The Response

A few days I wrote about a nasty situation at the Chelsea Premium Outlet Mall in Vacaville, CA. For a refresher, please see "Photography is Not a Crime."

Today, taking me by surprise, I actually received a response. Predictably, though, it was unapologetic and actually misrepresented the circumstances by which they were made aware of my violation of their "code of conduct."

Code of conduct? Who are they kidding? Who goes shopping realizing that they are doing so under implied consent of a code of conduct?

Here's the letter:

click on it for a better view or see: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=188397227&size=o

Just by coincidence, last weekend we stopped at another one of their fabulous outlet malls in Napa (mostly because we had to pee) and I noticed that the management office was right next to the rest rooms. I noticed a document taped to the window that turned out to be exactly what this letter is referring to. If it was much larger than a standard sheet of paper, it wasn't by much. It's not exactly something that would stop shoppers in their tracks and say, "Gee, I hope I'm acting within the mall's code of conduct!"

It was about 102° outside. I was hot, tired and miserable. I SHOULD have taken a photo of the document because it was fairly thorough. What was most interesting was the first 16 items on the list. It included things like shouting, causing disturbances, doing illegal things and other stuff I can't remember. Number 17 must not be very serious because it was near the bottom of the list.

I had asked Chelsea for the complete list but, obviously, didn't get it. SO I will be FORCED to take a photo of the list the next time we are at one of their FABULOUS malls.

Now just for clarification, the only reason it "came to their attention" that I was at their Vacaville mall taking photos is because I wrote to them and said so. Their employees have no way of knowing who I was.

They may get to know me in the future, however.

Does any of this sound totally ridiculous?