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Does this count as age or wealth discrimination?

Asked by cutiepi92 (2252points) April 16th, 2013

A little incident happened the other day while I was out with my boyfriend on a shopping day.

As I have said in previous questions, my boyfriend and I are pretty young. I am turning 21 in two months and he is 22. We decided one day to go look around at the plaza. The plaza (I’m not giving the full name) is across from the mall and is considered to be the “wealthy people mall” because it is where Armani, Gucci, Michael Kors, Saks Fifth, Jimmy Choo, etc are all located. It’s relatively upscale but obviously open to everyone to shop. We like going there because while it’s expensive, it is never crowded like the mall is and there are a few stores in there where I can occasionally spend some saved up money. One of these stores is Bebe. I bought a chain belt from there a couple of years ago that I love. During some horse play last week with my boyfriend, the clasp broke. I checked online and they have a similar (though not exact) chain belt on their website. So I decided to go into Bebe that day and see it in person. When we walked in, the lady at the desk asked if she could help us. I smiled and said of course. I told her that I was specifically looking for a chain belt. She looked at me funny, whispered to her associate and said that Bebe doesn’t carry anything like that. I told her that I’m pretty sure they do because not only did I see one online, but I had one from a few years back. I really love that chain belt so I just wanted to buy a similar one from the same brand you know? She then repeated that Bebe doesn’t have chain belts, looked at me and said maybe I should go to Hot Topic or something. My boyfriend asked me if I wanted to look at any of their other belts but at that point I was just annoyed and said no and we left. Was/am I overreacting? It’s not as if I was in “Hot Topic” like dress; on the contrary I was wearing a maxi dress. It just felt like she suggested that because I’m young or something and don’t look like I have the money to shop there. That and obviously she doesn’t know the inventory since it is on the website….Maybe she just misunderstood me? I even showed her a necklace that had a similar chain pattern on it and I told her it was just like that but longer.

I am mainly asking this because I just want to know if I was wrong to be a little upset. Not for any other reason, I just didn’t really like the way she treated me as a potential customer. Especially since prior to that I was in a shop above it where I was treated with extreme kindness. I can accept being wrong, I do overreact sometimes, it’s just nice to get other opinions on it

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