Grandmother left dangling midair when she is caught by shutters
She was swept off her feet.
A 71-year-old convenience store cleaner in the UK got a serious surprise when she became tangled in a shop shutter and was lifted several feet off the ground, video showed.
Anne Hughes, 71, was standing outside the Best-One in southern Wales just before 8 a.m. Monday when the bottom of her coat got caught in the store shutter, the Daily Mail explained.
She realized the snag too late, however, and the grandmother was quickly hoisted upside-down into the air.
“I was just stood there when my coat got caught and up I went. I thought flipping heck!” Hughes recalled to the Daily Mail.
“I’m telling everyone it’s the shop where prices don’t go up but the staff do,” Hughes joked, adding “all I could think of at the time was that I hope I don’t fall down flat on my face.”
Luckily, the Best One’s manager, Amir, was in the store at the time of the incident and rushed outside to bring Hughes back down to earth.
“He ran over and managed to twist me around before bringing the shutters back down again,” Hughes said.
“I don’t have a head for heights so I was glad to get my feet back on the ground. Amir offered to get me a chair and a cup of coffee to help me recover but I said I was OK and had a cigarette to calm me down,” she said of the ordeal.
The CCTV footage of the incident subsequently went viral, garnering over 1 million views on TikTok alone.
“Don’t hang about like Ann, come down to best one to get the best deals! The only thing going up in this shop is our staff, not the prices!” the Best One location in Tonteg, north of Cardiff, joked on social media.
The shutter debacle was merely the latest mishap for Hughes, who has worked as a cleaner at her local Best One for over five years since retiring from her previous career as a carer, the Daily Mail noted.
“’I’ve been suffering falls for the past six months or so and the doctors up the hospital think it’s from low blood pressure — it was going up then!” she told the outlet, indicating an older bruise and black eye on her face.
“I was lucky my coat didn’t break because I really didn’t want to land on my face again,” she noted.
Hughes’ colleagues expressed relief that she wasn’t hurt during the incident.
“She is a lovely lady and it was quite a surprise for her,” one told the Daily Mail.
“But luckily she wasn’t hurt in any way. We know customers have been looking at the video — and we are just glad she is well,” they added.
Hughes said she plans to return to the job — with one caveat.
“I’ve learned my lesson, I won’t stand as close [to the shutters] in future,” she noted.
