Two shoppers have made a scene at Coles after the supermarket installed gates at self-service checkouts to curb shoplifting.
The supermarket has introduced the new gates – which refuse to let shoppers exit if the surveillance system believes they haven’t purchased all the items they are carrying – at some select stores.
Footage shared by two female shoppers shows them clashing with a manager by the security gates at an unnamed store, believed to be in Victoria.
In the video, a Coles manager walks up to the pair and asks the women if they had gotten permission to film in store.
One of the women responds : ‘No, but you’re filming us all the time’.
‘Did you get permission to film us?’ the other woman asks the manager.
The manager replies that there are signs at the front entrance of the store indicating Coles has a right to film customers.
The manager then asks them to leave the store.
‘Are you being gagged? They’re being gagged,’ the women can be heard saying.
After successfully passing through the gates without any problems, the women position themselves on the other side and continue filming customers.
They joke with customers, saying, ‘you’ve escaped,’ each time shoppers walk through the gates.
One of the women says the gates make customers feel like ‘caged animals’ and that nobody likes them.
However, when one customer is asked for their opinion, they replied simply: ‘The gates don’t really bother me.”
One of the women says she ‘couldn’t believe’ that the shopper didn’t have a problem with the gates.
The other says ‘it’s always the young ones’ that don’t care.
The woman behind the camera can be heard telling viewers to ‘dig your heals in (and) push back’.
Two women have been chastised online for taking aim at a Coles manager for the store’s new surveillance measures, claiming new gates treat customers like ‘caged animals’ (pictured)
A Coles spokesperson said they had introduced the gates alongside a myriad of other security measures to help curb shoplifting (stock image)
Despite both Coles and Woolworths being criticised for introducing new security measures, Aussies called out the women for harassing staff.
‘These poor staff and the s**t they have to put up with. The staff you’re harassing didn’t install these,’ one shopper said.
‘There’s more than enough information about how these systems work if these clout (online respect) chasers cared enough to do their research,’ a second wrote.
‘Private company does thing in their store & these people think it’s a public place that they get to complain about,’ a third wrote.
Another person, who shops at the same Coles store where the women were filming, said that ‘the amount of theft that occurs here is insane,’ and that the gates were needed to stop thieves.
‘A couple walked out a few weeks ago with a full trolley – no longer after these gates went in. It’s not rocket science!’
A fifth added: ‘Surely they have better things to do’.
A spokesperson for Coles told Daily Mail Australia ‘We know that retail crime is on the increase across all retailers’.
‘We have a range of security measures in place to reduce theft from our stores including CCTV, electronic article surveillance (EAS) and in some stores, new smart gate technology that automatically opens as customers make payment for their products.’
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