To think it was Wilkinson's own fault that one of their shops was set alight by a work experience girl.

[IamHelenaJustina]

Daily Telegraph link here Basically bored 15 yr old was left alone to stack shelves and set fire to cardboard to get out of it. Causing HUGE blaze and thankfully no injuries or loss of life. Obviously she is entirely responsible for the stupid and dangerous action and has been prosecuted accordingly.

BUT a part of me wonders what the heck the store staff were playing at. Work experience is not free labour. She should have been with staff learning about different roles and not bored out of her mind alone in a stock room. Or AIBU? Is that what work experience is for?

Are you her mum OP?

That's the only reason I can think of, that anyone would be stupid enough to think it was the company's fault.

The girl was 15, who at 15 isn't able to know how quickly fire can get out of control?

She deserves to be punished accordingly and I hope she is.

When I was 15 I was sent on work experience to a hairdressers, but obviously there was very little I could do other than sweep up hair and make cups of tea. It was mind numbingly dull, but I wouldn't have even entered my head to burn the place down!

The girl is a fucking idiot and knew exactly what she was doing. A very dangerous young woman I think.

Can't believe you are sympathizing with an arsonist. Oh poor love she was bored. She could have killed someone - YABVU

Dh has a girl on WE working with him next week. Poor thing is going to be bored shitless but my experience of 15 year olds is that yes they get bored easily and no most of them don't do stupid dangerous things like set fires.

A lot of jobs are boring, and nearly every job has boring elements to it. I always found doing some boring jobs as a teenager was a good incentive to work hard to get something better.

When I was back at school, we had people do WE in places like lawyers, architects, the vet and all sorts. There are very few tasks you can do without being qualified. (I was at the vet's, and it was mostly really interesting, even though there was a lot of watching.) I think the people who got retail WE did usually have more things to do, even if it was shelf-stacking.

I'd say that being bored at WE is pretty standard, and therefore good experience - that is the world of work much of the time... And pretty much every other person who has ever been on WE and got bored has managed not to burn the place they're doing it in, because they're old enough to know it's not a sensible decision.

Quite a lot of posters will have had parents and grandparents of an age that they might well have left school and gone into full-time work at 14 or 15.