Fredericton — The Regent Mall has been overrun with shoppers all month and one frustrated patron is planning to lodge a complaint with Sport Chek over the fact that he had to wait in line to purchase a hoodie for his son.
“Ten people in line ahead of me and only 4 cashiers working — ridiculous,” recalled Gerald Hartley of Burtts Corner. “I had to wait about an hour and a half to buy this shirt for my son, who I don’t even like that much.”
The Manatee was shown video surveillance footage proving Hartley was actually in line for just over 7 minutes.
“Even so, that’s still unacceptable. They shoulda been calling more people in to work the cashes,” argued Hartley. “In fact, I didn’t even see any more cash registers at all — the whole outfit is in shambles apparently.”
Mary Mason was patiently waiting in line behind Hartley when he demanded to speak to a manager.
“He just started breathing really heavily and then shouting at the top of his lungs,” recalled Mason who was also buying some Christmas gifts. “He wasn’t even directing his yelling at anyone in particular — just yelling something like ‘get me the manager!'”
Mason said Hartley tried to make small-talk with her to pass the time, but she felt uncomfortable because of his obvious anger.
“He kept complaining bout having to wait and saying that there should be more cashiers on, but the line wasn’t even that big and they had every cash open. I just pretended to be texting someone and ignored him as best I could.”
The manager on duty at the time was Briana Rose, who described Hartley as “unreasonable” and “smelly.”
“I actually encountered him a while before that specific incident,” she said. “He was looking for a shirt that was in the Walmart flyer and asked if we would price match. I tried explaining that we don’t sell that brand of shirt and we can’t match something we don’t sell, but he kept insisting that I go check out back. So, I walked into the back room and just waited there for a minute to humour him, and came back out empty-handed.”
“I asked to speak to the owner and what do they send me? A little girl who says she’s the manager on duty,” explained a still-agitated Hartley. “I told her that I would take my complaint straight to head office and asked her what her name was.”
Hartley ended by telling our reporter that, “Sport Chek needs to get their shit together if they expect me to spend 20 bucks here every year — next time I’ll be taking my business to Cleve’s.”