Kew WTH?

I’m a Kew Gardens member and I have always enjoyed going, Saturday I had an unfortunate encounter with staff and I decided to write about. Let’s take racism out of it and look at the facts for what they are. Enjoy the email below.

Hi.

I thought I'd write to you about a bizarre encounter that occurred between a friend of mine and a member of staff yesterday.

Context-

 I am a Kew Garden member who yesterday forgot her membership card at home.

Also, I want to praise the actions of the manager/team leader who this query was escalated to.

So a friend and I arranged to see the orchids at the Princess of Wales greenhouse, she was running late so I went alone, but we said we'd still meet up for tea in the Orangery. Because I'd forgotten my membership card at home I had to show my drivers license to prove who I am at the main gate when I arrived at Kew. (This will be relevant later)

So when my friend got to the main gate she was meant to be coming as my guest. She was on the phone to me as she walked from Richmond station to Kew so I could hear the encounters she was having with the staff. It also meant that the volume she was speaking in was conversational "phone volume" for a public place. She had headphones on the entire time and was clearly on the phone.

She is stopped at the main gate and explains she is my guest, now normally because we arrive together she is my guest and I scan my card and we go through, but because she was running late we arrived separately. So she asked me if they'd scanned my membership card, because I'd forgotten it that day I said "no" not realising how this would be interpreted. (that's my fault) so my friend said I was a member who didn't need to scan, which a staff member corrected her for, which is correct, had I had my membership card I would have scanned it. the staff member asked her to stand to the side of the entranceway to wait for me so I could come and collect her as my guest. I realised what needed to be done and was walking in from the Orangery to collect my friend. 

(I want to be clear this is all context and nothing on this part of the conversation was inappropriate.)

Shortly after this my friend and I were within sight of each other so hung up the phone and greeted one another. At this point our conversation is at normal levels you would expect in a public place. The same staff member ushered us to a booth so I could confirm I was a member. We walked the 20 or so paces to the booth and I made a comment about how deserted it was, whilst my friend mildly berated me for giving her the wrong information about the membership card. 

Issue

I want to be clear, this was not exuberance, nor agitation, she'd had a long morning and did the tea at Kew as a favour to me because she's going on holiday and we won't see each other for a while. So it was just after 2pm and she was tired but happy to be there and that was reflective in her tone and volume. Meanwhile we were going through the brief process of member identification. I also want to point out here that she was speaking to me from less than half a meter away, so she couldn't be loud because it would deafen me first and I would have told her to be quieter because as I said the area was deserted. 

The person who ushered us to booth 3 then stationed herself just outside it, south of us.

My friend was then told she were ruining other customer's experience by the person who ushered us to the booth and that she needed to be quieter or management would be called. Now I want to point out that myself and my friend are both adults, and professional people completely capable of moderating our speech to our social situation, so if either of us had been loud, the other would have corrected them. It is also worth noting that neither of us is hard of hearing and so there is no need for us to speak in raised voices when less than a meter from one another. Finally, we're also capable of self-reflection, so if someone did come up to us and say "sorry can you pipe down a bit you are a bit loud and others can hear you" we would have apologised immediately and modified our behaviour. The point was, that we weren't being loud. Unless this staff member had bat-like hearing it is weird she could hear us at all, because I expect that the booths would have blocked the sound, but only because she'd stationed herself directly south of us, maybe 10 feet away could she hear our conversation.

But it wasn't just that she came up to us to ingratiate herself into a conversation that wasn't hers and opine on our tone and volume, which as I said was well within the bounds of normal. It was the condescension, and obvious erroneousness of her actions. There were maximum 5 guests within a 10 meter radius of which we were 2 and they were being dealt with quickly and efficiently by other staff members. It was mainly staff members and still I would say there were under 10 people in a 10 meter radius' and that includes the 2 ladies in booths 1 and 3. So there almost wasn't any other guests and members of the public to be worried about. We were shocked and taken aback, what we'd done to deserve this opprobrium I did not understand.  And because of this, we continued our conversation at our usual, completely appropriate level. This seemed to mollify her and so she reported my friend to the manager. I want to once again point out that in my 33 years on this earth I have never had someone have the temerity to approach me about my entirely appropriate conversations in a public place. But as I said what made it weird was that we weren't in the wrong. My friend even asked the lady in booth 3 and the lady agreed. The next level down from this conversational tone would be either hushed tones or whispering which is a weird thing to do in public. To me that would be suspicious, why on earth would a person whisper about bus routes and doing her mother a favour? If we were making racist, sexist, homophobic remarks even at a normal conversational level I would expect to be upbraided for it in public, but as I said I was being filled in on errands, bus routes and holiday planning so there was nothing offensive in the conversation that would make it appropriate for someone to listen in and intervene.  It was a perfectly normal conversation held at an entirely appropriate decibel. But I should also mention the sparseness of the conversation, because we were only in the booth to complete the membership identification process my friend could only speak to me when the lady in the booth wasn't speaking to me. 75% of the time we were there I was speaking to the lady in the booth, and so we weren't dealing with much conversation to begin with. 

As you can imagine the process of member identification is ephemeral, I was asked for proof of ID and because I had done it earlier that day I was familiar with it so I had my ID ready. So had we not been interrupted the entire process would have taken a minute max.

Which means you can imagine our shock and surprise when this staff member goes and calls the manager on us seconds later. I said to this lady, "oh don't worry she's not talking to you, she's talking to me," because she was so close to us of course she could hear our conversation. My friend was then annoyed, asked for her name and accused her of racism (i.e. branding our as antisocial based on the skin tone of the people rather than the merits or the demerits of if the conversation was being held at an appropriate level.)

At this point I want to say the manager behaved outstandingly. My friend now annoyed,  explained to the manager the situation without raising her voice and he listened and dealt with it calmly and professionally whilst deescalating it.  I on the other hand stood there not really understanding what the hell was going on. You can imagine how perplexed one would feel explaining to authority that we had the audacity to speak in public in 2025.

 I am not a child, so being "seen not heard" is no longer appropriate. Feminism has afforded me the right to be in public without a husband or male guardian and the time and means for leisure. My ancestors got their manumission in the 1800's and so the colour of my skin shouldn't be the issue. So I would like to know what about this conversation so offended this staff member. And she shouldn't have been eavesdropping into in the first place because it was at a normal volume and tone? 

As I have said repeatedly in this letter what is bizarre to me is that the staff member was the aggressor and that objectively, we were not in the wrong. I have never had such an encounter in all my life. 

I'm not mad, I'm not disappointed, I am more perplexed. This staff member came across as a martinet, which considering the stakes as you can imagine was really weird. It was, as you can imagine a completely enervating experience and doubled the amount of time we spent dealing with the query. 

Actions.

To close, I would like to thank the manager, and the lady at booth 3 for how they handled what should have been a completely unremarkable encounter. 

In terms of actions going forward if you can pass on my thanks to the manager, because it shouldn't have been anything, and he turned it back into nothing by calmly dealing with the situation. I mainly feel sorry for him because we spent just as much time explaining the situation to him as we would have done on the membership identification process if we hadn’t been repeatedly interrupted. We essentially wasted his time on a non-issue his team member brought to his attention.  

As you can tell from the tone of my letter this is weird, right? Racially motivated or not, it is weird simply because we weren't being loud and we were followed in order to make an issue where there wasn't one. I'm not looking for any disciplinary procedures I have complete faith in the manager to handle what happened for what it was, I am just a member of the public casually observing a really bizarre set of events. If anyone else had told me had happened at Kew I would have immediately dismissed them because I have been a member for years and I know your staff to be friendly and helpful.

I thought I'd recount the situation for someone else to pass judgement on because I personally am still confused by the whole encounter.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards

Bealinda.