Sacked from French supermarket Super U for dog treat

Shopping spree in France stopped because of unjustified accuse of shoplifting. This may happen also to you, travelling with your dog to French supermarket Super U in Alsatian town Seltz, a border town to the South-West part of Germany.

I am writing about an event that happened to us last Saturday, where we – on a warm and sunny afternoon – took the spontaneous decision to fill up our wine and cider storage by going shopping in France before the next COVID-19 curfew.

The 90 kilometres to the supermarket located directly at the French highway A35 is a 1.5 hours drive for us, one way. It is nothing you are doing often, and you’re not buying grocery in France which you can get in Germany for one third or half the price. For 15 years living at the border to France, this is the supermarket I used to go to buy French wines, ciders, cheese, Alsatian dairy products like Bibeleskaes, water, tea, coffee and even meat. More expensive though, but better quality.

Travelling with a dog on sunny days means, that you need to take him out of the car when parked, due to risk of overheating inside the car. In a grocery store however, dogs are not allowed, so we planned that one of us will walk the dog outside, while the others are filling up the shopping trolley. For the car, we luckily found a parking in the shade, which allowed the three of us to go inside the supermarket for a couple of minutes, before one of us will go out to walk the dog.

I tried to de-escalate the whole situation by talking initially calm to the manager in French. He offered that no police would be called if we paid for the treat. Though wearing a face mask, the manager came ominously close to me and stated the treat can no way have been bought in Germany, as the product is registered with that barcode in the French SuperU system. With a price almost doubled compared to what we paid in Germany for the treat.
He must have failed in Supermarket Manager School and never have heard about globalisation and European Article Numbers, the Germany produced Vitakraft treat carried an EAN-13 barcode which even is printed on the ticket of the German pet store, where my wife bought the treat 3 days ago of exactly that batch of treat in this shoplifting discussion.

While we already had filled up the trolley with pricy alcoholic beverages, my wife went out for the dog. She tried. But after quite some minutes she came back searching for me and my sister to announce that the so-called manager of the SuperU supermarket took the three pieces of dog treat that he discovered in her bag that she voluntarily – without being asked for – showed at the information desk, having tried to explain in a mix of French and English words that she need to look for her Chien;

I presented the ticket as proof to the manager, repeating my sentence”ELLE N’EST PAS UNE VOLEUSE” but he did not give in, instead did I. A big mistake! I paid 2,10€ twice for the German dog treat instead of asking the manager to just call the police, check all the cameras, and disgracing himself in front of French police. Stupid me!

After having paid we considered shortly what to do with the full trolley, certainly already more than 150€ of value, and whether we would be still in a mood to continue shopping. But having seen my sister and me not leaving the shop but returning to our trolley, the manager followed us, reached aggressively out to my sisters handbag and accused even us for shoplifting and kicked us out of Super U in Seltz.

I would consider this as an act of defamation, xenophobia and misogyny!

A long tradition of being a loyal client of Super U in Seltz, Alsace, France has sadly ended.