Well intentioned or otherwise.

Or that those affected should just keep quiet in case they are mistaken as is the case with many profilers? Without being there, I cannot determine the intentions of the employees, but I’m guessing given the same info neither have you. Should we give the employees the benefit of the doubt or the person who felt they were profiled? I don’t have the answer, but it seems you don’t even like the question.

Last edited Mon Mar 31, 2025, 01:30 AM - Edit history (1)

I'm not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, but speculating about a likely end result. Not only that, but the customer wasn't even the one that sent the complaint, it was a friend of his, who wasn't there either.

What we do know, based on what was given in the post was that the employees asked the customer if he needed help, and also that the customer was uncomfortable by the way they were looking at him. Those were the only two things mentioned, and no indication that either of them said anything out of line or it would have been mentioned

Since asking someone if they needed help certainly is what Lowe's expects them to do, and wouldn't seem to indicate any racial animosity, I can't believe that Lowe's HR is ever going to discipline any employee for that act. So, now, the only discipline the employees could possibly face would be for the customer's accusation of looking at him in a manner not to his liking. So, now the employees get called into HR and told the customer didn't like the way they looked at him. What would you expect Lowe's management to do at that point? "A couple weeks ago a customer didn't like the way you were looking at him when he was examining a marked down sink?" "Thought you were racially profiling him"

Huh? They may or may not even remember the customer at all after that amount of time and are now being accused of racism. After all, the whole incident started when they asked him if he needed help. Not completely unreasonable to believe that the next time they see another black customer, they might figure it was better to play it safe and not engage with them at all.

It’s sometimes used just to let the customer know there are eyes on them. That’s how profiling works. It wouldn’t if it was obviously racist. Unless this individual had a history of crying “racial profiling”, I have to wonder what happened to give him that vibe here. You seem to have left out that they, as in two employees, lingered afterwards. Does it generally take two employees to ask someone if they needed help? It does generally take two people to deal with an unruly sink part thief though. Most likely, for some reason or other the customer’s looks or actions set off alarms with the employees. It might not have been racial profiling as much as the way he was rummaging through the box. We don’t know, but it’s kinda naive to think they were just trying to help him. If they were, they would have helped him inspect the sink.
OP didn’t ask Lowe’s to discipline anyone. They didn’t even ask anyone to be singled out. Lowe’s is a successful store, I’m sure they are well equipped to deal with a complaint such as this. I’m also sure they’ll just file it with other such complaints unless they see a pattern develop. I wouldn’t word it like OP, but have no problems with friendly reminders that employees need to be sensitive to actions that appear to be racial profiling. As a matter of fact, many businesses do this without the ill effects you hypothesize. The fact that you think the employees will just stop helping black people is alarming. I never thought the reasonable response to increased sensitive would be to stop serving that demographic.

They said they usually have to track down an employee when they need one, yet in this instance, two of them "swooped down" on him. The OP also indicated that they like and frequent that particular store and employees are always respectful and polite to them, so they seem just fine with that level of employee interaction.

If as I hypothesized, an employee decides not to engage a black customer in the future, it would appear based on the OP, that would fit the usual expected behavior for employees at that location, and thus the black customer would be treated exactly like they typically would treat white customers.

Good. I don’t think that was your initial intention when you warned “ The employees might just decide it is best to avoid interactions of any kind with black customers,” but I’ll take it as a win for equality.

Yet, you somehow know what my intentions were. Cool

I've been to Lowe's and Home Depot and seen, too often, a package had been opened and one or more pieces missing. In your friend's case. Even though the package the damaged sink was in the employees may have just been checking to make sure something wasn't taken out. BTW, from my experience with both stores, the employees really don't know much about the products they sell. So it may be the employees didn't know if there was just the sink in the box or whether there were other parts in it.

I'd give the employees the benefit of the doubt that they're not racists.

I'd question anyone tearing open a box. Damaged or not.

If you want to make sure all of the parts of an item are there or undamaged, ask an employee to do it for you.