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?

Yes, and the way schools deal with allergies (by banning allergens) also contributes. Shifting the responsibility onto the general public just doesn't work with a life threatening illness.

Although feeling sorry for the staff there is part of me reading through the events that thinks her actions were quite negligent logically. I guess it may be a company disciplinary issue but can this go further?

Not always, our son has a dairy allergy, lots of coffee shops have a milk free version, even more so now they tend to be syrup rather than powder based.

I'm not sure if it's the same in every branch but in ours, which is small, the frother gadget is used for all "milks" and they consequently cannot guarantee that drinks are dairy free, says so on the sign. Also cannot guarantee nut free and the only gluten free are prepackaged, sealed offsite.

If I had an allergy that could kill me I would not be buying food in busy chains, they cannot have adequate cross contamination procedures

But anything produced in a public setting, especially on a busy counter which handles multiple allergens, always carries a risk of cross contamination. It’s a personal risk choice, and not one I’d take with a life threatening allergy.

I have a laughably low tolerance level to caffeine, and when I ask for decaff I watch the staff making it so I can be sure they're actually using a decaff blend.

Yes I know it still contains some caffeine but I can cope with it.

I'm so sorry for this family but they should have borne the full oversight of the drink making if the reaction could have led to death.

They only have to follow their training - staff are absolutely not being asked to take responsibility.

The question here is was the standard procedure followed.

Every member of staff at every pay grade has a duty under H&S legislation to do as instructed/trained to do in their workplace - this rule protects us all in many ways every day. This principle - follow the company rules - is correct.

@MeowCatPleaseMeowBack

Good point. Do we need to revisit our whole approach to allergens and rsponsibility?

It wasn't cross-contamination.

It does seem to be an issue with the powder being made with milk because the staff member was meant to show the ingredients booklet but did not, which is where the complaint is. She did seem to tell the mother and the mother said it was fine.
I feel so sorry for the poor barista who is probably only young and making minimum wage. The mother needs to take some responsibility.

You can close 75% of coffee shops in UK if broken English doesn't do the job on minimum wages.

It doesn’t say the level of English.

If you had to rate it, what level would you plave my English skills at? My first language isn’t English, I was once in court and provided with an interpreter as the other persons barrister had requested one, it doesn’t mean the person has a poor understanding of a language.

I'll go against the grain here. I think that either Costa or the server ARE to blame and need to face the consequences. It's either poor staff training, i.e. Costa's fault, or incompetence (the server's fault). People should be free to order/buy stuff from cafes/shops etc and place reliance on food labelling being right (including labelling of wholesale/bulk items read by staff), and/or place reliance on the staff being responsible/competent when told about an allergy. Staff dealing directly with customers should be competent in the home language of the country they're working in. Fair enough if it was, say, an Italian trying to tell a British speaking waiter in a cafe - it is a little stupid when there's a language barrier. But in a UK cafe/shop, I feel it incumbent on the cafe/shop to have English speaking staff available to step in when another member of staff can't understand what the customer is saying/asking.

Any one of you could develop a potentially life threatening food allergy at any moment.

The fact they didn't carry epipens or equivalent suggest this could have been an escalating allergic response unlike others had previous.

It's such a sad story. Personally I don't trust many places with my sons serious allergies. We certainly never eat at restaurants where his main allergen is common, I just can't relax about things like that. He doesn't risk it either.
It sounds like they didn't have an epi-pen on them which is odd, for such serious allergies they should have been prescribed two.

I don't believe it's the servers fault no. The mum should take more responsibility, made it clearer or not got them from Costa/made them at home. Mum should also always be testing these things first. If mum had taken a sip first this wouldn't have happened. I don't blame the mum either, I just think it's a really sad event but nobody should be prosecuted for it

The staff member needed an interpreter at trial ffs

That doesn't necessarily mean weak English. I am fluent, I would still probably accept interpreter because I don't know legal terms. When legalese hits even natives can get confused if they are not familiar.

If you look at costas online allergens list the hot chocolate with non dairy milk isn’t suitable for vegans. And under dairy it says that it could contain milk due to manufacturing.

The line of questioning suggests the employee didn’t follow the process and show the mother the allergy book. The employee pointed out that the hot chocolate had milk in, I assume meaning the powder. The mother said it would be fine, according to that article.

There could have been a communication issue which getting the ‘book’ out might have helped with. But if the girl has never had a reaction like that before and the mother genuinely thought it would be fine, after being told, surely it’s just a tragic incident that no one could have predicted?

This is awful but blame lies on the mother surely?

Why would you even step foot in Costa?

My DH has an anaphylactic allergy to peanuts and tree nuts and while we do eat out, he doesn't get coffee from places that offer nut milks as an alternative to dairy where they use the same equipment for both. And I don't think he'd go to a restaurant that used nuts as prominently as a coffee shop would use milk.

Given the mum's willingness to buy a hot drink for her daughter at Costa, and the fact that she refused an epi-pen in favour of antihistamines, it sounds as though she didn't realise how severe her daughter's allergy was. This is the problem with a lot of allergies: the first reaction(s) can be mild but subsequent reactions can be more serious, and there's no way of knowing when that might be the case. I think plenty of people who consider themselves only 'mildly' allergic might make efforts to avoid the allergen without severely limiting their day to day lives.

From the reporting so far, it seems that there was miscommunication/misunderstanding between the mum and the server, and the server didn't follow procedure by following the allergy handbook. The fact that she didn't ask for clarification when the barista double-checked suggests she's to some degree culpable.

I think when dealing with food/drink that has potential to cause harm to allergy sufferers, you need to employ people who can communicate in respect of those allergies, i.e. ability to read "contents" on packing, ability to understand what a customer is asking for, etc. I.e. it's relative to the role and consequences.

You can't ban milk products from a whole school. Or?

the main issue here seems to be that once informed of an allergy, the correct procedure (the book discussion) wasn't followed. That is why the chain will be to blame here.

Once that book is got out, and the discussion over ingredients had with the customer, its then their issue if they then understand the risks involved and continue with the order.

It’s horribly sad, but I don’t think the barista is to blame.

Buying a drink in a chain that mostly sells milky drinks seems a dangerous gamble for a young person with such a severe allergy.

My heart goes out to them.