A Black woman from the United Kingdom recorded an encounter with a Bershka store worker, alleging she was racially profiled at the shop after paying for some clothing items.
The video, posted on TikTok by @nelzgarden, was overlaid with text saying, “I’ve never experienced racial profile like this before. This is after she’s searched our bags and seen receipts that’s we’ve PAID!!”
The footage shows the TikToker’s altercation with a staff member at a Bershka retailer. In the video, @nelzgarden accuses the employee of following her and her friend out of the clothing store and shouting at them.
The two are engaged in a back-and-forth about the store worker’s conduct until the employee tells the customers that they’re “free to go.”
“You’re free to go,” the store worker says repeatedly.
“Well, now I’m free to go. I’ll do what I want, you idiot,” the shopper’s friend says.
“The way she’s changed her demeanor – It’s rage bait, and then she wants to do this when I get the camera out,” the female shopper says. “It’s madness, isn’t it?
“And now you’ve just called her on it and she’s running away,” her friend responds.
The store worker is seen walking away from the altercation, and the shoppers are seen finally leaving the store.
The video was posted to TikTok last month and garnered nearly 500,000 views and hundreds of comments, most of which chastised the store worker for her behavior.
“Urgh…shop assistant raising her voice, ensuring all other shoppers get a good earful of her dressing down this lady and actually making the shopper look like a thief infront of others…once she’d inspected the receipts she should have apologised for any inconvenience this may have caused and returned to whatever she was doing,” one person wrote on TikTok.
“Listen I’ve worked in retail before as a manager and honestly I don’t why staff react like this, we don’t get paid enough to be arguing with customers!” another person added.
Several other viral instances have emerged in which retail shoppers have accused staff members of racially profiling them.
Last September, a young Black woman went viral after tearfully recounting her shopping experience at a TJ Maxx in Wisconsin, where she was followed around the store by several staff members while purse shopping with her boyfriend.
That same month, a Black man posted a video of his encounter with a loss prevention employee at a Ross store after the worker accused him of stealing shoes and threatened to call the police, then walked back the accusations.
