I got assualted in Tesco!

joan_brennan

he he this makes me laugh. I have read every post . took me all afternoon. I remember when i was 20 ish and went on a hen night in liverpool. A sister of the "bride to be" was only 17 and was with us. all slaughtered. At the last night club about 6 people got in about 6 still in the que whenthe ticket seller said nah i think this one is under age. although we denied it we thought ok we will leave .asked if i could go in and just gather up the others. ok they said . first two got their entry money refunded but others did not.. suddenly rightious indication ( and 6 gins) kicked in so ... went to nearest phone box to call the police.. i remember being slung in to the back of a black miria stating loudly... i know my constitutional rights.... ha ha drunk and disorderly fine and a night in the cells. but at least i was only a baby and drunk. ah ha maybe op can claimed he too was !!!!ed. I am only that objectionable when eiyher !!!!ed or in the WRONG

pinkshoes

176 posts over a banana??

I too was assaulted in Tesco once. It was when i was little, shopping with my grandparents, and some man got in an arguement with staff (caught trying to shoplift I think - maybe it was a banana?). The staff asked him to leave, and he threw his basket at the member of staff, missed, and it hit me! I cried, they were very nice and gave me free stuff! No police, no fuss, no banana.

Anyway, to have my tuppence worth:

1) The OP committed the first crime by opening the product, AND taking a photo. Two wrongs don't make a right, but if we're being pedantic (it IS a banana after all...), then the OP committed the first two "crimes" here...

2) The bananas were sold at a lower price per kilo as the bags contained some bad ones. By removing the bad banana the OP was attempting to deceive Tesco by getting good bananas at a lower price.

3) We only have 1 side of the story. From what the OP has said, it sounds more like the person merely placed their hand on their shoulder to take the photo equipment off them, which I believe they're entitled to do (Signs usually say "no photography, equipment will be seized"...)

4) IT'S A BANANA!!! OP, why on earth didn't you just choose a bag without a bad one, pay the full price for the good ones, buy some apples, or shop elsewhere?!

It's not 1st April is it? And this whole thing is a wind up to create an amusing post?

superscaper

pinkshoes wrote: »

Anyway, to have my tuppence worth:

1) The OP committed the first crime by opening the product, AND taking a photo. Two wrongs don't make a right, but if we're being pedantic (it IS a banana after all...), then the OP committed the first two "crimes" here...

Neither of which are crimes. I'd love to know which law otherwise. Doing something wrong is a long way from it being a crime.

2) The bananas were sold at a lower price per kilo as the bags contained some bad ones. By removing the bad banana the OP was attempting to deceive Tesco by getting good bananas at a lower price.

Don't think anyone disagrees and he never got them anyway as the transaction never went through.

3) We only have 1 side of the story. From what the OP has said, it sounds more like the person merely placed their hand on their shoulder to take the photo equipment off them, which I believe they're entitled to do (Signs usually say "no photography, equipment will be seized"...)

We do only have one side, but the staff are NOT entitled to lay a finger on him nor are they entitled to take his property. We are talking UK law here aren't we?

4) IT'S A BANANA!!! OP, why on earth didn't you just choose a bag without a bad one, pay the full price for the good ones, buy some apples, or shop elsewhere?!

Most people here would agree and wouldn't have done what the OP did, that still doesn't justify anything the staff did afterwards. The ONLY right the staff had was to ask him to leave and eject him if he refused.

It's not 1st April is it? And this whole thing is a wind up to create an amusing post?

I wondered the same about your interesting new view on UK law.

newmum1

elsien wrote: »

Just wondering how ethnic origin has any relevance at all to this saga - or is that symptomatic of your general attitude?

Iwas just wondering the same thing as i read i thought that there would be a relevance obviously not ................

uktim29

What law is it against to place a hand on someones shoulder?

superscaper

newmum1 wrote: »

Iwas just wondering the same thing as i read i thought that there would be a relevance obviously not ................

I think it was unintentional. I thought the same at first but the OP was simply cutting and pasting the entire complaint, so it was for the receiver of the complaint's benefit not ours. In which case if you're trying to give a physical description to identify someone then it seems appropriate. But it isn't relevant here, so it's not about why the OP wrote it in the first place but why he didn't edit/censor it out when he copied the text. But these things can slip by if you're copying entire passages. I know on other forums I've accidentally left in someone's name when I'd thought I'd blanked it from the entire document I was copying.

superscaper

uktim29 wrote: »

What law is it against to place a hand on someones shoulder?

Well we weren't there so we don't know the exact context but if it were under the context of trying to grab him then the member of staff had no legal right to do that unless performing a citizen's arrest. If it were merely to attract someone's intention then there's no problem but it doesn't seem likely the staff member would only want to get his attention, simply talking would have been enough.

Apparently the legal term is mens rea common assault which can cover simply physical contact. It's common law in England and Wales and assault covers any form of physical contact without consent. There are exceptions for certain social behaviour but they wouldn't apply here because the member of staff was a stranger to the OP and the circumstance of the "hand on shoulder" grab.

peterbaker

uktim29 wrote: »

...Apparently anyone over the age of 40 won't be happy with discounted Bananas because their not perfect. Apparently as soon as you get to 40 you become a supermarket inspector...

Nah, I started watching what I bought from supermarkets when I was much younger than that ! And I started rubbing noses in some of it when I realised that some unwise staff use it surreptitiously as an economic 'dump' for goods which are no longer of merchantable quality. I have come to believe that there is a mismanaged, department-performance-related, self-serving reason why some do that instead of throwing over-ordered stuff away, or reducing it much earlier.

They risk contaminating other merchantable goods when they do so. So often they mix raw fish with cooked meat, which shows a particularly high level of all-pervasive dimwittedness. I've even watched a regular fish counter guy in Asda once remove a broken pack of loose scallops which had spilled into the bottom of a chiller counter and shovel them into another pack, re-wrap them in a heap of clingfilm, reprice them, using the fish counter cutting board as a work surface for the whole operation, and then start heading to the reduced counter. He didn't get there because I challenged him on a series of counts.

Actually I do find the fish counter and produce sections to be the biggest culprits in poor hygiene. The fish counters very often extra wrap the fish in layers of clingfilm so you cant smell the stink until you pick up the pack and inadvertently it leaks onto your hand. And many produce counters seem to have very little understanding of such things as the poison in green potatoes and in the mould on 'over ripe' fruit.

I agree that some people like overripe bananas, but in our decades-old supermarket self-serve produce section model where customers are actively invited to sift through loose fruit and 'cherry pick', the use of a flimsy plastic bag to 'hide' a particularly overripe otherwise loose banana amongst others is itself a questionnable tactic and again demonstrates questionnable attitudes to trading. The flimsy bag is no barrier to a discerning cherry-picking shopper or supermarket inspector of course :money: .

pinkshoes

superscaper wrote: »

I wondered the same about your interesting new view on UK law.

pinkshoes wrote: »

The OP committed the first crime by opening the product, AND taking a photo. Two wrongs don't make a right, but if we're being pedantic (it IS a banana after all...), then the OP committed the first two "crimes" here...

Hence my use of inverted commas my dear superscaper. I do also state my sarcastic nature in my foot note...

If the supermarket states no photography, then the OP was the one who "committed a crime".

This whole saga is laughable and an utter waste of the taxpayer's money!

superscaper

pinkshoes wrote: »

If the supermarket states no photography, then the OP was the one who "committed a crime".

But he didn't commit an actual crime, at worst he violated the store's policy. That's got nothing to do with law, I hadn't realised you'd intended to put quotations around "crime" in :"The OP committed the first crime by opening the product, AND taking a photo". So it was a bit ambiguous whether you meant a metaphorical crime or not. I agree he was wrong but he broke no law and at worst he should have been asked to leave.

Besides, which supermarkets do you go to out of interest? Because I honestly can't remember going into one where I've seen a photography prohibited sign.

I'm not saying I condone the actions of the OP to begin with or his actions at the end by going to the police. But the actions of the staff shouldn't be condoned either because they were technically breaking the law and they're the ones in any dispute who should be acting professionally and not exacerbate the situation. I agree this entire situation is over just a banana but the store could have easily defused the situation but instead decided to escalate with someone that obviously finds it easy to make mountains out of molehills. The OP was in the wrong, so ban him from the store that's the end of it. But the staff were also completely wrong but they'll still be there in the store dealing with thousands more customers yet.