Being pregnant is by no means a cake walk; however, one pregnant woman managed to attract the disgruntled attention of the internet after encountering what she felt was a vast injustice.
The internet, with its weather eye on social media for those who think that the world revolves around them, did not agree with her perceived injustice, and called her out for what it saw as entitled behavior. And, it appeared that the store did not exactly share her concerns either.
It seems that one pregnant American woman was shopping in Victoria Secret when she was denied the luxury of skipping the queue… something which she saw as potentially illegal.
As far as the law goes, I really don’t think that not allowing someone to skip the queue due to pregnancy is a thing in the US.
The woman took to the comments section of one of Victoria’s Secrets Instagram page in order to voice her concern and disgust at their behaviour.
In today’s society, social media is such a crucial tool for brands of all sizes. With the rise of this fear of negative feedback on social platforms, social media has become the perfect way for members of the public to voice their concerns with a brand (regardless of how ridiculous) due to the fact that they know brands will do nearly anything to keep their socials positive.
Little sympathy came for the woman, however, as the comment was quickly shared across the internet.
The post was shared with particular vehemence to the Reddit thread, “ChoosingBeggars”, a thread which described itself as for, “stories of people who are being way too picky”.
It was the woman’s protestations of, “You should be ashamed.. what does the law say in USA ??” which garnered most the negative feedback.
As you may be able to imagine, people were less than sympathetic with her plight, with the comment garnering such reactions as:
“Wow, she’s already an entitled parent.”
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“I definitely don’t foresee this woman raising her kid to be a whiny, demanding, spoiled, poorly behaved piranha of a child.”
It wasn’t long before Victoria’s Secret posted a comment replying to the disgruntled customer in an attempt to cool off the situation… and it was everything you’d expect…
The comment may as well have read, “Hey! Thanks for your comment, please have this stock response and now please leave us alone. Thank you.”
The majority of people revelled in the passive aggressive nature of the reply and shared experiences of their own time in customer service…
One person sarcastically responded, “We’ve made sure to forward your feedback with our store leadership, they could use a good laugh.”
While another disgruntled ex-service employee shared their experiences: “As someone who worked in retail, this is likely the case. Lol. We’d get people that drink half a cup of coffee, then leave the unfinished half in the cup, and walk over to customer service demanding a refund just because they didn’t like it.”
However, as strange as this may seem a concept for people in the USA, laws permitting pregnant women to skip queues have been instated in certain countries.
An article published by the Daily Mail last year reported that in Israel a law had been instated which permitted pregnant women to skip to the front of the queue in place which offer a public service.
As it turned out, the law is quite common in most parts of Europe.
One person in the comments pointed out that, “This is actually the law in Brazil— pregnant women, differently abled people, the elderly, etc get to skip lines”.
It is also a law enforced in Portugal, and the penalty for not allowing a pregnant or elderly customer can total a fine of up to €1,000 according to The Portugal News .
Regardless of the rest of the world’s laws, however, the people in the comments were certainly not planning on letting her cut in front of them any time soon.
People jumping a queue is an unavoidably annoying moment; however, if someone asked me with a legitimate reason to jump ahead, I’d probably let them in… although perhaps I’m in the wrong.
Either way, it doesn’t seem like Victoria’s Secret will be revising their queue skipping policy any time soon lest they incur the wrath of the redditors – which was incidentally a working title for the final Harry Potter novel.
h/t: Reddit
