Possibly mentally deranged store manager at Quakertown, PA Salvation Army Thrift store
This review is for the Quakertown, PA location of the Salvation Army Thrift store.
My wife and I are avid thrift store shoppers at various Salvation Army thrift stores in the Lehigh Valley here in PA. On 2 recent occasions, my wife and I were subject to severe harassment by one of the store employees at the Quakertown PA location. In the first instance, my wife was shopping in that particular store and, after paying for her items, left the store only to be followed out into the parking lot by 2 of the employees and falsely accused of stealing a scarf my wife was wearing on that particular day. After we proved that the scarf was indeed her own, the 2 employees did NOT apologize for the accusation and acted in a very antagonistic manner. My wife, who is 74 years old, was traumatized by the experience and never wanted to go back to that store again. I eventually convinced her that this was an isolated incident and we subsequently went back to shop at that store on a number of occasions - without incident.
But, then, yesterday, March 11, 2026 my wife was again shopping in that store and I left her there to do some grocery shopping in the area. When I returned to pick her up, my wife asked me to try on a shirt she had picked out for me, which I did in front of a mirror by the front entrance. As I was doing so, an assistant manager by the name of Kristen (or Kirsten?, she wouldn't give her last name) approached us and asked us whether we had already paid for a number of items that were in our shopping cart. I found the question to be strange but replied that no, we were still shopping and had NOT checked out and paid for anything yet. This person, however, persisted in asking this same question over and over again in a harassing manner, so I thought that she was maybe somehow mentally deranged and walked away to another mirror in the back of the store by the changing rooms just to get away from this person. But, unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. This Kristen person pursued us to the back of the store, confronting us again with the same question as to whether we had already paid for the items in our shopping cart. My wife and I were really getting upset at this point since this employee would not accept our answer that no, we had NOT checked out yet and were still shopping!
This entire situation was surreal because we couldn't understand that this assistant store manager would continue to harass us with such a weird question whether we had ALREADY paid while we were still shopping.
So I told my wife let's cut this short and pay for our items so that we can escape from this deranged interrogation. We went to the checkout and paid for our items. While doing so, this same assistant store manager again engaged us stating that she believed what one of her employees had told us, namely that we had ALREADY paid for our items. So crazy! Exasperatedly, I responded, "Fine, you want to give us these items for free, we can just walk out of here right now with these items even though we have said - repeatedly - that we haven't paid for them yet!"
No response to that from Kristen other than she mentioning that she remembered us from the previous above-mentioned incident (where she had falsely accused my wife of shop lifting her own scarf!) stating that "we have had issues with you before"
We paid, and, both of us being very upset by this bizarre altercation, left the store and went home. Since we are avid thrift shoppers in various Salvation Thrift stores in our area (Allentown, etc) and have spent probably a few thousand dollars on furniture and clothing in their stores just over the last few years, I wanted to leave this review because we really feel that this Kristen person is mentally ill and should not be working in the capacity of an assistant store manager if she exhibits such bizarre behavior. My wife is, after yesterday's incident, afraid to go back to the Quakertown Salvation army thrift store. I know that the credo of Salvation Army is to employ individuals who are in recovery or are otherwise disadvantaged, and that is commendable, but that should not mean to employ people like Kristen who have obvious mental problems and are unable to think reasonably and provide polite customer service. She, on the first occasion, accused my wife of stealing her own scarf and then, yesterday, accused us of trying to pay for the same items twice! How bizarre!