A woman who described herself as a regular customer at a store in a shopping center near her city said she had been followed around by staff members on every visit for about two years, according to a post she shared on the Reddit community r/TalesFromTheCustomer. The user, who goes by the name cenzilooculta on Reddit, said she had never caused any trouble at the store and would typically leave with a purchase each time she visited. In her post, the woman said she kept returning to the store despite the experience because it carried items and decorations she could not find anywhere else, and because the prices were often marked down. She said she had not thought much of being followed at first, assuming it was a general precaution on the part of the staff, given that the store sold some expensive items. Over time, however, she said the experience became more frustrating, particularly because she had become a familiar face at the store. On one visit, she said a man, who she later found out was the store’s owner, followed her so closely that he would walk up and pretend to “fix” items on the shelves every time she stopped to look at something. The moment she decided to follow him back through the store That day, according to her account, she decided to do the same thing to him. She said she walked over to wherever he was standing and stood right next to him, looking at whatever he appeared to be looking at. She said that when he moved to another part of the store, she followed; when he stopped again, she followed again, and even picked up one of the items he had been adjusting, as if she were interested in buying it. I got fed up being followed around, so I played their own game byu/cenzilooculta inTalesFromTheCustomer She said that by the third time she followed him, he appeared to notice what she was doing. According to her post, he seemed unsure of what to do with his hands and eventually made his way to the register, where he stayed for the rest of her visit. Hers is not an isolated account; a Dallas woman similarly reported being followed around a store by an undercover employee who was dressed like a regular shopper. She said she then went ahead and paid for the one item she had decided to buy that day. The woman said that when she got to her car after leaving the store, she found herself smiling at what had just happened, adding that she generally dislikes confrontation and would not normally do something like that. She said she was not sure whether she would be followed again on her next visit. According to her post, the man never followed her around the store again after that day. She said his behavior toward her also changed noticeably, where he had previously ignored her entirely, he began greeting her when she came in, saying things like “Welcome to [store]” and “Thank you for coming in.” The woman said the biggest surprise came during a visit for the store’s grand reopening after a renovation. She said she ran into the man, who turned out to be the store’s owner, and that he gave her what she described as a nod, which she said felt like a sign of respect, comparing it to receiving approval from a strict parent. She also noted in her post that she is Hispanic and lives in the United States, adding in a comment that the shopping center is known to treat Black customers worse than they treated her. The racial profiling angle was raised by another Reddit user in the comments, who asked whether her ethnicity had played a role in why she was followed. Unusual treatment of customers at retail stores has surfaced in other viral accounts too, including a case where a Dollar Tree cashier escorted a shopper to the back of the store after she tried to buy a pregnancy test. The post drew a range of responses from other users who said they had gone through similar experiences. One commenter said they had been followed by security in stores since childhood and described the emotional toll it had taken over the years. “I even had it when I was sent to support a different branch of the same company, as a manager, when I first walked in. I absolutely berated that security guard,” they wrote. Another commenter shared a story from their time working at a large hardware chain, saying they had once turned the tables on a loss prevention inspector by treating him the way a suspected shoplifter might be treated, hovering nearby and asking if he needed help with products. According to that commenter, the inspector later called them out at a store meeting as the only employee who had paid proper attention to him.