Not allowing heavily pregnant woman to use a loo

No, mine was the legal field. Hence knowing why these rules exist. And they do commonly exist.

Yes, those "staff only" signs are for fun. And staff training is just to waste our time. And specific safety equipment is just to look pretty...

And not that there are dangers that need to be considered. We have an area that is staff only. Visitors are taken another route to entirely avoid that section. A route that is only accessible at certain times, so visitors are only invited in at certain times

you're not invested in increasingly pedantic point scoring but trying to infer (again) that I'm overly invested isn't pedantic?

There is a function called control and f which takes about half a second and tells you how often someone's name appears. I didn't actually go through the whole thread and count all your posts 😁

IT/computing also not a strong subject of yours at school I'm assuming. Together with reading comprehension, grammar, and debating skills...

They really have to stick to the general rules and the general rules are there for a reason. If you allow pregnant women then surely you allow young children and maybe old men with prostate problems.
This could be a danger for the staff . Anyone could stuff something up their clothes. Really if I was staff I wouldn't want to share the toilets with anyone off the street.

If co-op are on twitter or Facebook someone could # /link the thread (I'm sorry I'm not on twitter and don't know hiw to). It would be interesting to see what their response would be.

@Hankal

Only in the UK would this happen, no where else.

Where have you travelled?
Many shops in countries I have lived in don't even have staff toilets.

Actually access to toilets is often worse overseas. It's bad in the UK, but certainly not the worst.

Not in the 100s of shops they have worked in apparently

Not letting customers into staff-only areas is 100% a rule, don't be daft.

Obviously tills can't be left or the shop floor unattended. But not letting customers with medical needs ever use the toilet in an emergency even if there were staff on the shop floor was not a rule.

I did too although admittedly more senior than staff on minimum wage.

I'm sorry this happened to you OP.

I am also sorry about all these posters on here literally bullying a heavily pregnant woman that had a horrible experience.

Common sense and humanity should prevail in these situations. Reasonableness should have been exercised here by the shop assistant and you should have been allowed to use the toilet.

Nothing would have happened. You are not unreasonable to have expected a tiny slither of common sense and humanity. Only in the UK would this happen, no where else.

All the best with the rest of your pregnancy.

Nailed it.

@wombat15 I worked in retail for 2 decades.
I couldn't break the rules just because I wanted to.
(I will confess I did take a colleagues little niece up to the toilet once)

More frequent event where I work are visits from people trying to sell calendars or collect for caused I have never heard of. Or local organisations wanting raffle prizes. 'We have specific causes we support, leave the details '.
Toilet requests are much less frequent.

@wombat15 I would assume that all retailers have basic rules about "don't leave the shop floor when the shop is open" or "don't leave the till unattended".
You learn that on day one.
(which is what the assistant would have needed to do)

Given that you have clearly never done anything for a customer with specific needs you wouldn't actually know.

How do you know that "these rules exist". Multiple people have told you that they don't where they work or have worked and multiple people have told you that they have let people use the toilets in an emergency without it leading to a huge crowd of people using the toilet. Do you work in a chain where there is this policy? I would be interested to know which one because it all sounds a bit hypothetical.

it will be policy, even if just that of the insurance company.

A shop worker cannot know if a customer has a genuine medical need, or if they’re trying it on. They cannot be expected to assume that risk to ‘be nice’. These rules exist because people that thought ‘it will be okay’ found out that it wasn’t, in fact, okay.

It doesn’t matter what you have personally been told. If that is what these workers were told, they were correct in denying OP access.

@wombat15 no it is the same - you do something for one customer that technically you shouldn't be doing then you will have dozens of other customers wanting the same thing.

The example you gave is not the same thing at all. Using a toilet because you have a medical need isn't something people really want to talk about and most people don't want to discuss their medical conditions and toilet needs with shop staff either. People are only going to do that if desperate and there is no alternative as in the case of OP.

It isn't Coop company policy though. I can't think of anywhere where I've been specifically told that customer with medical needs can never use the toilets under any circumstances.

@wombat15 oh word would get around.
In one of the shops I worked in we were not allowed to hold products for people to come back and pay for another time.
Why? Because 50% (probably more) would never come back and while that item was sat in the stockroom waiting to be paid for other customers who would have bought it right then were told "sold out". But because it hadn't actually sold out the reordering system wouldn't send anymore.
It all worked perfectly fine until one member of staff decided to ignore the rule and hold back "Christmas Must Haves" for customers a few times and we were literally then had numerous customers saying "but that member of staff did it" or "my mate said you could" etc.
That member of staff got a bollocking by the way.

Either way, no, they wouldn’t be held responsible for following company policy by not allowing OP use of the toilets.

Allowing customers access to employee only areas poses a very real risk, and not just for the future employment of the retail assistant. They didn’t know for sure that OP’s reason for wanting access was genuine - if they allow someone in ‘to help’ and end up getting robbed, or someone was attacked, the store insurance would be invalidated and the person allowing it could be held liable. If OP had been injured in the staff only area they could be held liable for granting her access. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s basic risk management reflected in company policy.

‘Helping’ someone may provide the warm virtue-signaling fuzzies, but the warm virtue signaling fuzzies don’t pay your bills if you lose your job. They don’t shield you from potential litigation.

Maybe they didn't see it straight away. I doubt anyone would advertise the fact that they had wet the floor. Anyway, enough with all the ridiculous extrapolations and hyperbole. I think this thread is filled with jobsworths who will always find excuses not to help anyone.