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We were wrong‚ Pick n Pay apologises to granny

Pick n Pay customer director Jonathan Ackerman apologised profusely on Tuesday for a “horrible incident that got out of control” at a store in Cape Town involving a grandmother‚ her grandson and a broken chocolate bar.

There was an outcry on social media over photographs of Iris Beukes‚ 59‚ and her grandson Tylo‚ 5‚ crying on the floor of a store in Mitchells Plain. The diabetic granny collapsed after being threatened with arrest by a security guard because the boy broke a Dairy Milk bar inside its wrapper.

Speaking on CapeTalk radio‚ Ackerman said: “It’s just a horrible incident that got out of control very quickly. We do millions of transactions every day and sometimes we get something wrong‚ and we got this wrong.”

The manager of the store‚ he said‚ had been “dealt with severely“.

He said staff needed to be sensitive to the situation at hand. Although people could not be allowed to damage products‚ “I think sometimes people are overzealous‚” he said.

“You have got to look at the situation independently and individually every time. There is a tiny little kid involved. I just wish the store manager had taken R10 out of his pocket and said‚ ‘Don’t worry‚ we’ll pay for it’.”

Beukes said the security guard told her that she had to pay for the chocolate‚ but she did not have enough money. A floor manager then told her‚ “If you don’t buy this chocolate‚ then you must go to jail. The child must go to social services. I’m coming to fetch him.” She fainted and regained consciousness on the floor with Tylo holding onto her.

Ackerman said the situation could have been handled better.

“The manager came out. The granny was very distressed and he picked her up and he put her on a chair. There were a lot of people around the situation and it got quite unpleasant.

“He managed to cool the situation down. Could it have been handled better? Absolutely. It was a mistake by the store. There was a very distressed elderly lady there and we don’t like that. Unfortunately on social media the story just built and built. We just asked the granny to pay for the chocolate. I wish the store manager had not done that‚” he said.

Pick n Pay have offered counselling to Beukes.

 

 

 

 

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