A Māori man kicked out of a west Auckland supermarket after confronting the store manager says he was at breaking point after more than a year of alleged racial discrimination by staff.
But a Countdown spokesperson says he was completely unknown to them before that point - and deserved to be booted out, as he was aggressive and threatening to the point the manager filed an incident report.
Henry Keita Nehua and his partner have been regular customers at Countdown Te Atatū Peninsula since 2019, going there nearly every day as they don't always have the means to do a weekly grocery shop.
But the 34-year-old says every time he goes he leaves feeling humiliated, as the store's staff allegedly follow him around the store and ask to see the contents of his pockets and bags to prove he's not stealing.
"It got to the point where I could be trying to shop and I'm looking around, and the employees or the security is spying at me from around the corner. It's just ridiculous," he told Newshub.
"I've never, ever seen that happen to anybody else, and I'm there all the time. I thought of myself as a valued customer. It's got to be something racial or discrimination or something of the sort."
Nehua says he's never stolen from the supermarket.
Countdown is adamant Nehua was not known to supermarket staff prior to the incident earlier this month - but he says that can't be true, because the targeting is constant, and regularly brings him to the point of tears.
"It affects me, it affects my family, it affects my attitude at home, because I can't even go shopping without being followed around," he said.
"I just didn't know what to do any more. I come home and I'm straight upstairs just about bawling my eyes out because I don't feel like I shouldn't be treated like this in my own country, by my own people."
Tensions came to a head earlier this month, with Nehua confronting the store manager about his alleged treatment.
He said once again, he'd entered the store then "boom - they were watching me".
"I said, 'I want to know why I'm followed around the store all the time'. And she [the manager] literally stepped back and said 'I feel threatened, you need to leave'," he recounted.
"I was like, 'excuse me, I'm trying to make a complaint here'... I said I needed to know how she would feel if she was the one who's being followed around all the time.
"She goes 'it happens to everyone'... But I know that it's just me, because as soon as I walk through the store, either the security or the employees are following me."
'His version of events differs from our reality'
Nehua is adamant his complaint wasn't threatening - certainly not enough for supermarket staff to boot him out - but a Countdown spokesperson says he was.
Kiri Hannifin, the supermarket chain's general manager of corporate affairs, said Nehua was "very aggressive" towards the manager, to the extent that upper management checked in with her the next day to ensure she was OK.
"His version of events differs from our teams' reality. His behaviour was such that the team raised an incident report," she told Newshub.
"We remain incredibly concerned about the level of abuse our team are subjected to."
While the incident happened the day before last week's horrific stabbing at a Dunedin Countdown, Hannifin says abuse towards Countdown staff is an ongoing issue that keeps her up at night.
"We would have assaults against our team every day in our business," she said. "It has got significantly worse since the level 4 lockdown last year, where we saw, during those few weeks, a 600 percent increase in violence towards our team.
"[There have been] threats to kill, threats of abuse, terrible, terrible abuse, every day. It's been a very, very tough 18 months for our team in New Zealand."
But Nehua says laughter from staff after he was booted out - as heard by his partner, who remained in the store after the confrontation - proves they didn't feel genuinely threatened by his complaint.
For now, the experience has left him not wanting to return to the supermarket - but he says he doesn't really have an option to go anywhere else, due to financial constraints and him only having a learner's driver's licence.
"I've never stolen from them and I've never had the intention of stealing from them," Nehua said.
"I spent a lot of money there and now I feel I just can't go there."
