M&S Colchester claim mixed changing is ‘completely safe’ for women.

Would you feel safe with someone pointing a camera at you asking you to contradict your employers policies? Knowing that if you don’t comply they are going to post the video it to an audience who are ready willing and able to dox you?

Would you feel safe with someone pointing a camera at you asking you to contradict your employers policies? Knowing that if you don’t comply they are going to post the video it to an audience who are ready willing and able to dox you?

What action do you fear exactly?

I agree. The only victim here is retail staff.

I fear how far it’s going to go.

Getting evidence for the police or to prove a beach of the law is one thing. This is NOT what has gone on here. This retail worker has been publicly humiliated and shamed and it should be illegal.

Hopefully one of the outcomes of this is it highlights the abuse of staff in retail and make filming like this illegal.

Getting evidence for the police or to prove a beach of the law is one thing. This is NOT what has gone on here. This retail worker has been publicly humiliated and shamed and it should be illegal.

Hopefully one of the outcomes of this is it highlights the abuse of staff in retail and make filming like this illegal.

Exactly this.

M&S are indirectly discriminating against women by having a policy where changing rooms are mixed sex.

This employee on camera is the evidence of that policy.

The man walks off dismissing her reasonable request. She is then asked to leave the shop for asking for a single sex space which they won’t offer her. He tries to imply it’s because she’s been aggressive or raised her voice but she only increases her volume because he walks off instead of finishing the discussion in a polite way.

All this is because both M&S and this staff member believe that it’s OK to discriminate against women.

Unfortunately for them - it’s not ok.

And the PP on this thread who seem to think that the woman is the unreasonable party here need to give their head a wobble. Recording discrimination on film is completely fine imo

The woman filming should make a small claims court application against them. Sex Matters has a guide on how to write the pre action letters etc

And so should lots of other customers - if they won’t listen to all the reasonable complaints perhaps they’ll listen when it starts costing them time and money?

Sometimes you need proof of what a policy means IRL on an important issue such as this. In order to illustrate a problem for those who do the "there isn't a problem/nah, that would never happen" thing.

When you get that proof - well, this employee provides it. I'd feel,sorry for an employee who was sympathetic being exposed on SM like this, but this person? No, cos he is fully behind the GI policy and dismissive of the GC customer.

I'm surprised and sorry the DM hasn't picked this up.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Individuals have and still are keeping these discriminatory policies in place and demonising women who speak up.

Those individuals will have to put their money where their mouths are - and that might mean their beliefs being made public sometimes when they don’t expect that. Just like GC people have feared in the past.

The filming started part way through the conversation when the employee had already been recalcitrant. The filming started to record his poor attitude. He wasn’t being entrapped

The filmed employee clearly agreed with the policy - at no point did he say you make a good point or i sympathise. Or I can see your POV. He said leave the shop - which is difficult to interpret in any other way than: we don’t want your type as a customer.

On the other hand I agree that filming someone is an aggressive move - and maybe it’s not what I’d do, but I’m not going to criticise this women for having done it. What I would say is that the employee missed a trick. She isn’t entitled to film him on private property and as store staff he could call security. Only in the public realm i think you can be filmed and not expect privacy? So he could have asked her to stop filming and said that M&S might take a dim view of that material going online, especially if any monetisation is involved.

Instead he walked off and suggested she leave the store - it’s his reaction and he should own it. He’s been seen to abide by M&S policy and he may get a few comments on social media but he’s unlikely to face any death threats or lose his job like the person filming might?

Speaking of toilets in particular, I was appalled that when visiting New York recently, that the public toilets (when you could find them) and even in massive tourist locations like famous museums and Central Park etc, actually had at least an inch gap down EACH side of the door frame. And I kid you not, the doors were more than a foot off the floor so you could see a lot of each person sitting there on the loo.
The kicker was the ones we went to that had GLASS doors. No I am not joking. You couldn't even rightly call it frosted glass. It was very very vaguely blurred, so much so that you could make eye contact with people at the sinks while you were there doing your business.
Which I didn't do as soon as I saw the set-up and could see other women sat with their garments round their ankles.

Absolutely mind boggling.

Give me a floor to ceiling fully enclosed lockable cubicle any day with doors that actually meet the frame.

But then you'll have people saying you could slip a camera under the gap. Personally I'd rather be fully enclosed but it'll be subjective obviously.

Speaking of toilets in particular, I was appalled that when visiting New York recently, that the public toilets (when you could find them) and even in massive tourist locations like famous museums and Central Park etc, actually had at least an inch gap down EACH side of the door frame. And I kid you not, the doors were more than a foot off the floor so you could see a lot of each person sitting there on the loo.
The kicker was the ones we went to that had GLASS doors. No I am not joking. You couldn't even rightly call it frosted glass. It was very very vaguely blurred, so much so that you could make eye contact with people at the sinks while you were there doing your business.
Which I didn't do as soon as I saw the set-up and could see other women sat with their garments round their ankles.

Absolutely mind boggling.

Give me a floor to ceiling fully enclosed lockable cubicle any day with doors that actually meet the frame.

"I completely understand your point of view" goes a long way.

You can change the design to make it safer. You can have a 15cm floor to door gap so you can see how many people are in each cubicle and their proximity to each other from the outside. The slight decrease in privacy can even prevent crimes.

There is nothing he can do himself except listen and invite her to complain to the people who make the policies, which he did.

That's not a reason to expose him to doxing by a barrister who should know far better or general ridicule, even if he were "extremely dismissive" (I don't think he was, even just in the edited clip shown which obviously didn't show the whole interaction)

People should be able to make relatively minor mistakes while doing their job and not have themselves destroyed on the internet for making them.

Even if you have the separate women and men's changing rooms, no company can say it is 100% completely safe, just safer. Boys being targeted by predatory men, for example.

But the man being filmed didn't create the playing field, nor did he dictate who can play on it.

I never said two wrongs made a right.

I'm saying we are playing on a drastucallyunegen playing field.

As I've said a few times on here two wrongs don't make a right. You should be better than that if you want change.

I'm not sure there's much point in pulling the GC side up on 'shitty tactics' given the absolute avalanche of such tactics on the TRA side.

In an ideal world, no she shouldn't have done it like that, but we certainly aren't living in an ideal world. I don't have too much sympathy for this man, he was terrible dismissive towards women.

I hope M&S take note. Their staff shouldn't have to go to bat for such awful policies.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Individuals have and still are keeping these discriminatory policies in place and demonising women who speak up.

Those individuals will have to put their money where their mouths are - and that might mean their beliefs being made public sometimes when they don’t expect that. Just like GC people have feared in the past.

The filming started part way through the conversation when the employee had already been recalcitrant. The filming started to record his poor attitude. He wasn’t being entrapped

The filmed employee clearly agreed with the policy - at no point did he say you make a good point or i sympathise. Or I can see your POV. He said leave the shop - which is difficult to interpret in any other way than: we don’t want your type as a customer.

On the other hand I agree that filming someone is an aggressive move - and maybe it’s not what I’d do, but I’m not going to criticise this women for having done it. What I would say is that the employee missed a trick. She isn’t entitled to film him on private property and as store staff he could call security. Only in the public realm i think you can be filmed and not expect privacy? So he could have asked her to stop filming and said that M&S might take a dim view of that material going online, especially if any monetisation is involved.

Instead he walked off and suggested she leave the store - it’s his reaction and he should own it. He’s been seen to abide by M&S policy and he may get a few comments on social media but he’s unlikely to face any death threats or lose his job like the person filming might?