Not allowing heavily pregnant woman to use a loo

Humanity would literally end without women being pregnant and having babies; it’s not an optional extra!

Store policies and insurance policies should reflect that.

There should be some public acknowledgment in the form of private and civic facilities that women having babies allows economies to function and countries to thrive.

Look at any struggling community and it is one where the birth rate has fallen dramatically.

The law is an ass sometimes it really is! Society has forgotten what is important.

It must have been embarrassing for you but unfortunately that is the reality of being pregnant. The Co-op aren’t going to let you go in their staff area because if you start trying to steal stuff they then have to manhandle a pregnant woman out, and that will look worse on the front page of the local paper than wouldn’t let someone use staff loos. It’s not the Co-ops fault you don’t have a car or that you had to do the school run or that the baby moved.

Those who think the staff member should have let the op use the loo can I ask - if doing so meant losing their job (which it could, depending on the company) you think that staff member should have accepted being fired and having no income as a price worth paying? That they should prioritise the op over paying their bills and feeding their family? That's genuinely how you feel?

I'm sorry OP, I can imagine the humiliation and the knowledge that you could have been spared it with a little human compassion.

However I can also see that businesses do have to have rules and policies in place and the staff member you are talking to at the time is probably not going to be able to use their discretion for fear of getting into trouble. And in that situation you don't have time to try and find a staff member who could.

More public toilets are the answer. And a gentler, kinder society where we can treat one another with compassion and trust. Neither are quick or easy fixes though.
Tena pants for the rest of pregnancy and being kind to yourself - any reasonable person witnessing it would have felt compassion for you. And likely have either been in or close to being in a similar situation.

Worth seeing a gynae physio after you've had this baby to help strengthen things up for the future.

Why would a shop take out a restrictive insurance policy that states that only people on the payroll are covered for accidents?

They wouldn't, they'd have one saying that members of the public are only covered for accidents if they're in public access areas.

I really feel for you OP - I hope you are ok now. Like others have said it’s an insurance issue but in all honestly I’ve let plenty of people use staff toilets where I work as I use my common sense and kindness. I’d rather get in trouble that have someone pregnant / disabled feel humiliated and have an accident .

some people have given you a hard time probably the same ones who think we should let workmen or delivery drivers pop into our homes to have a stinky leisurely poo

Yes it's incredibly unfair to put someone in that position imo

I have both (part of the same insurance policy) and they don't distinguish between areas. In fact, it's personal to the business, not the premises as covers incidents outside of business premises.

Most councillors are actually quite elderly - sadly, cutbacks mean loos are expensive to maintain (too many people fouling them or shooting up) so they get closed. OP - there is an app called Flush that lets you know where your nearest public loo is. Might not be of use so much in the sticks but if you go into a town maybe

Why would a shop take out a restrictive insurance policy that states that only people on the payroll are covered for accidents? Also, people aren't saying it's "entirely possible" that is due to insurance. They are saying that it is due to insurance as if they have read all shop insurance policies and that's what they state.

I’m really sorry you’re not getting more support on this - it really varies country to country - I’ve asked when I was pregnant, small kids just starting to use toilet and found some places are just much more family friendly than others.

I think we all ought to form a women’s alliance and stand in our towns and raise money for public lavatories and an employee to look after them!

Why should public lavatories not be at the top of the spending agenda when we all have bladders and bowels and it’s a fundamental right to be able to relieve oneself with dignity. And women can do this far less easily than men.

It’s not a glamorous cause but it is a necessary one and it’s a cause that young men aged 28 to 45 in councils who are forming public policy don’t care enough about for the obvious reasons that they don’t have to endure the indignities of pregnancy, they don’t look after little dc as much as women and it’s often women who are caring for elderly relatives as well as some elderly men.

YABVU Your pregnancy doesn’t change store policies or insurance requirements.

@Offtheroof

protecting their jobs is more important that showing basic compassion and human decency towards a heavily pregnant woman.

Are you going to provide financial support to people who lose their job because they didn't follow the store rules.
If not then where is your compassion and human decency?

You are talking nonsense. There very much is a distinction between staff and public areas. Staff will be covered as they are employed by the business and would have had appropriate training for things like fire escape procedures. Member of staff injuring themselves in their place of work is very different from member if public being in a non public area as far as insurance is concerned.

Does it make a difference if the insurance thing is a red herring?

Stores have sets of rules which their staff have to follow. Lots of stores have a "no members of the public through the back" rules for a myriad of reasons. Staff who break that rule lose their jobs.

I feel for you, I really do. I've been pregnant four times and really struggled towards the end especially.

However, it's really not the stores fault. When I was a teenager I worked in a large well known store and we let a man use the staff loo. We had seen him in the store multiple times so thought it was OK. A member of staff had to escort him and it was upstairs. He 'fell' into some well stacked boxes (which as staff we somehow managed to avoid multiple times a day!) became abusive, threatening to sue the store and we had a health and safety inspection (which we passed, as thankfully we had cctv!). We also lost a significant amount of staff time while it was cleared up.

People like that are the problem, and unfortunately ruin it for everyone else.

What we should be campaigning for is more public toilets. We have recently been informed that all of the public toilets in our local area (a busy tourism area!) Are closing! Of course, it impacts women much more than men...

Regardless of your opinion on whether OP should've been able to use the loos there,

• This is a small shop she goes to regularly
• It's a one-off
• She obviously needed a wee, not to shoot up or smear shit all over the place
• She's clearly pregnant, and pregnant women are sometimes in desperate need of loos, as is well known

Why have you gone off on a rant about a different issue?

Why are so many people being so mean to the OP?!

Goodness me, where's the kindness and sympathy, this poor woman just wet herself in public and had to parade through a small town with wet clothes, this would be mortifying!

I'm so sorry OP, I can't imagine how awful that was, I hope you are feeling ok today.

All the planning in the world can go wrong sometimes, sounds like she did plan as best she could, when heavily pregnant with your 3rd child planning timely wees so never to be caught out is not always possible, just like planning when you might go in to labour!

A friend of mine was in Aldi once and her little boy toddler needed a wee, she had a trolley full of shopping and a babe in arms and had to run outside to a bush in the car park. The manger had seen and came up to apologetically and said please don't feel you have to do that, please ask our staff and you can use our toilet in an emergency. I used a staff toilet at a mechanics once in a pregnancy emergency. There are kind people and businesses out there and rules can occasionally be broken, believe it or not.

While i'm sorry for your embarrassment you said post school run ... presumably you would also have had to take your 2 children with you as well, so 2 (young?)children also in the back of the store/walking through a warehouse/up stairs/alone with a staff member while you were in the loo?

I think there was, or is a requiremt to provide customer toilets if you serve sit-in food/drinks (so if they have a cafe in store)...not necessarily for the public/non paying, but I imaging they would make an exception

Public liability insurance doesn’t cover staff, employer’s liability insurance does that. Completely different policies

It's not pregnancy discrimination. It is to do with insurance and security. A solicitor would laugh you out the door. It also has nothing to do with the staff having morals. Tbey are literally doing their job.

It is security and insurance as others have said. Many years ago working in a childrens clothing shop I got into trouble letting someone into a short corridor area so their daughter could try on a dress, it wasn't even the stock/staff room area.

I wore tena pads for the last couple of months of my second pregnancy after sneezing in Tesco.