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?

No. An F1 is paid more than a barista for a WTE full time role
i think you’re referring to the additional unpaid hours that F1 work that when hours worked are divided by salary reduce the salary to approximately on par with barista

But you’d be carrying an epipen with you. And you won’t dismiss an offer of an epipen by the dentist. If mum knew she had severe allergy, then why did she not do any of the above or recognise the severity of the situation earlier? All sounds weird. I hate to say it is not all the servers fault. They need to establish whether the child was known and diagnosed to be medically intolerant OR allergic to milk. If so, why hasn’t she been prescribed epipens? The fact that she was heading to get antihistamines to treat the symptoms as if it were intolerance tells me that she initially thought it’s an intolerance and was not expecting her to have a severe reaction that will lead to death. Something is not right.
it also says that mum needed an interpreter. Does that mean they might have had a breakdown of comms due to the language barrier? So many questions.

It's not shifting responsibility onto the general public, it's making reasonable accommodations to minimise risk of cross contamination.

@Notmushroomforthis
If schools had to have allergy free menus I'm not sure they could offer much of a menu.
This poor girl had a dairy, eggs and fish allergy. Other children would have nut or gluten allergies, or kiwi/strawberry for example. What could her school put on their menu?

All food and drink providers have a legal and moral duty to provide food and drink that is safe to eat, including those with allergens. Regardless of pay, if you work in the catering industry it's part of your job. This is a tragic case of negligence and should hit home to people who don't take food allergens seriously or think people are being dramatic - IT CAN KILL.

Staff should be trained and put their training into practice, people don't choose to have allergies.

You’re just wildly speculating. You have no idea what the family knowledge or understand of epipen administration was following their consultations.

I was just reading about this news story. Very sad all round. Interesting discussing and I can understand the different points of view.

Personally I feel there was a lack of common sense from the barista, if a customer is asking you to wash out a jug in between the two drinks they’ve ordered surely even if you initially fail to hear them say “soya” their request for washing the jug indicates there’s some sort of allergy involved so you’d then check and clarify?

The facts seems to be hazy but if it’s true the barista used cows milk I think she is culpable to a degree. The teen did yell out she tasted cows milk, so I assume that’s what happened as opposed to there being a tiny trace of it in which case IMO the barista would not be to blame at all.

If the mother refused an epi-pen at dentists I find that very strange and highly unfortunate and she will need to live with that :/ but the situation of being given cows milk should never have happened to start with. I’m assuming they never knew how serious the allergy was and had never been prescribed an epi-pen so I get why they didn’t have one of them but not why the mother declined. Dentists are very well trained!

Costa, Pret etc either have to hold their hands up and say no we can’t safely accommodate people with allergies or they have to take responsibility when these things happen.

A very unnecessary tragedy and I hope proper lessons can be learnt and at least some future deaths will be prevented as a result.

The school catering company for my ds's school have over 2500 special diets including allergies and intolerances. Their menus are pretty full and varied.

Yes it can kill which is why people with serious allergies need to carry medication in case the worst should happen. Food providers should do their best to minimise risk but there is always a risk of being exposed to allergens, and the risk can never be completely eliminated. I bet the majoritynof people on this thread saying the barista is to blame have never worked one day in customer facing roles, they can be so pressured and stressful, not to mention noisy and chaotic, there is no person on this earth who could work 100% perfectly in such conditions.

I worked in care and no how shocking work conditions can be. If a resident dropped and I was the one there hoisting them then I would be negligent because I should have asked for help. I had a tricky client who should have had two carers. He had to get approval from the social worker for extra funding. I asked everyone who worked in care would I be negligent if he fell and hurt himself they all replied yes. I shouldn't be held accountable because of the work conditions but then I should have said something if I knew it was wrong and their was danger.

That sounds stressful but when you work in cate your job is specifically within the health and social care sector. I'm quite sure a barista at Costa is more the catering/ retail sector. I am sorry your pay is so low but that is really an issue for another thread.

But allergies can crop out of nowhere. I have a severe allergy to a food I ate liberally throughout my life. One day I ate it and it damn well nearly killed me. You can have someone who has a mild allergy they tolerated because they enjoyed the food and one day their body decides they don't like it and tried to kill them. You can have someone with a severe allergy but never had anaphylaxis.

None of the above will be prescribed or carry epipens by the NHS.

AND she explained they needed to wash the jug used for frothing the milk and the other bits. She was very vocal about it. How the hell did they get this SO wrong 😱🥲

🙄

One of my daughters likes coconut milk. We've gone into a few Costa branches, and I ask for a chocolate fudge brownie frappe with coconut milk and real dairy cream. Each time the server has paused and said 'Dairy cream?' and I've had to say 'she likes the coconut milk, she doesn't have an allergy to cows milk', then they've breathed a sigh of relief and put the order through.

I genuinely think the server didn't even hear soya.

Health & social care is regulated, inspected. Staff are routinely expected to manage risk
retail coffee shop isn’t inspected or regulated and don’t have standardised SOP for risk
It is an unrelated comparison, an extrapolation

True, which is another way these tragedies can happen without anything possible to prevent them. I'm quite sure if you spontaneously developed an allergy you wouldn't be avoiding anything beforehand. The only thing that could help in that situation is having emergency medication available nearby such as in a first aid box, but then that comes with thr risk of it being misused ar another time.

Crazy to blame the staff member or the company

if you have an allergy it’s up to you to decide if you want to risk another person making you food or drink

she could have got a sealed drink or could have just waited and made her own

absolutely wrong to blame the poor girl serving

This is perhaps the most sensible, informed post on this thread.

It's written in law that they must provide food and drink that is safe to consume, including allergens, "doing their best" isn't good enough and in this case, the barristers due diligence couldn't be used as a defence as they weren't diligent and didn't do everything in their power to prevent a customer being served something they had an allergy to. First rule in training: if you are unsure, ask... as it can be a case of life or death.

It's why everyone needs to be allergen aware. If you see someone having an allergic reaction call 999 immediately, if they have an EpiPen administer it while simultaneously calling. The first thing you say should be "I'm with someone having a severe allergic reaction/anaphylaxis"

I am 100% with you on this. It is immensely tragic and truly awful.

but, if you suffer a deadly allergy, you can’t pass the responsibility of your well being onto another person in a context such as this. It just isn’t fair. The worker would not have signed up for that. It isn’t like if you drive a bus or are a doctor. You are just making drinks.

now of course you should take the best care to produce the drinks requested but mistakes happen. The mistake itself was minor (ie picking up the wrong drinks bottle) but the result was just catastrophic . There is also so much cross contamination in these premises that I don’t believe it could ever be truly allergy free.

If doing their best isn't good enough then what do you suppose is? Shutting down all food and drink outlets just in case 3 people a year die by mistake?

I know, although not everyone knows how to administer epipens (although it is very smiple) which is why people with allergies get specific demonstrations on it from doctors. As I have said several times, the best way to prevent these tragedies is to use the emergency medication.

On a recent flight in Europe they would not serve any peanuts as someone on board had a nut allergy. A woman takes her child into a coffee shop that is awash with milks of all kinds and assumes there is no risk of her child coming in contact with the wrong sort of milk being it in a coffee, on any of the surfaces,cups, spills etc is asking a bit much. Just stay well clear.