A pregnant woman named Sherell Bates was forced to lift up her shirt and confirm that she is indeed pregnant after a Staples manager accused her of stealing school items.
Staples has fired the manager who wrongly accused Bates of shoplifting.
Bates is 34 weeks pregnant with twins — a boy and a girl — and recently she took her two older children to a North Carolina Staples to buy school supplies.
While picking up back-to-school goods at the Staples located in Pineville, North Carolina, a police officer walked up to Bates and asked her if she had plans to pay for the items she had hidden under her shirt.
The mother, who has a good sense of humor, assumed that the cop was joking with her.
Bates told the officer she was carrying “twins,” but the answer did not amuse him.
Bates decided to solve the matter once and for all by showing her bare bump.
Talking to local media, the woman explained: “At which point, to avoid him asking me again, I lifted my shirt just a little bit, just to expose my belly, so he could see that I’m just a regular pregnant person buying school supplies.”
The pregnant lady confronted the worker who claimed she was shoplifting and she insisted that she saw another woman hiding items under her shirt and assumed she was doing the same. Bates is not having it.
She went on to say: “You pretty much jumped the gun without any evidence, except my stomach is enormous. That’s not fair. No mom should have to go through that.”
Staples was quick to issue a lengthy apology and sincerely said race did not play a part in the incident: “Yesterday at our Pineville location, while a customer was shopping, a manager mistakenly thought they were possibly shoplifting and asked a police officer who happened to be in the store to talk with the customer. After a quick conversation, the issue was resolved, the manager apologized to the customer and refunded their transaction due to the inconvenience.”
The statement concluded by: “At Staples, we want all customers to feel welcome in our store and work with our store associates to try and foster an inclusive culture. As an organization, we would like to apologize to the customer if that was not the case in this instance.”
Bates is thinking about suing.
