‘You can’t tell me I can’t, Alice’: Customer says Joann Fabrics worker refused to let her leave the store with fabric
Life is a spectrum, ranging from the highest highs to the lowest lows. Customers in retail may find that they happen upon employees and staff members experiencing everything in between.
One Joann Fabrics customer has taken to TikTok to share an experience she had with an employee who ended up screaming at her when she attempted to cancel an online order in favor of picking up the fabric she needed the same day.
In a video that has drawn over 290,000 views, TikToker Karragen (@karragen) says she went to the fabric and crafts store about an hour before closing, in anticipation of her same-day pickup order being ready. Her plans were to check whether her pickup order would be ready before closing or if it might be easier to cancel it and just go to the fabric section herself and have the length she wanted cut.
"I go up to the register and I'm like, 'Oh, so look I placed a mobile order,' and she's like, 'When did you place it?'" she says in the video. "I was like, 'Oh, way earlier today.' She told me it's not going to be ready until tomorrow. I was like, 'Can we cancel it, will that be too much of an issue? And then I'll just go to the back of the store.'"
Then Karragen says the employee she was speaking to took offense, asking her what she expected her to do, as she was just one person.
"She's like, 'I'm one person, what do you think I'm going to do, cut it for you?'" she recalls. "I was like, Alice, why are you screaming at me? I'm trying to help you here. I'm trying to say just cancel it, I'll go have it cut, and I'll check out right now. Every time I tried saying 'that's not what I'm saying,' she's literally getting louder."
She says she chose to de-escalate the situation and stopped reacting to the employee, which just made her more upset. The employee then began telling her that she would under no circumstances be leaving the store with any fabric that day. However, after she finishes checking out with the disgruntled person, she is able to obtain the fabric she came to the store for from another employee—while being yelled at by the former.
"I am refusing to engage," she says. "I am not fighting with this woman, she is clearly having a bad day."
The Daily Dot has reached out to Karragen and to Joann Fabrics via email regarding the video.
Multiple viewers shared that although they normally would not take such a path of action, they would be asking for a manager after the interaction.
"Asking to speak to the manager feels so much like tattling, but daaaaang would I be tempted to get Alice in trouble!" one commenter wrote.
"I'm not one for talking to the manager but.... the way I would be RUNNING to them after this interaction lmao," another said.
"I would have looked at the fabric person and asked if it was possible for a manager to check me out," a third claimed.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post ‘You can’t tell me I can’t, Alice’: Customer says Joann Fabrics worker refused to let her leave the store with fabric appeared first on The Daily Dot.