Not Tesco’s Finest (moment)

Wow

That’s shocking. I wonder who made the decision to do that? I honestly can’t see it being a company policy.

The photo shows how awful it was

That's appalling.

The explanation, according to Tesco's initial response, was that "Stores may sometimes use security tags on items which have recently been subject to theft and the decision to do so changes from store to store". When that attracted even more outrage, Tesco blamed "human error", and had the tags removed. But what exactly did the 'human error' entail? Was there not a high level of theft of that product line? Were roughly equal numbers of lighter and darker tones stolen? Were more lighter or darker tones stolen? Whatever; if high levels of thefts were taking place, the 'human error' lay in not anticipating the offence caused by not tagging both tones.

Same in Superdrug in Newcastle. When my DD queried it, they threatened to ask her to leave the store for trouble making.

So I posted several times on their social media about it. Strange how they paid attention to a white woman, but treated a Black woman as just a trouble maker.

I think Tesco must have let their eye drift of the ball. This was also spotted in a branch (won’t say which)

I agree the tags were most likely placed on the items which were frequently stolen, without the computer realising it was racist! Computers work in a logical way and are not capable of racism, so it's humans that have made that assumption.

MawtheMerrier

I think Tesco must have let their eye drift of the ball. This was also spotted in a branch (won’t say which)

?Where's the Argy when you need them?

I agree Chestnut.

Don't get me started on this subject. My husband and l were shopping in Waitrose in our small market town. DH has a number of health problems, needed the loo urgently. He had picked up a bottle of vodka, quickly passed it to me and left the shop.
A few minutes later, a big commotion, the manager had stopped my husband on the way back in and accused him of stealing the vodka.
It seems he had been following him around the shop, seen him pick up the vodka but failed to see him pass it to me.
I tried to explain as DH had lost his temper, manager said, l hadn't realised you were together, I'm white, husband black.
The manager also hadn't bothered to check CCTV, before accusation.
He didn't really apologise, and we left the shop without the shopping.
I got in touch with their headoffice, the manager had to write a letter of apology, plus apologise in person.

I'm sorry you had that nasty experience Mayal but that is genuinely a human issue, whereas the tags are almost certainly a computerised decision and nothing to do with racism. It was perceived as that by humans.

Chestnut But it wasn’t the computer who physically tagged the products. I think it’s very sad, for want of another word, that whoever did do the tagging or the shelf filling didn’t query this.

I imagine shop staff are not paid or expected to question the instructions they've been given. And why should they? Some of the staff I've seen couldn't give a toss, they just throw the items around whilst chatting to their colleagues. It's a bit unrealistic to expect such a high attention to detail from them.

Not very diplomatic. Ok a computer picked the items which had probably walked the most from that store but a human manager must have endorsed it. They probably just didn’t think or realise. The items aren’t that expensive anyway so idk why they had to be tagged which presumably has a cost factor to do as well. I can understand on bottles of spirits.