UPDATES: Charges Filed Against Bed, Bath & Beyond Manager Who Refused To Allow 911 Call
BB&B Responds To Customer Complaint Over 911 Debacle
Bed, Bath & Beyond refused to let some customers use the phone to call 911 after they saw a toddler locked in a hot car in the store’s parking lot. The witnesses told the local news that the employees told them, “…You cannot call no one, what goes on in the parking lot is not our concern.”
“I said, lady, there is a child out there in a hot car and it’s locked and it needs help. And I said, will you let us use your phone and call and she said no, we will not get involved.”
The Lexington police arrived, smashed the car window and gave the 3-year-old some water. The mother was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment. Meanwhile, Bed, Bath & Beyond has issued a statement about the incident.
“The customer did ask the store to contact the authorities, the store suggested that the customer, who had witnessed the situation, contact 911. We are pleased that the manner was addressed in a timely manner and will use this incident as a training opportunity.”
Police: Toddler In Hot Van For 45 Min. [LEX 18 News] (Thanks, Doug!)
(Photo: Morton Fox )
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Similar incident at a mall. The wife and her friend saw a child in a car and went into the nearest store to ask the manager to make the call. The manager returned to the parking lot, confirmed the problem and made the call to 911.
Why wait until the manager had seen the child in distress to make the call? Because the store is liable for filing false emergency calls and can be billed for the cost of the response.
Actually what the person should have done is to grab the phone and dial 911. In most places it is a crime to interfere with someone calling 911. Then make sure that your call to 911 is nice and long which should ensure that some dolt from this store takes the phone from you. Narrate the experience to make sure that it is all recorded on 911.
“Please don’t grab the phone from me MIKE the BBB manager with red hair. I am trying to save the child. Do you want the poor thing to die? [click]” would be one of the best 911 calls ever played on the evening news.
Skimming past all comments.
Is the the human in immediate harm?
Will the person suffer(immediate) harm if emergency services are not rendered?
Is this life or death?
Then… LET THEM ACCESS 911 services.
Otherwise there is other phones about.
I am far from not letting someone using my phone. But if they say it is critical for emergency. It better very well be. Otherwise find another phone.
DAMN, this takes corporate ass-hattery to a new level. BB&B, do you honestly believe that your PR bullshit isn’t completely transparent? Up until the PR quote, I was willing to go with “just (a) stupid ass BB&B employee/employees” but now that they’ve put their foot into their stupid mouths, I’ll have to expand that to the BB&B company as a whole.
I was robbed at a Home Depot and they refused to call and help me as well.
You would think having a gun held to your head in a parking lot would warrant the use of your phone but no.
I refuse to shop there anymore.
They informed me that the parking lot is public property.
I am sure if I felt like hanging Lowe’s signs in the lot, they would think otherwise.
If the kid dies, the mother is on the hook.
If you use the phone to screw with somebody, that employee is on the hook.
Where is the incentive to help?
I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming the OP here, but why don’t people ever take action on their own? You could get your own tire iron out of your car and break the window yourself in about 30 seconds, then worry about calling 911. Most state good Samaritan laws would cover you in case of any legal troubles.
“Authorities” do not replace common sense and good judgement.
@Canino: @IHaveAFreezeRay: Certainly a lot of citizens are unaware of Good Samaritan laws, and would not want to get involved. I meant to add that into my previous post. Oops.
smart move guys, i mean what’s better for business than a baby dying in your parking lot?
In Cincinnati it is legal to lock your kids in a car and murder them as long as you are affiliated with a school. More here: [chadsblog.com]
@chadbailey: That is sick.
@alphafemale: I agree with points 1-3.
I’m seeing a lot of comments about how the customer should have taken initiative and gotten the baby out. I get that is something a lot of people would actually do…but since when does spotting a baby in a car and calling police translate into a dire emergency requiring smashing of windows? The customer was expecting to be able to reach police. Just because the BB&B employee was insane to not let the customer use the phone, doesn’t mean she should have smashed the window. There’s reaction and then there’s overreaction. Most people don’t want to get involved in such a way because it could open up a whole can of worms for legal trouble and personal trouble. Who knows what kinds of people leave their kids in the car? We see now that the mother was arrested and held. Who’s going to pay for the car damage? Certainly the mother isn’t the pinnacle of human intelligence.
@IHaveAFreezeRay: There was another article online I found with a little more detail. It said the child could be seen profusely sweating, wearing a long sleeve shirt, was partially covered with a blanket, the child did not wake up when they knocked on the windows, and it could not be determined whether the child was breathing. I had that information before posting which is why I said people should take action on their own. Without that extra information you would think, as you stated, that the situation might not call for smashing of windows. With that info, I’m sure you would agree action was probably immediately necessary.
@Canino: In that case, action would be warranted, protected, and understood.
It still doesn’t mean that most people would break a window. If they do, I hope they have the foresight to break the driver’s side window to unlock the car, rather than break the window near the baby.
@Scoobatz: I’ve got 7-year old twins, so I went through the mental wrangling of making the “do I wake them” decision many times. So to be clear, I’m not scolding here–you asked for advice, and that’s what I’m giving.
Before I became a parent, I watched a close friend lose her children to foster care for 18 months over an incident no worse than what you did at the Wawa. By the time I became a parent myself, I had decided to follow the rule of thumb she created for herself after she finally got her children back: If you wouldn’t do it while a police officer is standing beside you, don’t do it at all.
Have I followed that rule perfectly? No. Twice I’ve found myself mid-action and realizing, “oh my God, what I’m doing is a risk to my children,” and left myself wondering for months afterward how I ever got to the point where I had made the stupid decision in the first place. But the fact is, I made those two stupid decisions. Like you, I got lucky and my children weren’t harmed, or even aware that they were at risk. But it doesn’t change the fact that my actions were stupid.
And your actions were stupid too.
But I’m not saying that to insult you. It’s only through recognizing our own faults that we learn from them. I’ll make other parenting mistakes in the future, I’m certain. But hopefully, by acknowledging my own failings and learning from them, I won’t make the same mistakes twice. I try hard never to let my pride be the factor that leads to putting my own children in harm’s way. One of the ways I (and you) can do that is to just go ahead and admit internally that yeah, that was a stupid thing to do.
I hope you understand that I don’t mean to hurt your feelings here. But whether it hurts or not, I hope you become a better parent by hearing it. None of us will ever be perfect parents, so let’s help each other at least be better ones, a little each day.
Best regards,
Darnitol
I don’t think it’s wrong to not want to call 911 because someone comes in and says there is an emergency. If you call 911 and there is no emergency, the person who called 911 can get in trouble, and there are many cities that are cracking down on 911 false alarm calls. What is wrong is that BB&B could have let the the person call 911 from their phone, and consequently take any of the blame for fraudulently calling 911 (if that was a concern on the part of BB&B).
I used to work in a gas station and had a woman come in running and screaming to “call 911! There’s a handicapped guy across the street who’s going to get run over! Call 911! Call 911, you twit! Call 911!”. I looked across the street and there was a handicapped gentleman getting into his car, which was parked on an incline. He was doing just fine getting into his car. I said “I’m not calling 911 for a non-emergency. You can call them from my phone. Or even better yet, why don’t you go across the street and help him if you’re so concerned. I’m sure you’d get there quicker than the police/EMS/Fire Dept or whoever 911 sends would.” I looked over again and the guy had managed to already get into his car and was pulling his wheelchair in. So, apparently it was not an emergency and had I called in, I could have gotten myself in trouble for a false alarm.
BTW, I’m not excusing anyone, but you all seem curious about the store policy, so here’s where it comes from:
In normal situations, the employees are instructed that it’s not their job to do anything outside the store’s physical plant. You don’t shovel walks, or clean up trash, or help someone jump start their car. It’s a safety issue and also a scheduling concern – they want their employees safely working where the job needs to get done, and within the walls that the insurance covers and the employees are trained to work. So, that’s what the asst manager was going on.
But no, every crap job I’ve worked at, you were allowed to call 911 if there was an emergency in the parking lot. You just don’t go out there and handle anything yourself. Those stories you hear about workers fishing ducklings out of sewer grates? The workers probably got in trouble, you just didn’t hear about it.
The fact that the sales personnel said “you cannot call no one” tells me that in all likelihood they come from the demographic that would be apt to lock their toddlers in overheated cars themselves, thus no one here should be overly surprised at their reaction, n’est ce pas?
@23221:
Certain dialects of English do use the double negative for emphasis.
I really hope you aren’t implying that people who speak certain dialects are more liable to leave their children in hot cars.
Did someone that gets paid for making BBB statements write that? I hope not. “We are pleased in the manner that our employee’s manners, was mannerized, and that the manner was resolved in a timely manner”
W…T…F…?
(sorry nothing more clever than that at the moment…)
Something similar to this happened where I work. A bruised and bloodied woman came running into our lobby and asked the receptionist to call the police because her deranged ex-husband is chasing her and thumping on her. Our receptionist politely declined, stating that she didn’t want to get involved. What the f*ck is that? Are we really becoming that callous as a society?
Oh, and I work for a school district. Yah, we really care about our people here.
Those store personnel are pretty idiotic, much like the cafe staff who charged firefighters to buy bottled water the morning of 9/11…
Yeah, it’s just like that. GTFO.
Smashing the window introduces the possibility of the child being injured by flying glass or possibly the brick itself (or whatever) if you lose control of it. Even assuming the car’s windows are safety glass, this seems like a fairly risky gambit. If it’s possible to get a police officer or other professional to the scene within a few minutes, I think I’d opt for that route.
I hate people who won’t break rules in a time of need.
BB&B should thank their lucky stars there are no lawyers present.
One morning I was putting my shoes on getting ready for work when I heard a load “crump crump” I looked out my window and saw some guy standing on the hood of a tow truck beating the windsheild out.I called 911 and was told this is not an emergency. 10 minutes later 3 guys, 1 was the guy beating the windsheld, were beating the gas station attendant up and had dragged him into the street., at that time I recalled 911 and was told they would send someone right away. The police never showed up and the owner of the gas station came to my duplex that evening and wanted to know why the police we’nt called. All I could say is the PD doesn’t really care.
Back in high school, my brother and a friend were in the parking lot of a Safeway when they witnessed an older man fall off a curb and smash his head on the cement. Needless to say, he was unconscious and bleeding everywhere. They were the only ones nearby, so they moved him out of the road and my brother ran inside the store to ask an employee to call 911 while his friend stayed with the injured man. The employees had no problem with it and immediately summoned an ambulance for the guy. Why is it that some stores seem to act with human decency and others just can’t be bothered? Shame on BB&B.
That being said, I don’t know if one should head straight to window-smashing in this case unless it is very hot outside and/or the child is in visible distress. Forcefully breaking through a pane of glass could hurt both you and the child. I certainly wouldn’t condemn anyone who looked for an alternate course first.
At least they didn’t say they take it very seriously?
@nyaz: Actually one of the corporate responses did!
Here’s my question: I know BB&B was being sucky, but did NO ONE present at the time have a cell phone capable of dialing 911? Why the dire need to use the store’s phone?
I don’t know what it is like in KY, but here in California, you can be on hold for 20 minutes or more when calling 911 on a cell. THAT gets you onto the CHP dispatch, which then has to transfer you to local dispatch. Sometimes you end up with the wrong dispatch (not always the dispatcher’s fault, esp. if it is a small town). That is enough time to kill a small child in severe heat.
Out here, it is MUCH quicker to call from landline, and, as some have mentioned, it is easier to locate the caller’s address on landline. Just a thought.
Blood Bath and Beyond
Ok, feedback I received from BB&B clarifies the training opp:
“Thank you for contacting us regarding the recent incident in the parking lot outside of our Lexington, Kentucky store. Please be assured that we take matters such as these very seriously. We train our associates for emergency situations. Unfortunately, this situation was not handled the way we would have expected it to be handled. We will take this opportunity to re-train our associates.” FYI.
What I don’t understand is, doesn’t Kentucky have any Samaritan laws? By refusing to call the police and the child had died, would they not hold some part in the death of that child by willingly refusing to help?
Any company large or small has a responsibility to the community they do business in. I would hope the local chamber of commerce or city council would have something to say to the boneheaded management of that store.
Wasn’t there a recent story about a drug store chain where an elderly woman collapsed from a diabetic seizure in their store then the manager had the audacity to charge the customers who came to her aid for the supplies they needed to save her life?
Corporate retail America sucks.
How did the woman wanting to make the phone call know that the baby was not cool and doing well inside the car? Don’t most cars have air conditioning?
@fisherstudios:
1. Through visual inspection.
2. Not when they are turned off and parked.
3. You worry me.
@alphafemale:
Agreed, on all counts.
… The statement that BB&B made didn’t make sense at all. Didn’t the employee NOT let the customer call 911? I find that not allowing someone to use the phone for an emergency is appalling.
The BB&B statement contradicts with the one described in the below story:
[www.kentucky.com]
Unless BBB was responsible for creating the emergency, they’re under no legal duty to help. It’s probably best for them not to get involved and put themselves at risk for some kind of crazy litigation anyway.
@Micromegas: I don’t understand how they can be sued for letting someone use their phone.
@Micromegas: Careful, that’s the kind of comment that Life likes to answer by putting you in an emergency and forcing you to rely on someone else being a decent human being…
For the person who asked about leaving their children in the car for a few seconds: if you manage to leave the children in the car, do your quick shopping and get back before anyone notices, I say, no harm no foul. But you do take the risk of someone taking action before you manage to get back. Go ahead, you’re the one responsible. Just don’t blame someone for calling the cops on you if you don’t get back first.
I agree that its a hard decision to have to wake kids to do errands. Many many times I’ve forgone coffee and snacks because my kids were asleep and I didn’t want to wake them to get them out of the car to run into the store. Or, I look for drive-thru places. I swear drive-thrus must have been invented by a mother of young kids, they are such a convenience when you have sleeping kids. Hear that Starbucks in PA, you could get more of my business if you had more drive-thrus.
Why not just send all these comments to their PR department?
public.relations@bedbath.com
I remember reading something a while back on CNN that said that the number of incidents of children being left in cars went up after they started telling parents they had to put baby seats in the back seat and should face backwards. It’s a shame that baby and child seats can’t have some kind of alarm that goes off if the car is shut off with the seat still in it or something.
BB&B’s response to this defies all sane and rational thought. In what bizarro universe does a business say that they’re pleased with an employee refusing to let someone call 911?
@All “Why ask for the BB&B phone”: Doesn’t it make more sense to ask for a phone you know for sure exists than to ask a bunch of random people hoping they’ll have a cell phone? I would think (at least before reading this I would have) that if anyone is going to have a phone and let you use it in an emergency it’d be the store.
@All “Who/how did the 911 call get made?” According to the video the couple who asked BB&B for help “ran back to their car to find a cell phone”. I’m guessing that they were closer to the store than their own car when they say the one with the kid in it.
@Rectilinear Propagation: That is an acute observation:
“I remember reading something a while back on CNN that said that the number of incidents of children being left in cars went up after they started telling parents they had to put baby seats in the back seat and should face backwards.”
we have eliminated one failure mode – unrestained children killed in car crashes – which has resulted in a new unintended failure mode- children dying in car seats in locked vehicles.
And no, children shouldn’t be left in running vehicles as they can move around and put the car in gear. While not as easy now with brake pedal/shifter interlock, it is still possible. while I was living in Chattanooga 10 years ago an incident happended. A baby sitter left 4 year old and 2 year old in her minivan in front of a grocery store. When she came out, van is gone. Cops called, local newsradio broadcasts alert (pre-Amber alert)everyone freaking out hunting for van. About 2 hours after the report, TV news people were on scene doing recording for evening news. One TV sound man gets to looking at the scene and walks across the parking lot to overgrown,wooded gully. He finds the van dhidden down in the gully with the children a little bumped up but ok! With the parking lot covered with cops, no one thought to have investigated the gully. Turns out the 4 year old had gotten into the drivers seat and put the older minivan in gear. No one even saw the van drive into the gully even at a busy food store parking lot- probably one of those lulls in business traffic.
BB&B is crazy in this instance. If someone approached me and said a kid was locked in a car, I would call 911 without hesitation.
Also, leaving your kids in a car while it’s running and the keys are in it? Bad idea, I worked with someone who had gotten arrested for stealing cars. They way they did it was to watch people at gas stations and wait for them to leave their keys in the car, then they would take to car. This was in a small town with little crime, too.
I live in Louisville, about an hour and a half away, and this made our news this morning. Turns out, the local prosecutor in Lexington is working to determine if they need to charge the store or any employees of it for refusing assistance. So yes, it is illegal to refuse to allow emergency calls here in kentucky, apparantly.
On reading the other blog, what baffles me is the mother’s response. She thought she left the car running with the A/C on? Lady, unless your keys are featherweights or your car is silent as death, I think you would know if you’ve shut your car off or not. My car runs pretty quiet, but it isn’t so quiet that I can’t tell the difference between the motor running and being shut off. Nice try.
And that BB&B is staffed by incompetent tools. Way to nearly kill someone.
A store employee refused to let someone who claimed there was an emergency call 911. Talk all the legalese you want, rationalize all you want, but that’s just bad BEING HUMAN, period.
The fact that BB&B corporate backed up their employee who was being a horrid human being? Is reprehensible. I kind of wish I ever shopped there so I could stop.
Oh well. There’s six grandmas in my family, and I guarantee none of them will ever set foot in this store again once I tell them about this…that’s something.
spanky at 06:47 PM on 09/08/08:
Yes, spanky, I really am implying in some instances just that.
No “dialect” uses the double negative in English as correct standard usage. And if you can name a foreign dialect that does, I’d be interested to hear of it.
@23221: Why did you put scare quotes around dialect? Do you not believe in dialects or something?
Rather than typing a bunch of stuff that you won’t read or understand, I’ll just point you to the Wikipedia page on double negatives, which can provide you with many examples of double negatives in use in both English dialects and other languages.
The insurance industry propaganda has really gotten out of hand when so many people here actually seem to think that a store would be successfully sued just for calling 911.
This story made me insanely angry ~ not only will I, and those who I forwarded this article to, be boycotting Bed Bath & Beyond ~ I fully encourage others to do the same! Let their training opportunity be that is there is an emergency, in their parking lot (or the vicinity thereof), they should get involved!!
The fact that there was an immediate danger to a child (charges were filed against the mother, which implies that there was a criminal act in progress) and the fact the employee didn’t see this as reason enough to dial 911 not only speaks volumes about the types of people employed at Bed Bath & Beyond, but also speaks volumes as to the company’s corporate PR bullshit gone entirely too far!!
NO MORE BB&B for me ~ k thanx!!
Well have you noticed when Bed Bath and Beyond get in trouble they never accept any kind of responsibility. Unbelievable I won’t be shopping there again and the reason being all they seemed to care about is keeping that lady in that store and making a sale. They told the couple to call 911 but they didn’t let them use their phone. I mean come on. Sickening. And to the lady that said people in lexington don’t have cell phones??? No they’re many older people that don’t have cell phones. And I don’t carry mine at all times either. She must work there…anyways shes not worth wasting my time on. I’m glad the ladys’ window was broken, I hope she gets some major jail time to teach people yes it is a pain to get your child out of the car but you know what you are a parent DEAL WITH IT
@jaradsmommy:
How is BB&B dodging responsibility any different from many other corporations in America today?
Cheers!
If it really was that hot out, then smash the window yourself. Or if it was an emergency, just start shouting for a cell phone to call 911. This sure didn’t sound like an emergency though.
When I was little (about 20 years ago), there was no issue with my parents leaving me in a car for a couple minutes while they went inside the store to pay for gas or something. No big deal. Granted, I was old enough to unlock my own dang door and open it if I was about to die of heat exhaustion.
Apparently times have changed.
I got charged with Wanton endangerment once…remind me never to go to a Chinese Buffet when Sally Struthers is in the same zip code.
spanky at 12:50 PM
Spanky, give it a rest. Double negatives do not count as correct English usage. Period.
And, no, I don’t count Ebonics as a dialect or a “dialect”.
@23221: Personally, I wish people would use more double entendres nowadays anyway!
I wrote to BB&B and actually got a personal response…
Mr. [Removed]:
First of all, I want you to know that I understand and appreciate your position. We are ashamed at how the situation was handled.
The most recent statement that we issued yesterday indicated that this situation was not handled the way we would have expected it to be handled. We have no policies that should have impeded our ability to respond in this case. And yes, we are using this unfortunate occurrence as an opportunity to re-train our associates nationwide. Like you, we do not want anything like this to happen again.
I hope that you’ll understand that I cannot comment on personnel issues.
Thanks for your feedback and I hope that, in light of this, you’ll reconsider. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.
[Removed]
Vice President, Customer Service
Bed Bath & Beyond
@scoobatz – NEVER acceptable! This is a great way to get your car stolen and your children kidnapped by someone who may not have even known they were in the car. I don’t believe a police officer would find this acceptable and as a parent, I’m shocked you would even consider it. Wake the kids up, carry them into the store with you, ask someone else going into the store to get the candy bar for you or go without your precious snacks until such time as you can get them into the store with you with less hassle. (Does your state not have drive-through Starbucks or drive-through ATMs?) Like someone else said, yeah, this is a PITA, but this is something you agreed to when you had children.
Sent an email, got this, better, response:
First of all, I want you to know that I understand and appreciate your position. We are ashamed at how the situation was handled.
The statement that we issued yesterday indicated that this situation was not handled the way we would have expected it to be handled. We have no policies that should have impeded our ability to respond in this case. And yes, we are using this unfortunate occurrence as an opportunity to re-train our associates nationwide. Like you, we do not want anything like this to happen again.
I understand your response but I hope that, in light of this, you’ll reconsider. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.
Hank Reinhart
Vice President, Customer Service
Bed Bath & Beyond “