Posted on 06/06/2012 9:50:08 AM PDT by Altariel
An Arizona doctor says he’s going to sue Barnes & Noble unless he gets an apology from an employee who tossed him from the store because he was alone in the children's section.
Dr. Omar Amin, 73, of Scottsdale, said he was browsing for books for his five- and seven-year-old grandkids at the store on May 4 when he walked into the children’s reading area to quietly answer a cellphone call.
Amin, a renowned researcher of infectious diseases, told local station KTVK that he sat on the ground to avoid bothering other shoppers with his chatter.
“This man approached me and asked if I was in the store by myself,” he told Fox News.
“He said ‘You cannot stay. This is not an area where men are allowed to be by themselves.’”
The employee told Amin that a female customer complained that he made her uncomfortable, Amin said.
The employee then told Amin to leave and “escorted me out as a potential sex offender,” he told the KTVK.
“I was upset like hell because I’ve been so insulted and humiliated in public for the charge of being a man,” he said.
Mark Bottini, the big box bookseller’s vice president and director of stores, apologized for the flap in a statement.
“It is not our policy to ask customers to leave any section of our stores without justification,” the statement said, according to KTVK. “We value Dr. Amin as a customer and look forward to welcoming him in any of our stores.”
The distinguished doc said the statement didn’t go far enough.
“I do not intend to let this slide by," Amin told FoxNews.com. "I want the person who insulted me in the store to apologize to me in public, in the store, and on camera. If I do not get that, I am going to court,” he told Fox News.
He also said he wants the company to prove it reprimanded the employee who confronted him.
“I did not break any rules,” he said.
The store should have had a couple of adult-sized chairs in the children’s section. They have them elsewhere in the store.
Intellegent physician/grandparent shopping books for grandkids, takes a call and is asked to leave B&N. How ridiculous!
Better the staffer take the squawker complaint and enter the area as an employee observer, to meet the need of the complaintant and yet not embarrass a customer under wrongful suspicion, as it turns out. Simple.
The man was *not* a “creeper”, as it turns out, was he? Scottsdale is MAYO CLINIC. Physicians are everywhere. Some have grandchildren who read.
He was a grandparent shopping books for grandkids and took a call, and got tossed.
Major civil rights violation and he is smart enough to know that. You are not.
My old partner and I once got a call about a strange man in a kid's playground (there is actually a New York City law that states you cannot be in a playground without a kid, so we could have just kicked him out). I asked if I could look through his phone, and he said yes. I found up-skirt pics and videos of girls between the ages of, probably, 8-10 years old.
So I know there are sickos like this out there.
If the woman is uneasy then she ought to be right next to her children, and they’ll be perfectly safe. If she has a very specific, reasonable cause for her suspicion only then should she complain to the management. Something like “he keeps scooting along the floor to be close to my child.” “He’s taking pictures of children.”
If the store management is uneasy that children might be molested, photographed, stared at ... then they need to have a policy of no unaccompanied children. Not treat innocent men as criminal suspects and perverts.
I don't care for all the people treating public book stores like their living room by sitting or even laying on the floor to browse thru a book or magazine. However; I don't report them to management; I just don't shop there any more.
Sounds like profiling to me.
IF-if I had been in the store and I had witnessed his behavior and found it suspicious and there were unsupervised children in the children’s section, I would have hung out and watched him until he left. I know I would because I have done it before. I would never have complained unless I saw him actually do something he shouldn’t have.
Post 39 is factually incorrect, he was taking a call not taking pictures. And even if he was taking pictures there’s legit thing to take pictures of in the book store, maybe sending them to his wife or somebody in texts asking which of these books to get.
People are supposed to be assumed innocent in this country, it’s people like you that ignore the facts around child abductions and pedophilia (the vast majority are people known to the family, NOT strangers) that cause every man in this country to be treated like the worst kind of criminal for doing nothing more than not bringing an “appropriate” escort when trying to do something like buy a book for their grandkid. It’s pathetic really, you should feel shame but I know you won’t, the assumed guilty crowd feel proud of the way they’ve destroyed this country to not keep the children safe.
Shocking! Really? I’ve been thrown out of a store for making a woman “feel uncomfortable”. What man hasn’t?! This is America today, get used to it, stop feigning surprise. Bitches rule!
It might be creepy, but when the employee said they don’t allow men in that section by themselves, he screwed up. If you can’t discriminate against women, then you can’t discriminate against men either.
Uncontrollably laughing in the face of any 0bama-voter is usually appropriate.
That’s good, isn’t it?
The good doctor is more used to getting his ass kissed rather than kicked out of the store. Oh, those old lions are fierce. He’s also probably facing the prospect of being declawed at work which none of them like. Nevertheless, it is a situation that cries out for a test case, and I’m glad someone is challenging it.
Little clue, real terrorists tend not to be 73 year old guys taking a cell phone call in the kids section of Barnes and Noble.
Please.
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You may have noticed that the leadership (bin laden, al zawarhi) are/were not young men. You may want to bite off a corner of that clue and keep it for yourself.
It’s all speculation anyway, what both of us are doing. We have no real idea of what motivated the woman in question.
So with or without your permission, I will continue to speculate wildly and entertain outlandish notions when there is a dearth of facts.
Even if he was there looking for books for HIMSELF as a guilty pleasure, he has the right to do so.
Remember, most bookstores still sell the Narnia books in the kids’ section.
Surely you are smart enough to see that the story was written in such a way as to elicit certain responses from people who are psychologically predisposed to react just the way you have reacted to the story.
The author of that story is probably laughing his you-know-what off at the arguments he set deliberately set off.
See post #65.
Which has nothing to do with the situation and is you again assuming guilt based on nothing. He had a phone, it rang, he answered. Not a crime.
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