Entitled Parents

Entitled Parent confronts me at work after bag checking her son in the registers

So this happened in the course of 2 days during the weekend and I was still "sorta-new" to my job (a year in working here). I was asked to work in the day (I'm usually a night/closing shift worker). People were sick so I was asked to be in registers during the first half then on the floor during my usual hours. No biggie, been there before. Our store tends to get some people who try to steal goods so we now have a "check bag policy" where we have to check inside your bags, baby strollers, and during that same year, as far as checking inside boxes of our products because of a case where someone tried to steal hundreds of dollars worth of Lego toys and hit it inside a car seat box and someone removing a lamp in its box and filling it with clothing. This policy is placed at the entrance at the shop so all customers should at least know that we have this policy in place.

So I was serving for this man at the registers and he has a lot of grocery shopping. Since it wasn't busy, I asked if I could check his bags. He was shocked but I told him that we kinda have to due to store policy and he should know about it. The guy got mad, complied for a bit but then stormed out of the store.

Thought that will be the end of it... but nope.

The NEXT DAY - I was confronted by the guy's mother... who is like close to the age of my grandmother. She told me that she went towards the people on the registers and asked "who was working yesterday in registers and has long dark hair". My co-workers pointed them towards me who I was doing the day shift floor duties.

Conversation goes as follows:

EM: Do you work here?

Me: Yes why?

EM: Are you also [Insert nationality here]

Me: yes???

EM: Ah good, this will make my job easier. *pauses*... How DARE YOU interrogate my son like that?!

Me: I'm sorry??? (confused since I immediately forget events that happen at work because... why would I need to remember every person I interact with)

Here is a fun fact about EM, we both have the same nationality, so she's decided to give me a full blown lecture on how "disrespectful" it was to check the guy's bag when he's clearly innocent. This lady complains and yells at me at both English and our native language about how "I was in the wrong" and blah blah blah. The thing about me is that... I'm not that fluent with our native language so some of the words she said, I couldn't understand but I got the jist of what she's complaining about. So her yelling didn't take that much of a tole on me mentally but I was like both shocked and sorta scared (I hate confrontation).

Me: I'm sorry but it's store policy to check, even if you're at the registers.

EM: BUT MY SON IS INNOCENT!!! When he went home that day, he CRIED and told me on how HE FELT LIKE A CRIMINAL. I could have complained about you to your manager but since we're both the same nationality, I thought of sparing you the risk of losing your job and just "talk to you" on what you did wrong".

No matter how many times I tried to apologise and explain to her that it's store policy, she still complaining and saying that I should have pardoned his son since we're both the same nationality and I should have trusted him since we're a "community" (we have a very strong community of migrants and overseas workers in our area). In the end she was like "I don't want to hear another complaint from my son about this", "I know you were doing you job but YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER to not treat MY SON like a CRIMINAL" and finished off with a "Good day! Nice to talk to you. I hope you learned something from this".

I told this story to a few co-workers and they told me that I was in the right - that it was store policy so I did nothing bad but just did my job.

Thank god I no longer get called to work in the day anymore.