Cape Town - A grandmother and her young grandson were berated and humiliated at Pick n Pay Town Centre in Mitchells Plain on Saturday after he allegedly broke a chocolate in the store.
Subsequent pictures of the two, sitting on cold tiles, holding on to each other, with fear on their faces, caused a social media outcry.
The image, which was posted by several neighbourhood Facebook pages, alleges the elderly woman and her grandson were made to sit on the floor of Pick n Pay’s Town Centre store in front of other customers while they were berated by the manager and security guard.
A number of people posted to the retailer’s Facebook Page and received the standard “we are looking into the matter” response, then later that they were trying to identify the woman and child so that they could apologise.
One of the posts was from Kaylin Grace: ”They never contact us and we don’t even have food to eat because my mom was too traumatised and is still laying in bed.”
Provincial store general manager Jarett van Vuuren apologised for the incident and said they were investigating.
“This incident was unacceptable and we are very sorry for any distress caused. We are trying to identify and contact the family concerned to apologise to them. We are urgently investigating the incident with our franchisee who runs this store, to understand the circumstances and take the necessary steps to ensure it never happens again,” he said.
Shameemah Davids and Badroen Cassiem wrote that Pick n Pay’s response seemed to be a copy-and-paste version.
Dawn Heather Swanepoel wrote: “How many times have I bought chocolates from PnP stores and they are broken. This poor people are scarred for life, this is not something anyone can forget.
“You want to tell me all they are going to get is a simple apology… I would never sit back and just accept an apology.”
Cape Times