Employees of the Michaels store in Brentwood told a mother to go outside to breastfeed her daughter, which didn’t sit well with the mother and was against company policy. This all unfolded on Facebook in the past few days.
The woman, Jessa Marie, said on a Facebook post on Sunday that she should “nurse outside in the 104 degree heat instead of discreetly in the craft room.” After she posted her complaint, many comments on the post support Marie.
Marie said after she told the employee it was a violation of Missouri State Law HB 1320 to force her to nurse outside, she was given a chair in the corner of the room for her to nurse.
(HB 1320 requires a breastfeeding mother to use discretion and excuses breastfeeding mothers from jury service.)
Michael’s responded on its Facebook page on Monday.
You may have seen that an associate in one of our stores made a mistake and did not follow our policy on nursing in our stores. It has been our policy for years to allow customers to breastfeed or express milk while visiting our stores. If a customer asks us for a private space, we make every possible accommodation for the mother and child’s privacy and comfort. Unfortunately, we didn’t handle a customer’s request very well. We’re sorry, and have conveyed our apology directly to the mother. We’ve also sent a reminder to all of our stores to prevent something like this from happening again.
Karen was the employee a young blondish manager? Asking due to being repermanded myself. In my case I was trying to get something off a high shelf. No one around to help. So I grabed the mobile stairs, slowly pushed it to the spot. Made a loud noise with the stair lock and got what I needed. Just as I was done, some manager girl was talking to me in a very condescending tone telling what to do next time. Not once did she say sorry there was no one around to help us. So I looked at her and said,” and do you mind not speaking to me like that. I don’t work here!” She made a face and quickly walked away!
The Manager Girl needs some classes in,”how to speak to and treat customers”!
Wish I’d been there to capture the feeding on my Iphone, I think that’s constitutionally protected huh, filming people in public.
The constitutionality depends on what you do with the pics. But there is no expectation of privacy if you film in a public place. Now if she tells you to stop, and you continue–then there are civil charges she could have filed.
It also was convenient that the young mother knew the House Bill number that allowed her to breastfeed in MO. I supposed she has been reprimanded, when she breastfed in some other place of business, before this event too.
I’m glad too–because now I can help other mothers in similar situations. If society wants to ‘go after’ a decency priority, they should start a men’s “PULL UP YOU PANTS** law for those whose pants are around their knees.
**This actually is a man to man signal that they want homosexual sex that started in the prison.system. I bet a lot of ‘players’ don’t know this part of their dressing code…
I have never been “reprimanded” for nursing ny child in public but you can bet your backside that I know the law regarding nursing for Missouri and all other states that I expect to visit while I am still breastfeeding. I dare someone to try & stop me!
A lot of us nursing mothers can spout the verbiage of the law(s) that protects us verbatim *sigh* It’s unfortunately necessary.
It’s good that they apologized and did provide the space when reminded of the law. It sounds like that particular employees just wasn’t aware. Michael’s did a good job in sending out reminders to all of it’s stores after the mistake was realized.