Northampton B&Q staff verbally abused as hundreds of customers turned away due to high demand

Staff members at B&Q in Northampton were verbally abused by customers as hundreds turned up to collect orders over the Easter weekend.

Many cars that arrived at the Towcester Road store were turned away due to the high demand with queues stretching for almost a mile on Saturday lunchtime (April 11).

Natalie Whitestone, whose husband works at the hardware giant, said he was called a 'fat ****' and shouted at by customers waiting for compost on Friday.

"My husband and his colleagues are working extremely hard in-store and with morale already low, customers being aggressive and abusive just adds to this," she tweeted.

"I hope people will also think twice about if what they are buying is essential or whether they could actually just wait for it.

"My husband is grateful to not have been furloughed but who wants to go to work when they face this kind of treatment?"

B&Qs have been shut since the lockdown began on March 23, but customers can still shop online with delivery or collection available.

According to Mrs Whitestone, her husband and his colleagues turned away more than 300 cars because it was so busy.

Multiple calls were made to police about issues at the Towcester Road branch yesterday (Monday).

But officers were only deployed once due to reports of two drunk men walking up and down the queue harassing people and getting too close to them.

A B&Q spokesperson said: “All of our 296 stores have remained closed to customers for browsing since March 23, when the UK lockdown was announced.

"As an essential retailer, B&Q has moved to online-only, making diy.com its primary store for a limited range of home improvement needs and providing contact-free Click+Collect and Home Delivery services only.

"Given these changes, we are currently experiencing extremely high demand for Click+Collect orders and unfortunately were unable to serve some customers at our Northampton store this weekend.

"We’d like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. A big thank you goes to our store colleagues who have been incredible.

"They’re picking and fulfilling thousands of orders every day in stores designed for browsing and shopping, and are working hard to ensure that customers can collect items in our store car parks in a safe and secure way.”