To think that Birds the bakers were right to sack their employee?

[Sootikinstew]

Employee of something like 25years accepting cash from pensioners and paying for shopping on her own card.

Now I know it likely came from a good place and she was trying to be kind and helpful. But AIBU to think Birds were right to sack her. This scenario opens up her and Birds to all sorts of accusations and would surely come under fraud or money laundering rules?

YABU and petty. She did a good thing and they punished her.

Haven't read all comments.

It does seem a heavy handed attitude towards someone who was trying to do a "good" thing for her elderly customers, but..........could it be that this woman's actions had been discovered earlier and she had been asked to stop doing it, but she carried on anyway?

Newspapers are well known for leaving out pertinent information in pursuit of a good story.

In any other context if you walked into a shop and the person serving said to put your cash into their own purse would you be so supportive

Perfectly fine by me.

I have done exactly that when there was no change in the till and my money was swapped for smaller notes/£1s etc.

It used to be called using your initiative and making a sale.

Now it appears people just want “computer says no” people

Now it appears people just want “computer says no” people

Oliversmumsarmy No. Companies want employees who they can trust to follow their policies, particularly monetary ones. Any employee who does not agree and does not wish to comply does not have to work there.

The employee used her card for over £200 transactions.Theres no way @Oliversmumsarmy she didnt put her hand in to her purse a few times.

Elderly people have arthritis,and are not too steady.Its only common sense she had to help them a few times.
Also not only that she laid herself wide open for people saying she took more money and never gave change.Its just not open and shut.Its a major mistrust of the company she worked for.

If you use the buffet-style approach to employment - pick and choose which rules of the organisation you're going to stick to - it's hardly surprising that the employer might also take the same approach by picking which employees they are going to retain and pay.

The employee who was fired now works for someone else if the media are correct.

Women couldn’t open a bank account in their own name until 1975
In the UK?

@C8H10N4O2
Yes, in the UK.
And there were many more restrictions on their financial freedom.
You can take a look at the link provided by vanillandhoney at Sat 01-Aug-20 16:29:17 to see how much use those first cash machines would have been to the vast majority of women.

You are the second poster afaik to ask that question incredulously.
What a pity we women do not know the history of our own oppression. I wonder how that came about.

I agree with the company their poses a biological threat, but surely with the knowledge they now have they will pay for a antibody test ect to confirm or deny. But to help out and get sacked is awful and verges on unlawful, what if she had done it without anyone knowing due to her work presence, you wouldn't know. Ridiculous.

But to help out and get sacked is awful and verges on unlawful,

babydisney Don’t be so silly it doesn’t verge on anything of the sort. Her own actions verge on unlawful because of her serious gross misconduct.

It doesn’t matter if anyone thinks what she did was “good”; she has proved to the company she cannot be trusted to follow their monetary policies and so they have no choice but to sack her, because their most valuable asset is not in trustworthy, reliable hands.

Cash mishandling is such a serious, serious violation that it almost always leads to dismissal and she would have known that.

I agree with you, OP.

heartsonacake
I agree with you that sacking wasn’t unlawful. Where we disagree fundamentally is that the company doesn’t seem to give a shit about it’s long standing, loyal customers. Or about the difficult position they put employees in. This employee has a relationship with her customers, which the company clearly doesn’t understand.

@Fairybatman Spot on. I'm amazed that so many can't fathom the blatantly obvious.

@dalmatianmad

Weve had birds cobs today with beef paste, sausage rolls and a standard pork pie.

Caramel donuts afterwards

Was was the original question?!

Was that proper potted meat on a crusty cob by any chance? save me some

Seems there was malice behind the long service employee's sacking, shame on Birds.

@Oliversmumsarmy are you being deliberately argumentative or genuinely that short sighted? It's clear what happened and why she was wrong. How did she give change? Or did she just keep it as her fee?

Now it appears people just want “computer says no” people

No, people who are too dim to understand basic rules there to help them just want to blame someone else for their own stupidity.

Seems there was malice behind the long service employee's sacking, shame on Birds.

Laundrywoman How’d you work that one out? Misuse the cash handling policy in any workplace and it’s pretty much a one way ticket out the door because it’s gross misconduct. I don’t think people are realising how serious it is.

vanillaandhoney mathanxiety

Yes

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/1918-vs-2018-13-things-women-couldnt-do-100-years-ago/

It may be in the Telegraph but it simply isn't true that women could not get current accounts in 1975.

My mother, grandmother and her sisters all had their own bank accounts long before this and none of them had male family to act as guarantors. My DGM's generation were the young end of that generation of women who mostly didn't marry. There were no men to marry them, support them - they had to live independently and that included having bank accounts.

I remember older sisters of friends who left school at 16 starting work having current accounts (complete with picture cheques!) before 1975.

Credit agreements/loans - yes absolutely but not basic banking accounts.

I don't believe the 1975 thing for bank accounts either. At a push it could be legislation stopped banks from being able to refuse but they'd stopped refusing years before hand.
My mum had her own account before she got married in the late 60s and by the early 80s I had a bank account in my own name as a child.
In 80s banks were falling over themselves to get primary aged kids, no way did they make the jump from no adult females to we'll give wee girls an account in the space of 7 or 8 years.

Blackbear19 it wasn’t that you couldn’t have an account it was that you couldn’t have an account without your father or some elder Male member of your household saying you could have an account.

Your mother wouldn’t have been able to walk into a bank and ask to open an account on her own no matter how much she earned. She would have had to have her father or some male member of her family with her what ever her age

Even though I worked for Barclays Bank in the 70s I wasn’t allowed a Barclaycard but the boy who started on the same day at 18 was allowed one without any reference to his father

She did a good deed , total over reaction by the company.

I wouldn’t trust any newspaper to give the full story - but especially when it’s an online clickbait story.

Bird’s is not a tiny company. I’d be very surprised if they didn’t have a decent HR link to check this with, especially given the potential negative PR.

Bird’s are not going to be able to give personal information, like if this was after a warning directly on this issue - or even other issues.

She took £180 in cash in one day if I read correctly. For a bakery where the average spend won’t be huge, that’s not one desperate 94yo with no access to a card or bread.

I’m sure there’s more to this.

If it was all in one day only - then I do think it would be harsh to give more than a warning though.

My dad buys everything by card as he only has a Post Office account. He is an alcoholic and won't open a bank account as he doesn't want access to his money 24/7 or he would spent it all when his money came in. He also can't get a bank account as he is homeless and they require you to have an address to open a bank account.
If places stop a accepting card it will be very hard for him.

A little Ng winded way of saying well done to her and no way should she have got fired.

@TOADfan I assume you mean cash, not card?

C8H10N4O2

You are incorrect about bank accounts for women and the need to have the permission of a male relative. It wasn't until the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status in the provision of goods and services and the provision of education, training, among other elements contributing to the second class citizenship status of women, that providers of banking services were obliged to treat women as individuals in their own right.

The financial implications of becoming one person (the person of the man) under the law upon marriage were very far reaching, and the psychological effects of that state ran very deep. Remnants of coverture proved stubborn. You can check the history of the legality - even the concept - of marital rape to see the deep-seated assumption of complete subordination of women to men within marriage.

Regardless of the 1975 Act, as late as 1982 unaccompanied women could be refused service in an English pub.
Up to the 1980s, a married woman had to declare her income on her husband's tax return - he would therefore know how much she earned.
Up to the 1990s married women could be taxed in their husband's bracket. The right of married women to be taxed as individuals dates from the 1990s.

forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2043820/did-women-used-to-need-their-husbands-permission-to-open-a-bank-account
Anecdotes.

You are incorrect about bank accounts for women and the need to have the permission of a male relative

Ok, I'll tell DM that she, her mother, her aunts all had imaginary bank accounts because a bunch of randoms on a digital forum discussion thread and a newpaper article behind a paywall say so.
Those cheques we received from them as children must also have been faked.

They had no male relatives to grant permission, even if they had wanted it.

As @Blackbear19 says, the 1975 act gave women the right, but it didn't mean bank accounts were not available to women beforehand.