Kicked Out of Krogers?!..

Last week I was in Kroger's barefoot just the same as any other day. I have never been admonished in Kroger's before about not wearing shoes so I was totally shocked when the manager of the store approached me and told me I had to leave. I said, "Are you serious?!" He said, "I'm very serious" anyway it turned into this huge scene him saying he could get in a lot of trouble I'm like whatever I'll leave... so I walk off to find my friends so that I can give them money to pay for the cartload of stuff we were buying. I find them and hand them my check card and the manager walks up with SECURITY to escort me out of the grocery store. I was absolutely furious about this because I've never been kicked out of ANYWHERE in my town for being barefoot. Has anybody had this experience at Kroger's? I'm thinking I'm going to send a letter to HQ and complain about the way I was treated. I was under the impression that there are no laws restricting a patrons right to be shoeless in any establishment in Ohio. I just called my local health department to see if there are any local ordinances giving businesses the right to kick you out. I could understand if I was drunk or something acting a fool. But being barefoot? why is society so terrified by the prospect of naked feet? Really? there are more important issues to be concerned about. why waste time policing grocery stores for people with no shoes!?

 

While there are no laws against being barefoot, private establishments reserve the right to refuse service. Although civil rights and equal access laws exist to protect minorities and disabled individuals from arbitrary or even inadvertent discrimination, barefooting (like being a hippie) is unfortunately all too often considered a "lifestyle" and so is considered devoid of any legal protection.

One way to handle this is with your wallet and with your "pen" (digital or actual). Boycott the establishment, tell all your friends to avoid it, and use public forums, such as the local paper to discourage others from patronizing it (you needn't necessarily mention barefooting in a local letter to the editor, merely indicate that the management is not customer-friendly and has very poor customer service. This may deter more folks, regardless of their opinion of barefooting; remember, you are in the USSA). Shop exclusively with other, barefoot-friendly stores in your area and help promote them as much as possible.

Another option is to get a letter from a doctor indicating that you must remain barefoot for health reasons. This would allow you to claim protection under anti-discrimination laws for individuals with disabilities. Bring it with you for a visit along with a lawyer friend in a suit with a briefcase and make the manager sweat bullets! If he kicks you out again, then you get the pleasure of suing the holy living crap out of the entire chain for violating the ADA

 

Don't bother sending them any kind of e-mail. They say they will contact you by phone (after a return e-mail) and then do not contact you. Like most big corporations, they don't really care about their customers.

 

You may have erred when you walked off to find your friends without announcing this intention to the manager.

He was following procedure. It sounds like a miscommunication rather than him taking an attitude towards you.

Most businesses can refuse you service for no reason at all. Its their legal right to do so. As stated above, there are exceptions to the law.

Maybe keep a pair of flip flops handy for those "other" occasions? You can stash them in your waistband if they're needed


x

 

My local Kroger affiliate has one of those NSNSNS signs on their door. I wonder if yours does, but they just failed to enforce it until now. It's really too bad that America is like this

 

I have not had a problem with Kroger, I have been in there several times barefoot. I was asked at the service dept. at the auto dealership to start wearing shoes when I have my car serviced for "insurance reasons". I spoke with the dealership manager but no luck. I was barefoot when I test drove and bought the car and there was no problem then.

 

awesome idea with the dr.'s note. i bet i could totally get my doctor to do that.. well i'm shooting out an email tomorrow that i've gotten together but boy does that dr. note sound so much more appealing. i called the health dept this morning to ensure that there are no ordinance in my area hating on feet. so then like two hours later i was at subway and that manager came out and told me i couldnt be in there because the health dept says you have to have shoes in businesses. i said no it does not i just talked to them couple hours ago to which she replied honey i'm trained by the health department i know the rules... whatever give me my damn salad..haters

 

File a formal complaint wtih the corporate office for sexual harassment; she has no right to address a customer by a demeaning term such as "honey", regardless of provocation or lack thereof. If you push hard enough and spend $20 to have a lawyer draft a formal letter of complaint, chances are she'll be fired for violating corporate policy and possibly local and/or state ordnances.

Get a formal letter from the health department and bring it with you next time, regardless of the status of your complaint. You may also wish to contact corporate, as I'm fairly certain that there is no corporate policy against customers in bare feet.

 

You are right, most of the time. I had one notable exception last summer at the Rite Aid pharmacy in Bar Harbor. No one ever hassled me there, but one day there was suddenly a shoes required sign. I found a contact on the Rite Aid web site and asked why the change. I actually got a response, and a nice one. She said that due to recent damage done to the floor of the store, (which I had noticed) the sign was up TEMPORARILY and as soon as the repairs were made, I'd be welcome to shop bare foot again.

One nice exception to the usual way of things.


Home Depot wrote back after I complained about the poor behavior of their store manager in Ellsworth, Maine. They wrote back, all right, but it only said the usual bromidic "the safety of our customers is very important to us." What a load of crap. Their freedom from law suits is very important to them.

I always say the responsibility should be place on us barefooters. If there is a sign, it should read: "Bare foot at your own risk." Or some such. Then everyone's ass is covered.

 

Big disappointment. Freest country on earth, or so I was brought up to believe. Something has changed over here. This is part of something larger. Maybe we are stupider as a nation now, than when I was young. We're more like sheep, and governments and corporations are regulating us as if we're still all school children. Another poster here once wrote about America the Offended. I see more reckless behavior on the roads, as if everyone has the right to cut and speed however they want, and there's little the police can do about that. But in so many other little ways, we're controlled. And I keep coming back to the proliferation of control freaks, who seem all too willing to stick their noes into other peoples' business.

 

First, did your local health department back you up? What was their answer? Second point. Control freaks are everywhere and they have nothing better to do. Give a low level manager a little power and see how they abuse it. Reminds me of when police apprehend a motorist for registration and sticker violations, while only a short way away, a serious crime or accident may go unnoticed, for awhile. Police have serious work to do, but so often it seems they fall into the nit picking habit. Boredom, or what, I never know.

 

Cool Spruce, you and i are about the same age, remember the 60's & 70's when seeing people barefoot was normal? anyway i agree with you about the sign on stores leaving the onus on barefooters, but it doesn't matter, no one is barefoot nowadays anyway, what happened?

 

I'm with Kroger on this one. I'm not a hater of bare feet, but instead a hater of lawyers.

Imagine this - A customer drops a glass jar of pickles. Broken glass is everywhere. Assuming bare feet are accepted, there would be more people than only you in there barefoot, possibly someone's young children. The person who cleaned up the broken pickle jar misses one piece of glass that a few days later gets stuck into someone's foot. Now Kroger is paying for an emergency room visit and likely paying lawyer fees, because the kid's parents decide to sue Kroger. They settle out of court for many thousand dollars.

Wouldn't Kroger be better off if everyone wore shoes? They are not discriminating (or "hating"), but just protecting themselves from any possible problem that could arise.

 

Of course, Kroger would be better off, but society as a whole is far worse off as a result. When our basic freedoms of expression or our bodies is compromised for the sake of "safety" or "security", we, as a society have exchanged our status of free individuals for that of "children" of the "nanny state".

 

I am a conservative libertarian myself, but as barefooters, we really treasure the freedom of going barefoot wherever we can. I think that there is a problem with frivolous lawsuits, but if a barefooter is going to bring one up, it's not because they feel the store is liable for their foot injury. If a lawsuit went through suing a store for liability on a foot injury, some sort of ridiculous albatross of a federal law would be implicated requiring shoes in establishments, or something to that effect. We Americans need to change our paradigm from authority having the liability to ourselves.

The store does have a right to lose its profits it could have gained from the rare barefoot patrons if they wish, though I don't think it's the right thing to do. I've never been in a store barefoot, but I'm sure I will be someday.

 

You guys should come and have a holiday here in the UK, you can go anywhere barefoot without any hassle. Mind you, i haven't tried going into somewhere like Harrods or Buckingham Palace barefoot, perhaps i'll try that as an experiment!

 

Or you could come here to Micronesia and have far better weather

 

They're not. EVERY store that has a 'no shoes, no service' sign will allow me in to waggle in wearing 6inch heels or platform shoes. If we're going for scenario's, imagine this: some woman stops by the store on her way home from a party and is wearing stiletto heels, but is afraid to slip on the tile floor and takes them off. She sees the sign on the door (or is asked to wear shoes) and she really needs those items so she puts her stiletto heels back on. She slips and breaks her ankle. A colleague of mine just broke his last month (rock climbing, not walking on high heels )) and it's a lot worse than a cut from glass could ever be, keeps you off your feet for much longer!

If flats with rubber soles were required, you might have a point. But as long as the shoe-policy doesn't set *any* requirements as to what kind of shoe is required, the safety argument is a very arbitrary thing, that doesn't make sense at all.

Besides, it's not that likely to cut yourself on glass, I've been barefoot for eleven years including in places like the train station with lots of litter, the recycling center, at the bottle bank I leave my bicycle at several paces distance and walk up to it because there's so much glass but I walk on without even looking down. I have NEVER had a cut, in all those years! On the other hand, I *have* slipped on smooth-soled flats and tripped over loose shoe laces when I still wore footwear. I've seen friends trip on platforms when they were in fashion again briefly a few years back. I've cut my hand in the store on a piece of cardboard. Should stores require gloves then?

 

I still can't see why a sign like "Bare foot at own risk" doesn't cover the liability and responsibility just fine. Of course, as long as most Americans aren't interested in shopping bare foot, there will never be pressure put on businesses to put up such signs. As noted elsewhere, no one does it any more. I guess the new flops fad, if it's here to stay this time, works just as well for most. And I agree, it's a nice alternative to real shoes.

It seems like sole contact with floor is what's being scorned upon in this country. Tops of feet, OK. Soles, NO.

WTF here? My very abbreviated flops (which look good on me, I think) will not protect me from anything falling off a shelf, and they are slicker than Maine ice on a wet floor.

 

I do remember that, especially in California and maybe the Washington DC suburbs, not so much in the home state of Maine. Only recently have my fellow Mainers started to come out. Out, that is, in shorts and sandals, no bare feet. (Used to be long pants and work boots for these guys. Horror.

Mixture of Puritan baggage that we brought over on the Mayflower centuries ago, combined with a cold climate probably held them back. I at least had seen the rest of the States, and I think my influence around here helped. I'm still a standout to some of the hicks up here, but they usually discover that I'm OK once they know me.

But yeah, no matter how much loosening up, the foot still either hides, or is sandaled. I remember as a kid seeing some signs saying No Bare Feet even back then, instead of the farking NSNSNS we see now.