This Summer, I Worked As an Assistant Manager for a Clothing Store in a Tourist Town

CI #2, Spring, 2017

This summer, I worked as an assistant manager for a clothing store in a tourist town. We train our employees to ask for customer’s IDs when their credit cards aren’t signed, or if their cards say “see ID” on the back.

One day, two customers came in who were shopping together. One female was white, and the other female was black. The white female’s card had been signed, therefore the cashier didn’t need to ask for her ID. The cashier checked her out and moved onto the black female. When the cashier looked at the back of her card, it said “ C I D”, which the cashier thought was written there in order for people to ask about her ID before checking her out. Both women left with their purchases, and returned shortly after. They came back to the check out counter and stated that they wanted to return their items. The store’s policy is that we don’t accept returns, we only do exchanges or we can put the money on a store credit. The women became very angry, and asked to speak to the manager. When I came behind the counter to deal with the issue, they told me what had happened- the cashier had asked for the black woman’s ID but not the white woman’s ID. The cashier explained to me that the black woman’s ID had “C I D” written on the back, and when I looked at it, her signature did look like “C I D”. I did my best to explain to the upset women that the cashier misunderstood what was written on her card, and reassured them that we weren’t discriminating between them due to the color of their skin.

To me, this is a communication issue because the cashier was doing her job (if you see something that resembles “see ID”, you ask the customer for their ID), and the customers thought that we didn’t trust the black woman/were discriminating between the two shoppers.