A great-grandmother has been barred from every Sainsbury’s and Argos store in the UK after behaving ‘inappropriately’ towards staff.
Rita Seymour said she was accused by shopkeepers of ‘pinching’ items before being permanently banned from shopping at every one of the group’s 1,500 stores nationwide.
The 79-year-old from Hook, Hampshire, allegedly abused staff on multiple occasions, including during an altercation while she was buying a EuroMillions ticket.
Mrs Seymour had asked several times to buy lottery tickets after completing her food shopping when a staff member told her colleague on her headset she had been rude to her.
The grandmother-of-four and great-grandmother-of-two admitted to having knocked a body-worn camera out of the shopkeeper’s hand as she tried to activate it.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
The following day she was given a letter saying her invitation to shop at Sainsbury’s and Argos stores as well as use their car parks and petrol stations had been ‘permanently withdrawn’.
The decision means Mrs Seymour can no longer use her local superstore in Hook, where she spends between £80 and £100 on groceries.
She now faces a 30-minute walk to Tesco instead.
However the pensioner, who previously worked in customer service, denied she was a ‘troublemaker’ and said the ban had left her ‘dumbfounded’.
Mrs Seymour also denied being involved in any other altercations with staff in the store.
She said: ‘It’s really upset me, I’ve done nothing wrong.
‘It’s a horrible thing to feel inside, I can’t go in there anymore. It’s like being a criminal.’
‘I have been so dumbfounded. I was shaking when I left there; I could have cried’, she added.
‘They have knocked my confidence, I felt like hiding away, I didn’t know who to turn to make it right.’
A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s said: ‘We want everyone to feel welcome when they shop with us and our colleagues work hard to create a positive in store experience.
‘We take any form of abusive and inappropriate behaviour seriously, and following a number of incidents over time, a decision was taken to withdraw this individual’s right to shop at our Hook store.
‘This action was not taken lightly, but the safety and wellbeing of colleagues and customers always come first.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.