Maia Eng

Review of Zumiez

One of the employees accused me of stealing. Neve...

One of the employees accused me of stealing. Never going back there. I honestly think I was racially profiled.

I m a highschooler. A couple months ago, I went into this Zumiez with my friend. I am a POC and we both had our backpacks because we had come from school. I didn t usually shop at Zumiez, but I wanted to go in just to look around. I chose two hoodies to try on and we asked the employee (white guy, snapback) for a dressing room. I didn t like either, so I came back out with both. The employee took the things my friend didn t want, but when he looked at me, he looked with scrutiny. I asked if something was wrong and he said that there was a third hoodie. I told him there wasn t; if there was, I would have tried it on and brought it out, and I hadn t. He didn t believe me. He repeated, more forcefully, that there was a third sweatshirt. I didn t know how to respond because he wasn t listening to me. Then, he took out his keys and repopened the dressing room I had been in. He checked under the table and seat/bench. When he came out with nothing (BECAUSE I DIDNT HAVE A THIRD HOODIE), he somehow still wasn t convinced. He started eyeing my backpack and I felt even more uncomfortable than I already was. I knew he wanted to look inside, so I tried to show him. It was really freaky and my heart was beating. I was terrified because I knew I wasn t lying but he just refused to believe me. We left as quickly as possible and I haven t been inside there since, probably never will again. When I think more about it, there is really no reason that he would be so suspicious and insistent other than his prejudice. I wanted to share this because it s never happened to me. This Zumiez sucks.