I love Muji and have been shopping here since before they opened any stores in the United States. My home is literally filled with Muji products and I must have spent tens of thousands of dollars at Muji over the past twenty or so years. However, after my experience at Muji Newbury the other night, I don't think I will go back to them again any time soon.

Firstly, when I walked by around twenty five minutes before they closed the other night, the lights at the entrance were turned off. I thought that perhaps they closed early, but after I saw a small group of people walk out the front door, I figured that maybe the lights were just broken, so I proceeded to walk inside the store.

Since the pandemic hit and I'm not in Boston anymore, I've only been able to visit Muji Newbury a few times in the past few years. Therefore, I was pretty enthusiastic to take a really quick look and grab some snacks if they had any in stock. However this enthusiasm was quickly extinguished as I walked around inside the store.

Since the lights in the front of the store were off, nothing in the front half of the store was really visible. This didn't bother me very much since I was going into the back of the store to look at the available snacks, but I still found it to be odd that the lights were off even though the store wasn't closed yet. Furthermore, I saw a lot of empty shelves and a lot of things that were on the shelves weren't priced.

After being inside for a few minutes I noticed that over the intercom instead of the typical Muji music a message kept repeating itself over and over again that the store was closing and to bring your purchases to the front to check out. This in itself wasn't that big of a deal since all businesses make these announcements, but hearing it repeat itself over, and over, and over again was very annoying, especially when the store wasn't closing for another fifteen minutes.

It was at this point that I asked a staff member if there was a manager on duty, since I never had this experience before at any other Muji location and was just curious if this was their normal operating procedure. The only manager available was checking people out at the register, so I picked up an item to purchase and politely waited at the end of the line to speak with them. I was the last person in line.

The manager that I spoke with was very confrontational. After purchasing my item I used the opportunity to ask her, in a very soft tone, if the lights in the front were broken, or if they had just shut them off to dissuade customers from entering the store around closing. I was told, "yeah, that's how we do things at our store" in a very confrontational and rude tone. I'll admit, I haven't been to Muji Newbury in a really long time and perhaps this could have been a newly implemented thing that I don't know about, but I don't remember it being like this at Muji Newbury before. Furthermore, I haven't visited any other Muji in USA, Japan, Hong Kong, China, or Australia where they did this. I further asked why the intercom kept repeating the same message over and over despite the fact that it wasn't quite closing yet, and my question was simply ignored. I was offered no apologies, she didn't try to level with me, didn't try to explain their reasoning, nothing. She was just evasive, confrontational, and rude. She simply replied, " WE'RE CLOSING NOW". Despite the fact that this miserable woman was rude I'm not going to name her here. I simply said, I'll be in touch with Muji customer service and walked out and left.

Having worked in the service industry for many years I understand firsthand what it's like to work with the public and wouldn't consider myself unreasonable. I just feel as if this type of treatment to customers is unacceptable, especially from such a Japanese business like Muji.

This experience has greatly soured my short-term view of the Muji brand and if this is the type of customer service Muji wants to maintain here in their American branches I simply won't shop there anymore.