A video emerged months ago, on March 17 showing a group of supermarket workers kicking out an Asian grocery shopper wearing a face mask and her friends.
The woman, who asked not to be named, was grocery shopping with two of her friends at the Metro supermarket on Danforth Avenue in Toronto, Canada, when she was overwhelmed by a group of supermarket workers telling her to leave. Eventually, the group was kicked out by a security guard.
The woman told NextShark that upon entering the supermarket with face masks on, one Caucasian grocery shopper approached the group and reportedly said, “You know those masks don’t work right? I don’t know why you guys have them on but they don’t work. Are you wearing it because you have the virus? Why are you outside when you’re sick?”
The woman reportedly followed the group around, and eventually, the victim said, “Sure, whatever you say, now leave me alone!”
The victim told NextShark, “I let her assume so I can just carry on shopping and have her leave me alone.”
She refused to leave the group alone and brought two employees into the situation. Instead of listening to the victim’s side of the story, the employees immediately jumped to conclusions. One of the employees seen in the video accused the group of telling customers that they had coronavirus (COVID-19), and another employee told them to leave.
After the employees confronted the group, the woman who had originally started the situation left. The victim added in her statement, that the employees mocked the situation, saying that they were “trouble starters” and “little kids videotaping to get more followers on (their) Instagram.” It was a group of people in their mid-20s trying to purchase groceries in peace.
Following the incident, the victim called customer service to report the incident, to which they reportedly said that the store manager would reach out. As of the time of writing, she still has not heard back.
NextShark followed up and also contacted the customer service team at Metro for a statement. The representative stated that he wasn’t even aware that there was an incident on Tuesday.
“I have no idea about that personally, so I don’t have any information on that,” the representative said. “I’m not even aware there was an incident regarding that.”
After the incident, the group was escorted out by a security guard at the Metro supermarket.
