Auntie says

I’m a Girl from Auntie fan! I love your site and have enjoyed reading it [the writer may not enjoy it much longer, after reading this].

I’m writing to you to tell you about something that shocked me today. I went in to [local yarn shop with which Auntie is quite familiar] to purchase wool for a project and was amazed to find that stroller are banned from the store! There is a sign that says no strollers are allowed and I was told (not very politely) I would have to leave my stroller at the front if I wanted to shop there.

Of course, I find this disgusting. [Local yarn shop at which Auntie has dropped gobs of cash] has lost my business. And if you are a mother, are expecting a baby or care about someone who is, I hope they have lost your business too.
If you also find this practice abomidable[sic], please email [local yarn store, most of whose employees know Auntie by sight, if not by name]. I have cc’ed them on this note or use the email address included here.
[e-mail address deleted; wishing spam on anyone is just wrong]

Is there in an appropriate place for me to post this note to other knitters? I’d appreciate any suggestions on this issue.

Perhaps you didn’t know, but Auntie is very familiar with this particular shop. In fact, she has spent gobs of cash at this shop, and was such a frequent customer that some of the employees came to know her by name. While that doesn’t really sound surprising for the majority of yarn shops, Auntie felt this was an accomplishment for this particular one. It’s a busy shop, it’s chock-full of stock, it’s full of customers demanding frou-frou and assistance, and the staff doesn’t have time for tea-party niceties. Hell, the shop’s reputation for being brusque made the local section of the weekend paper, once, although it was suspected afterwards that the idea for the story had been planted by a person planning to open a knitting shop of her own. (No, I’m not talking about the owner of the other shop that was already open and mentioned in the newspaper article.)

Mind you, immediately after that article was published, a certain Stepford-like quality was noticed in the shop, but it’s wearing off now. Auntie doesn’t care one way or the other. Auntie remembers fondly the days when foolish newbies would wander into the shop and ask, “do you have any acrylic yarns?” and the clerk would respond, bluntly, but not unkindly, “no–the owner is allergic to them.” Alas, those days are gone; since the yarn is expected these days to do most of the design work, synthetic fibers and frou-frou have increased in popularity, to the point that whenever Auntie walks into a yarn shop–any yarn shop–she is assailed by the loud, clashing variegated colourways and irritating textures of novelty yarns.

Now, on to the specific point: although Auntie does not like trumpeting the fact about to all and sundry on the Internet, Auntie is a mother. She has walked, with infant tucked into a Peg-Perego stroller, across downtown to go to this particular shop. She has taken public transit, with infant jammed into one of those shoulder-harness carriers, to attend at this shop to peruse its stock. Auntie distinctly recalls that when she brought the stroller, of her own initiative and with courtesy aforethought, she parked the stroller at the front, removed the infant therein, and carried the infant about with her as she shopped. When shopping with father and son, she directed father to take son and stroller out for a walk. Why? Because the stroller was too damned big, and the city streets aren’t exactly clean.

Think about it. This particular store is so jam-packed with yarn, you cannot pass another person in the aisle without delicate manoeuvering, and despite your agility, you will doubtless make contact with the other person. You cannot pass a stroller through its aisles. The lowest shelves of yarn are virtually at floor level. The dust and mud of the street caked onto customers’ shoes is bad enough; you do not need stroller wheels making tracks over the odd ball of yarn that strays onto the floor (customers, as a breed, are notoriously bad for not picking up after themselves, and leave their messes for the staff to clean up afterwards; and while you might have control over where you place your own feet, Auntie guarantees that when you steer a stroller, you are forever bumping into corners and running over stuff).

Auntie arrived at this conclusion using her own powers of observation and reasoning. She didn’t need a “stroller parking” or “no strollers” sign, let alone a sales clerk, to tell her so.

Furthermore, there is the additional reason that had to be pointed to Auntie, because she would never think of such a thing. Less scrupulous stroller-pushers may use the stroller as a means of secreting purloined stock. Yes, that’s right, they use the stroller to shoplift. This particular yarn shop also has a sign requesting that large bags be left at the cash, or at least not brought downstairs, which is outside the staff’s range of supervision. Do you object to that?

Was the clerk rude? Auntie wasn’t there, so she doesn’t know; furthermore, Auntie takes reports of rudeness to customers with a grain of salt until she is apprised of the full context and conversation, because Auntie has come to realize something in her dealings with shopowners and staff in general. Consider this: on Internet mailing lists and groups, those people who inject many exclamation marks and “LOL” are generally considered to be cheerful, helpful, and friendly sorts! Don’t you think? LOL. Those who abstain from such frivolities are taken to be more serious; their tone might be gentle, but their attitude is more susceptible to being misinterpreted by the reader. This is the fault of electronic communication; because readers cannot absolutely discern tone from written communication, they have grown accustomed to picking up cues from punctuation and silly little acronyms. For example:

Question: I’m looking for a pattern that has this fluffy stuff and it can be worn as a scarf. Has anyone seen it?

Answer 1: You have to be more specific. No one can answer your question without further details.

Answer 2: You have to be more specific! No one can answer your question without further details, LOL!

Auntie rather thinks that the staff at this shop are like the people who are conservative with their punctuation.

Now, it wouldn’t have killed the clerk to say “please,” if this word was indeed omitted, although Auntie notes that you can say “please” and still sound rude. So she shall give you the benefit of the doubt regarding the rudeness of the clerk, because it seems your real issue is the content of the message–i.e., that no strollers are allowed past the front of the shop. Auntie obviously disagrees with you. If the shop has ample aisle space and permits it, by all means, stroller about. Many shops are designed that way, now. But when the shop physically cannot make that accommodation, do not expect to be granted a special dispensation to push or haul a dirty, wheeled conveyance through the stock. If this shop made the room for strollers and carriages in the yarn aisles, they’d have to cut their stock in half.

How the shop handles the customer in a wheelchair, Auntie doesn’t know. But a stroller is not a wheelchair.

Now, if Auntie had been told to leave her stroller outside the shop, because there was no room inside the doorway, she would have left and come back some other day. Auntie expects that this shop would only make such a request because the shop front already held its full quota of strollers. If the request was made and no other stroller was in sight, she would have laughed derisively, perhaps advised the clerk to have a nice day exclamation point, and then either returned at a later date to discuss the matter with the owner or a staff member she knew, or privately canvassed other mothers she knew to determine if this was normal behaviour or a freak occurrence. If this is in fact what actually happened, then Auntie thinks your complaint would have more impact and be useful in working towards change, if you had actually recited the precise chain of events and context.

Good luck with your boycott. As you’re probably aware, there are plenty of other sources for your yarn fix, including alternate yarn shops (Auntie unceremoniously hauls her wet stroller into one shop in Kensington Market, because the owner is so indulgent, has the floor space, and has a much smaller stock and therefore does not have to guard against the soiling of yarn stored in dangerous proximity to the floor) and online vendors.