Milk allergy death- should the book be thrown at the staff involved?

[mids2019]

....or if you are minimum wage staff member working in a stressed environment without English as a first language there should be leniency. Doctors are paid for life and death decisions but are Costa staff?

Frequently order's are routinely mixed up or customer names misspelt or wrong, the barista.misheard or made an error. Or both

You do realise supermarkets also can’t guarantee no cross contamination or even the ingredients (hello horsemeat), so you’re essentially saying people with allergies should only eat food they have grown. Every single food item you buy in a supermarket means you’re relying on someone else to check it on your behalf.

There's quite a difference between owning and running a business n overseeing it's allergen policies and being someone at the bottom who makes drinks, though. No matter how careful you are there is always human error. It's not as if the server intentionally poisoned the girl. The server won't be found liable in this case. If anything, the mother who refused to use epipens might be found guilty of negligence, but I doubt that will even happen.

This is a horrible tragedy for the family and I feel terrible for them.
BUT. If I were the mom and I found myself having to repeat myself to the staff, I would never have trusted them sufficiently to let them prepare a drink for my child.
Also, if a sip of milk is enough to kill your child then you should probably be preparing the hot chocolates at home or ordering a juice when out and about. Not worth the risk! In a busy coffee shop it is quite possible a drop of milk gets into places it should not. As a parent there is really no excuse for being so relaxed about something like this.

They seem so strict on prescribing epipens here

I'm on a drug that in other countries you have to carry 2 of them at all times as the reaction to the drug can happen at any point. A lot of countries won't let you self administer the drug at home either

I was monitored for my first dose for 2hrs, second dose 30 mins and now I do it at home but no epipen prescribed. Every time I do it I worry a bit I will react to it

In the company I'm at the server would immediately be in the wrong for verbally advising about the milk in the powder, we have it drilled into us NEVER to discuss/answer anything allergen related, only ever hand them the allergen tablet or phone customer care. 'Device not advice'. I do sympathise with the server though because in a rush you do sometimes think 'I KNOW this does/doesn't have X' and it would be so much quicker to be able to tell them rather than faff around finding the tablet, loading the page, zooming in...

All I can say is that if I or my daughter had such a life threatening allergy I would not be relying on cafe staff to provide me with drinks. I’d be taking a flask from home.

My sister told me about this tragic death and the inquest. She said from what she had read that the dentist they were visiting offered the mother an epipen to use and she said no, she opted to get something from a chemist.

Really? Would you? Really?

How can you possibly trust that all those machines and utensils have no trace of cows milk on them?

You can't.

But an unnecessary epipen can't do harm can it? So worth a try

Certainly sounds like she didn’t realise how serious it was initially and thought her Dd would be better off with anti histamines. So sad.

They're expensive to dish out for a "maybe" incident when there's no history of risk.

The mother may not have known that, and probably hadn't been given any training about when to use one.

I’d order a Fanta or Coke, not a hot chocolate of any description or ingredient from a shop that’s main food product has milk in them.

I feel sorry for everyone involved. It's awful. And although it does seem like an un-necessary risk to use somewhere like Costa, I'm going to cut the mum some slack. The girl was 13. I remember 13...

Please mum
Pleeeeeeeease
It will be fine
We can just tell them to be really careful
You tell them. You can make sure
I've done it before
Honestly. It was ok
I swear it's fine, they use a different jug and steamer
Pleeeeease

And when you have a child who has spent their life taking their own food pack to parties and having to sit on a different table etc, I can imagine the temptation to allow something 'mainstream' and the way you might be persuaded.

Yes I think she should be fired. And the manager should he sanctioned for hiring someone without enough English to understand an allergy warning. After all asking for soya milk is hardly an unusual request, and if the staff member was unsure she should have asked a colleague.

Exactly. No need to carry a flask around, you simply buy a safe beverage.

It sounds like this was going to be inevitable at some point if they weren't yet aware of how bad her allergy was.

If you look at most hot chocolate powders it says that they contain milk or may contain milk. The costa soya hot chocolate is marked C for cross contamination but it seems that the mother assumed that the cross contamination would have came from the milk jug, when it could actually have been coming from the powder. So it seems that they weren't used to checking properly and thoroughly.

As an allergy parent I agree with this. I'd have encouraged child to pick a prepackaged juice or soft drink in such a scenario. While we try not to overly restrict our eating out, there are some things we choose not to do given the risk (we choose not to eat in Chinese and Indian takeaways given his lifelong nut allergy and not to eat at buffets where nuts are served).

And if the child's allergy was known why didn't the parent have antihistamines/ epipens with her? We carry both everywhere, and even before we were prescribed epipens carried antihistamines everywhere.

If it's in the powder it has to say contains. Even traces of an allergen count as contains.

But it is always a risk. If you accept that risk then that’s fine but if you don’t accept the risk and want to blame someone else then that is another matter. This was a tragedy but there was almost an inevitability about it.

And we come full circle to this was a staff error that started this catastrophic chain of events.

Exactly, ALL of their hot chocolates are marked as YES for containing milk or C for being at risk of cross contamination.
And no one knows where the cross contamination could come from, maybe the machines or utensils or maybe the hot chocolate powder seeing as most contain milk or else say that they may contain milk or traces.

Fucking typical. When something happens, pin the blame on staff, ignore the corporate conditions that lead to it happening. Its like the situation in Nottingham - always easier to blame staff that actually hold systems to blame.