. I even offered to pay for any damaged goods, but they just simply told me to leave. The person with autism who got upset because of queue jumpers that Tesco were still happy to defend, over someone who had been shopping at that store for more than 30 years.
This is quite frankly disgusting behaviour and the poor showing that Tesco Surrey Quays is in serious decline. People have often complained about the lack of work done at this store to maintain their shelves, but if they treat their customers like this, people who are loyal and follow the rules by treating them poorly in favour of rude and obnoxious people because they just want to pay and leave, well then that just says an awful lot for that store and it doesn’t make the Tesco company overall look good by comparison. Fortunately, things didn’t go too far, but this was still a very unfortunate incident which should have been avoided if these queues were properly monitored and the rules adhered too.
Suggested solution:
I'm probably likely going to get nothing out of this. I just want people to be wary of whom they are dealing with and that Tesco should learn to treat more loyal costumers with respect to avoid an innocent like this from happening ever again.
