Mmk. Story time.
As you may know, I'm a Junior in High School. Despite my age minimum being met, I have not started to get my permit/license. Three of my friends are in the same boat. Without going into too many details, attending our school's girl-ask dance counts for points for our class in competition, but since we had no dates, we had to make SOMETHING out of the night. So, our quickest solution was to go grab dinner beforehand. We had an excellent dinner and all that stuff, but since it was a busy night and we still had 2 hours left until we could be picked up to head to the dance, we decided not to waste anymore of the restaurants time.
Only problem was, it started raining hard, so we had to find a roofed place to chill out for two hours. Closest semi-interesting store? Beck's Furniture store. Dripping wet, we entered the small furniture store, and although you may think I'm exaggerating details to lighten my case, we didn't do anything in the store that would've aroused ANY suspicion, other than being wet from rain I suppose. You've all seen those kids that show up to furniture stores and try to sit/climb on everything in the store, but really, we were quietly commenting on everything we saw. I mean, we did call some bedding ugly, but really any buyer would have the same thoughts, and really no employee would've been able to hear us anyways. We're only in the store for MAAAYBE 3 minutes when a manager comes up and seems super suspicious right off the bat.
"Can I help you guys with anything?" she questioned.
"No thanks, we're just looking around to learn more about the furniture market for college," I answered.
"Well, what are you looking for? What do you want to buy?"
"Uhhhhh.... Chairs," my real 'fast thinking' friend spat out.
"I don't think you guys should hang around here," she stated and pointed towards the door.
We definitely weren't causing any trouble, and there's actually been a huge debate among my other friends on who was in the wrong here. Even though we were actually carrying at least $400 at the time of course we weren't going to buy anything, and I think the manager knew that. But since when is window shopping a rejectable offense? Just because we're teenagers and all teenagers are trouble? I really don't understand how this was a potentially smart move for the manager at all. We weren't going to buy anything in the first place, meaning that she had two options.
1. Ignore us, let us window shop and leave.
Pro: We have more knowledge about furniture, and potentially keep Beck's Furniture in the back of our mind for college (in only 2-3 years!)
Con: We might 'steal something!'
Rebuttal: If we were really to steal something, would teenagers really choose a furniture store? How are we going to fit anything in that in a concealed jacket pocket? Couldn't they just investigate and prosecute IF something bad happened?
2. Kick us out of the store
Pro: We can't steal anything or cause any trouble
Con: By stories like this and my friend's Yelp review, the reputation of Beck's is lowered due to their discrimination of teenagers.
I mean this is "hella biased" (in the words of my econ teacher) but if I was running a business and had to assess these two situations, I would choose the first one in a heartbeat!
The manager then watched us leave her store and have to walk 3 blocks in the rain to WalMart (which luckily did not kick us out).
...So that's the story of the time I got kicked out of a furniture store.