Friday, March 24, 2006

...but is it against the law?

I saw on TV this morning (between my 3-year-old's episodes of Little Einsteins and The Doodlebops) this story about Walgreens being sued for insulting customers.

My first reaction was to stop chuckling. My second reaction was to wonder whether insulting customers is a crime.

To be sure, it's a bad business practice. I mean, who wants to be insulted when they're shopping? Personally, I stopped shopping at Priscilla's after they made fun of me when I asked for extra small condoms (even though I made it clear that they weren't for me, but for "a friend").

But I don't know if Walgreens employees broke any laws when they called several customers "CrAzY" and "B--tch," especially if the customers in question truly are crazy and b--tchy.

Have we really become so thin-skinned and touchy to over-react by such a degree just for having a few expletives placed by our names in a corporate database? Wouldn't the reasonable action be to take your business elsewhere?

Of course, litigious as our society has become, there will be a civil lawsuit and the lawyer of the three plaintiffs will make a ton of money from the deal and prices at Walgreens will go up for all of the other customers.

If there are any lawyers out there (Dan?), I'd love to hear read your thoughts.

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1 comment:

  1. Sorry - I can't think of any reason this would be against the law. Nor should it be, under free speech principles. If I run a store and I want to state my opinion that you are crazy, I ought to be able to do so.

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