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Here's some evidence that people in Utah are nicer than the rest of us: Last week, a nearly blind woman was kicked out of an Ann Taylor store in Salt Lake City because she came with her guide dog, and she's not even going to sue anyone over it.
Apparently Becky Andrews, a middle-aged woman who is a longtime sufferer of a debilitating degenerative eye disease, headed into a downtown Salt Lake Ann Taylor store last Friday with her guide dog Cricket. A salesperson told her she'd have to leave on account of the store's no-dog policy, even after Andrews explained that the dog was a guide dog and permitted to be in the store by law. Andrews left and went shopping elsewhere, but shared her story with the local news, who then reached out to Ann Taylor for comment.
Things then got messier, as the salesperson apparently tried to cover up for the mistake by saying the dog wasn't in its harness, so Ann Taylor's corporate reps issued a statement saying that Cricket was violating store policy, which they later had to retract. We reached out to them for an official comment, and here's what they've got now:
We at Ann Taylor sincerely apologize to Mrs. Andrews for her experience at the City Creek store.Service animals are always welcome in our stores and this incident is not representative of how we approach customer service.
In our previous statement we had said that her guide dog was unharnessed. This was not the case. We were misinformed and we are sorry that this incorrect information was released.
We strive for 100 percent customer satisfaction. In this case we fell short. We are in contact with Mrs. Andrews and her family to make this situation right.
Which, happily, is all that Andrews claims to want. She told Salt Lake City news station KSL that she doesn't intend to sue, and just hopes the company has learned its lesson. "I hope they can use it as an opportunity to learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again," she said. Consider the rest of us schooled in classiness.
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