A security guard at a branch of Matalan is alleged to have threatened to “shank” a customer when a dispute over a return purchase escalated.
Mostafa Mohamed, who visited the chain’s Charlton store on Saturday with his 60-year-old parents, said the guard partially removed his shirt and apparently threatened to stab him, before threatening: “I’ll fuck you up” after they questioned the returns policy.
Mohamed said his parents were told they could only exchange the items in return for vouchers, despite allegedly getting a cash refund for other items they’d taken back a few days earlier.
When they questioned the apparent inconsistency in the returns policy, he said the store manager became aggressive and called over a security guard to remove them from the shop.
Mohamed told HuffPost UK: “I heard my mum ask the shop assistant ‘when do the vouchers expire?’. She asked the manager and the manager said in a really sarcastic manner with a grin on her face: ‘when Matalan closes down’.
“So I asked her if there was a reason she was being so facetious and she called to the security guard and said ‘watch this one, sort him after’.”
At this point Mohamed says the security guard became aggressive, shouting “you can’t talk to me like that” and “I’ll fuck you up”.
“He then started to remove his shirt, there and then in the middle of the store, went chest-to-chest with me and said ‘come on let’s go outside right now, I don’t even care about this job. I can find out where you live from the store database and if I don’t do you now I can do you later’.”
Mohamed also claims the security guard threatened to “shank” him, a word commonly used as slang for “stab”.
“I don’t know where this animosity came from. The only thing I can think of, that seems to have triggered the reaction to him, was ‘you’ve got nothing better to do than stand there and watch us’.
“That was the thing that really seemed to hurt his ego,” Mohamed said.
The guard then allegedly followed them to a nearby coffee shop and waited outside. After mulling their options the couple decided to go back and apologise to “get it over with”.
A spokesperson for Matalan said: “We are dedicated to offering an outstanding shopping experience to all customers, so we are taking this complaint, regarding a visit to our Charlton store, very seriously and the relevant teams are looking into it as an urgent matter.”
Mohamed’s wife, Farah Jasset, also tweeted about the incident.