Small victory after supermarket encounter
A chance encounter at a grocery store unites three women against discrimination
“Do you have enough money to pay for what you are getting?”
This is not the usual greeting for customers whose turn has come at a supermarket checkout. It was the first thing Crystal Stone and her sister Odera Wapass heard when they started putting items on the belt at the Saskatoon Superstore on Thursday.
The clerk was curt and demanding, Stone says, and insisted she lift heavy items to be scanned, even though a nearby cashier said they could be entered using a code.
As the interaction continued, Stone felt sure the way she and her sister were treated was because she is Indigenous. The clerk said she asks everyone if they can pay for their items, but Stone did not hear the question posed to either person in front of her or behind her.
The stranger behind the register was acting in a way that was hard to absorb. Her hostility was confusing. But Stone would soon meet another stranger who would help restore her faith that there are also good people in the world.
Wanda Friesen was in front of Stone in the line. As she packed her groceries, she heard the question asked by the clerk, was shocked by the tone used and decided to take a stand against what she also saw as a clear example of racism.
“Because I happened to be born with white skin and blond hair, the cashier didn’t ask me if I had enough money to pay for my groceries. But because the lovely lady behind me had brown skin and brown eyes, the cashier did. She asked this lovely lady if she had enough money to pay for her groceries — twice. That woman humiliated her, and she infuriated me,” Friesen wrote in a Facebook post sharing Stone’s story online.
“Yesterday, I experienced what it means to have white privilege — and it brought me to tears.”
Friesen was looking for the pair when Stone and Wapass came through the exit.
“After our purchase we walked out of superstore, upset and shocked ... it didn’t make sense. Here was Wanda waiting for us outside,” Stone says. “It gave me a different perspective right there ... Not everyone is a racist.”
After clarifying what happened, Freisen offered to go with the young women to report the incident to store management. Together, they walked back into the store to take a stand.
The selfie the trio took after reporting the incident shows they had found joy in spite of the difficult situation they encountered. Freisen has one sister on either side of her, and they are all smiling widely. As a team, they bonded quickly.
“We hugged each other,” Stone says, adding this was the first time she had experienced this kind of apparent racism first hand, although she knows it occurs every day.
“I gained a life skill and a lesson,” she says. “It has to matter to everybody.”
Stone hopes that hearing this story will help others be willing to step up and take action in the face of injustice. She admits she did not fully realize this herself until going through that checkout on Thursday. Loblaws, the parent company of Superstore, was asked about the incident and issued a carefully worded response expressing regret.
“We are committed to diversity and to being inclusive, equitable and accessible in our interactions with each other and with our customers, and the experience as described does not reflect our core values,” the statement reads, pointing out that a manager apologized immediately after the incident.
“We are taking this very seriously and using this opportunity to remind all staff of our protocols and processes in order to ensure we continue to learn and improve our interactions with our customers.”
This story gives us all a chance to check our own “protocols and processes.” What will we do when faced with this kind of situation? Racism exists, and rather than simply be discouraged, we need to believe taking action will make a difference.