A cancer patient has been left devastated after he left his wallet in Kmart, only to discover that an employee cut up all of his cards due to “store policy”.
Glenn Darby was shopping at the store in Busselton, Western Australia last Wednesday night when he realised he had forgotten something. Upon returning the next day, he found out that staff members had not handed his wallet to police.
“The lady said to me, ‘You’re not going to be happy’. I asked why’s that, and she said, ‘We had to cut up all your cards, it’s store policy’,” Mr Darby told Nine News. “It just seemed aggressive to me, cutting like that. It was bizarre.”
Not only were both of his bank cards, his Medicare card and a $100 fuel voucher from the Cancer Council destroyed, but also his medical alert card. The father-of-four was recently diagnosed with rare oesophagus cancer and it’s vital that he has the number on the card with him at all times.
“I ring the number to say what do I do or I need help,” he said. “If my chemo port comes out, it goes everywhere. It’s like poison coming out everywhere and interrupts my treatment, and I need it to beat this.”
Kmart has issued an apology for the incident. “We deeply regret and sincerely apologise for the incident that occurred in our Busselton store,” said a spokeswoman.
“Kmart do have a lost property policy in place for stores, which does not involve the destruction of all personal cards, as has occurred in this situation. This was an unfortunate mistake, and we apologise for the inconvenience caused. We are working with this customer directly to rectify the situation.”
