Misinformation correction: M&S Staff

This is a total non story and I am entitled to my opinion. Sorry if you can’t handle that and think these boards are only for posters who agree 💯 with everything you say.

1. Staff in M&S are not supposed to approach customers.

1. This person was not working in this particular department

1. When spoken to by the mother this person turned away and left the department (because they shouldn't have been there in the first place)

This was a creepy guy acting inappropriately, actually his trans status doesn't really come into it, he was a male acting inappropriately. The only reason this gets defended at all is because 'trans'. We do not need another sacred caste above suspicion

Edit: it changed my numbering:/

Lol.

A cross dressing man going out of his way to walk into a department he doesn't work in to ask a young teen about bras isn't 'normal interaction' in anyone's book.

Apart from yours, obviously.

On the other thread an ex M&S employee confirmed that it’s company policy not to approach customers. I’ve never been approached speculatively in an M&S ever. Thats over 35 years of independent shopping. So for any M&S staff member to approach a customer is unusual.

The staff member was male. The staff member was not deployed to help in the lingerie department but had gone there on their own initiative.

The customer was an unaccompanied teen girl in the underwear section. The customer appeared to be an unaccompanied minor (parent nearby but not obvious). Any adult male staff offering to help this customer in this specific and sensitive context is putting themselves at serious risk of accusations. Irrelevant that they were trans tbh

Are you really a sex realist just fanning the flames OP? M&S's opinion that it is all fine and normal is largely what the original controversy is about. It's not like their position that it was just a staff member doing their job was hidden or something. It's what the mother was publicly complaining about.

Because it is not fine for male staff to approach teen girls in the lingerie department. In 50+ years I have never had a male employee approach me in any lingerie department, even female staff rarely approach unasked. It is obvious that on the whole women are going to prefer female assistance and that unasked for male intervention would be likely to make many women feel subconscious.

The mother of the girl in question also made it clear that it wasn't just the approach that was a red flag here, it was also that when it became obvious to the employee that the girl was not on her own but was accompanied by an adult, he slunk off. Which is exactly what creepy guys do to girls.

M&S trying to brush this behaviour under the carpet as normal and just what their staff are supposed to be doing, instead of taking the safeguarding of girls seriously is despicable.

And if it really is their policy that male staff members should approach women in the lingerie department and ask them if they want help, they need to rethink that. Though it's possible it's just not something they've ever had to spell out before because most men either have more respect for women, or they realise it'll look like they're perving and don't think they'll be able to get away with it.

Of course they won't apologise for manifacturing outrage about a (maybe) trans staff member politely asking 'Do you need any help' while in a lingerie department. It wouldn't have made national press if an actual male member of staff had done this - possibly someone might have complained to the shop that they weren't comfortable with a man in that part of the shop, but for some reason no one would have been interested in reporting that.

Pushing all sorts of hate?

What does that even mean?

Because a man who doesn't work in lingerie approaching a 14 year old girl bra shopping to offer "help" is creepy. If you can't understand that you can't be helped.

bollocks you would have said this to a man who thinks he's a woman when you were 14.

BINGO.

And another one.

READ THE THREAD.

YOU ARE STILL MISSING THE POINT AND ARGUING A STRAW MAN.

I haven’t read any evidence they were in the changing room. Why can’t they offer help on the main store floor? From what I have read (happy to stand corrected) the girl was shopping with her mother.

I really hate the way some posters assume ill intent at everything - including using words like ‘creepy.’ In a changing room, I would agree it’s ill advised to approach a teenager, but I don’t agree a trans employee (or anyone for that matter) should stay out of the lingerie department entirely for fear of offence. That’s totally ludicrous.

Awaits being shot down in flames…

it’s a good bra, flexi fit, full cup, reduced by 50% in the sale. I was going to return for a couple more colours but I have now found the same on eBay (presumably factory cabbage/over stock) instead of buying directly.

i haven't had cabbage in my bra for years! (good for mastitis)

Sure. M&S selects bluesky land of TRAs to correct the misinformation. What a load of crap.

Another person here who has never ever been approached in M&S.

Grown men should not be approaching children without a good reason. This person didn’t have a good reason.

When I was growing up, there was a rash of nuisance calls from a man who liked telephoning teen girls who’d been in the local newspaper. He guessed their numbers out of the phone book and would call to ask “what kind of panties are you wearing? Are they white or are they blue?”
The police got involved because in those days men wanting to talk to teens about undies was understood to be a problem. I imagine these days the girls would be convicted of a non crime hate incident for putting the phone down on him

Absolutely this.

Why? I'm quite happy to be served by a man, trans or female

Can I help you?

Yes please I'm looking for a size 34d in this ...

I'll just check if it's in stock.

Or alternatively. No thanks I'm ok ...

Normal interaction

Bra fittings are different but that's not what happened here

Not if they're bras to teenage girls, no.

Trans person aside, the average teenager is likely to find the whole bra buying process extremely embarrassing and will not want a shop assistant male, or female, trans or not, offering help, talking about bras or anything else.

Going up to a teenager in the lingerie section and offering help is not part of a M&S sales assistant's job. In fact M&S sales assistants do not typically offer help to anyone in any department, unless approached first.

I'm simply waiting to judge until I have ALL the facts.

If it turns out to be dog okay! I'll be the first to say Good Doggy!

Bingo is fun!

Adult men should not accost lone teenagers, either girls or boys.

Adult men having a gender identity does not stop that simple rule from applying to them.

Lucky that the girl's mother was so close by and could step in.

I bought a new bra from a very large branch of M&S recently, the only staff member I saw in any of the clothing departments was on the door of the fitting rooms - even the tills in the lingerie department have now become fully automated!

it’s a good bra, flexi fit, full cup, reduced by 50% in the sale. I was going to return for a couple more colours but I have now found the same on eBay (presumably factory cabbage/over stock) instead of buying directly.

At this rate the only bra customers they will have left will be male fetishists.

But more to the point, how could the girl even tell? I mean, you just don't know what someone's chromosomes are. Transphobe.

Maddy do you grasp that what you would call a transwoman is a man, a male? And that he approached a lone, young teenaged girl, in a department he was not detailed to work in? And that M and S have apologised to Mum and child for his frightening behaviour?