A TikToker posted a video supposedly showing an Ulta manager accusing an employee of stealing since she brought her own makeup bag full of products to work.
TikToker Leah Aguirre (@leahsmomlife) posted the interaction between the manager and the worker, who is also her cousin. The store manager allegedly wanted to toss the used makeup out of the worker’s bag because the products didn’t have green dots on them. The dots are supposed to indicate that the items in an employee’s bag were inspected when they entered a store.
The bag-check policy, which some viewers say is no longer instituted at Ulta stores, is seemingly meant to inhibit employees from potentially stealing any store products. In the viral video, the store manager appears to tell the worker that while she isn’t accusing her of stealing, she either has to leave the makeup products in the store or toss them out in front of her.
@leahsmomlife SO RIDICULOUS #fyp #foryoupage ♬ original sound – Leah Aguirre
A text overlay in the viral TikTok reads: “Ulta wouldn’t let her take her makeup bag home cus she couldn’t prove she bought it. Empty used makeup!
“[The manager is] not letting her leave telling her she needs to throw it [the makeup bag] away because it doesn’t have green dots on it. She can’t check her fucking cameras, she’s standing here, ‘Oh you need to throw it away if it doesn’t have the green dots on it thinking she stole old-ass makeup. That’s so ridiculous. I can’t even understand what kind of shit, what kind of boss does this?” the filmer questions. “And she’s fucking calling security on me like I’m scared.”
“I don’t want to leave my stuff here. You see, it’s been used. Why would…” the worker begins to say.
The filmer calls the manager an “idiot” and lets her know she plans to post the video she’s recording.
“I’m not gonna spend my money on products that I already have,” the worker reiterates to the manager.
@leahsmomlife Replying to @jujuugee #greenscreenvideo #fyp #foryoupagе #ulta #teatok ♬ original sound – Leah Aguirre
In a follow-up TikTok video, Leah gives a storytime. “OK, so basically, my cousin just quit. I guess she just said, ‘I’m not gonna work for a company who makes me feel like I’m stealing. I’m just not gonna work for a company who’s accusing me of stealing.’ So, she walked out, and then that was basically it,” she says.
She says the manager gave her cousin an ultimatum to either dump the makeup or leave it in the store and that if she didn’t oblige, she was fired. She also says the manager threatened to call security on her after the walked in the store “mad” and demanding the manager check the security cameras.
“I was like, ‘How you gonna do this shit? Check your cameras. How you gonna sit here and hold her hostage and not let her leave and accuse her of stealing?” she recalls. “As soon as I start recording, she had turned her back towards me, and she’s talking very low, and she’s like, ‘I’m not accusing you of stealing.’ What else are we there for, lady? We’re there because you won’t let her take her makeup home… because you think she stole it. But she keeps saying over and over ‘I’m not accusing you of stealing.’ Yeah you are, you’re accusing her of stealing. You’re not letting her leave.”
Leah reiterates the products were almost fully used and that some of the products were CoverGirl. “They don’t even sell CoverGirl there, and she was accusing her of stealing like CoverGirl products,” Leah says. According to the Ulta site, the store does carry CoverGirl products.
“[The manager] was going as far as saying like if you don’t have the receipt, I’ll look it up in my system. She wanted to look up every item in the system to see if [my cousin] stole it. All of it was used. You know when makeup’s so used, it has like marks and stuff on it,” she says, lifting some cosmetic products to demonstrate what she means.
Leah claims that another worker conducted a bag-check on her cousin’s makeup bag already. Leah claims that person “was fine with it” but that the manager had a problem with it since there were no green dots on it.
“She would rather have her employee dump out her bag, throw out her whole makeup … instead of just checking her cameras to see that somebody else checked her bag when she got there,” Leah says of the manager. “It’s just that she has all this power, and she is taking advantage of it. And she always treated my cousin like crap, so my cousin’s like, ‘You know what, it’s just whatever.’”
Leah then features a clip between her cousin and the Ulta manager. “This is ridiculous. I don’t wanna work in a place where I’m being told I have to leave my stuff because it looks like I’m stealing,” the worker says to the manager.
Viewers in the comments section claimed that Ulta did away with its bag-check policy. While there are several reports of similar policies being implemented at Ulta stores in the past, it is unclear what specific policies are currently in place.
The Daily Dot reached out to Leah on TikTok and Ulta via email.
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