Not allowing heavily pregnant woman to use a loo

I was having a think about where we might have loos. There are public loos but they've been closed for years. However there is a shopping centre with loos which is open early. And the library has its own loo and there's another one in the same building. But none of those are very near a school. I think finding a secluded bush would have to be the goal!

I agree that the state of some public toilets makes me wonder what people do in them and what their bathrooms are like at home.
Pubs and restaurants are a good place to pay an emergency visit. But tend not to be open after dropping kids to school.

This, and the women's toilets are worse then the men's

bookies are good to,

Pubs and restaurants are your best bet.

It is so frustrating that this happened to you!

Well I haven’t seen anyone directly blame the minimum wage shop worker either! They are mainly blaming shop policies and managers for not using their discretion.

And the op certainly wasn’t a “dick” when the situation occurred. If you read the thread properly, you see she asked once, and when refused she left immediately.

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and imagine that you are intelligent enough to
understand why your argument is both ridiculous and unreasonable. I seem to have inadvertently triggered you and in response you are falling back on the boring and predictable mumsnet favourite of attempting to shame and chastise me. Sorry it took so long for me to reply to your comment by the way, but I have been busy all day taking care of my severely disabled dc. In case you are wondering, he was perfectly healthy until about an hour before he was born. Unfortunately the paramedics refused to help me out of the house so I could get to hospital in time to save him because they were not allowed to due to “insurance purposes”. So they stood there and did nothing. But hey, you do you. The main thing is that people like you can keep their jobs for ticking boxes and obeying the rules.

okay so what if senior management DID give shopfloor staff the discretion to decide whether to allow people to use the loo or not and a staff member decided on this specific occasion not to, because it was really busy, or because she didn't want to leave the sole other staff member alone on the floor. Or perhaps she has the opposite views to some posters on this thread who think that pregnant women are the only people with weak bladder control and therefore should be the sole exceptions to the 'no public in staff loo' rule, and thinks she would allow an elderly or disabled person but not a pregnant woman. Or the loo is down a steep flight of stairs and she just doesn't want to risk being the one to accompany a heavily pregnant woman who might trip down them. Or she sizes you up and thinks you look a bit dodgy and a potential theft/false insurance claim risk. Then you would be blaming her for not using her discretion the way you think she should interpret it.

If you are focussing on the 'company culture' argument then you'd be better off arguing that they should put dedicated public loos in all their stores rather than relying on discretion and personal morality to make individual decisions to access the staff ones.

Plus you still haven't answered how, given you couldn't get to the shop doorway without losing control, you know you would have managed to wait for a staff member to be free to accompany you and then get to the staff loo without doing so, without knowing how far away it was or easy to get to.

I haven't seen anyone saying 'they probably couldn't allow it because of insurance/policy and that's a good thing,' just that if said policy is in place it's not fair to blame the individual staff member following it as they are obliged to do - if OP or anyone else feels that strongly about shops allowing people to use staff loos they should be writing to head offices and their MPs, not being dicks and blaming the minimum waged staff members and calling them cruel or pedantic for not wanting to risk their jobs.

Yes...a puddle on the floor needs cleaning. Small shops don't have cleaners. I prefer a flushed toilet to dealing with pee on the floor.
As an aside...we have had an occasional toddler accident but never a dog.

My local co-op allowed my children to use the toilet when they needed to go. That was years ago maybe things have changed. I suppose another hazard was on the floor someone could have slipped.

I get it from both sides
As someone who had had both bladder and bowel issues for over 30 years - there have been many times when I’ve been caught out
At work however, we have had money and phones stolen by allowing members of the public to access staff only areas, possible GDPR breaches and another occasion when I took pity on an elderly homeless person to use staff loo who then used it to take drugs and unfortunately died during the process
I won’t go into further details but it was an absolute nightmare

Agree with this - someone can't risk their job for you. I sympathise with OP though and it's hard being in that situation. I vomited in my office once - that was fun(!) Thankfully the cleaner was a lovely man

As you didn't make it out the door before weeing yourself.

Would you weed yourself in the stock room?

We get asked all the time (charity shop) and the answer is always no. Old, young, pregnant, whatever - we just cannot let you use it for insurance reasons. I always tell prospective lavatarians how to get into the entry behind our row or how to sneak into the loo at the nearby pub though.

Erm, yes they do. It might also cover things like staffing levels on the shop floor, which would be affected by escorting a customer to the toilets.
Different shops have different rules because different shops have different layouts, facilities and staffing levels.

Absolutely it's due to insurance and security where I work. Our toilets are next to a massive stock room, and expecting a member of staff to chaperone would have it's own issues (safeguarding etc). It just wouldn't be worth my job to go against the policy.

@wombat15 where you work must have a decent amount of staff then
As I said upthread - many small convenience shops like the co op frequently have just one or two member of staff there.

Perhaps OP should write to Co-op head office and see what they think. It doesn't fit with their stated values and they do say they accept "can't wait" cards for example.

my point was trying to help the op as the question was posed by the op to begin with on how they could of planned better

If you've read this thread thus far, you must know very well that there are many 'good reasons' to deny use of private toilets in a shop to a member of the public, pregnant or not. It's unfortunate for the OP, but the shop assistant is not required to justify the policy to her.

I am sorry you had an awful experience .

i can understand how you feel - however the biggest problem firstly there is likely only one staff , or one doing delivery - you would need to be escorted.

I have absolutely no doubt that you are genuinel , however lots of people aren’t - I work in the city centre - you would be amazed how often children are used for theft . Distraction whilst someone else steals which is where insurance and blanket policies come from .
shops are at the bear bones of staff . There definitely isn’t spare staff to take staff to the toilet.

They don't have to but if they don't have a good reason it is not nice to refuse if someone is heavily pregnant.

They aren't going to let the public in general obviously. Many companies and certainly chemist shops we'll let people with specific medical conditions, heavily pregnant women and small children used toilets though. The co op does usually too.

Staff toilets are private and not for public use.

The staff member does not have to provide a 'good' reason to anyone wishing to use them, even though it's easy to think of several such reasons.