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?

How could Banks seriously go from men only to let's include the kids in 7 or 8 years.
Attached is an advert for my first bank account. Bank of Scotland had the best adverts, and goodies as a result lured thousands of kids in the door with their Christmas money.

I actually don't understand why banks no longer seem to want to lure primary aged kids.

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

Yes This was even featured as part of a storyline in a 1980 episode of comedy series Shelley which was repeated on Forces TV last year.

The answer is legislation, Blackbear19.

I'll tell DM that she, her mother, her aunts all had imaginary bank accounts
Ask them about all of their friends and their bank accounts while you're at it. Especially their married friends, who would have been officially known in those days as 'Mrs. [husband's first name] [husband's surname]'.

The answer is legislation, Blackbear19

So point it out. Which statute in England & Wales required all women to have male family approval for a bank account and rendered it impossible for them to have an account otherewise?

The equality act stated that banks could not choose to discriminate, it did not reverse laws that said they must discriminate.

Married womens income was reported as their husbands until Nigel Lawson changed the tax laws in the 80s. However a bank requiring a husband's consent was a choice they made as a business, not a legal obligation to discriminate. Legal obligation re tax was on the man to correctly report joint income.

Ask them about all of their friends and their bank accounts while you're at it

Most of my DGM's female friends would have been single, most of that generation of women didn't marry. (this is basic history, not exactly a dark secret).

Single and widowed women reported their own tax and managed their own money. That is the majority of the women in DGM's generation. My DGM, her sisters and my DM when reaching adulthood had no male guarantor available even if it were required.

You may be unable to conceive of a scenario where women's lives were not run by a male family member but it was common for DGM's generation and their lived experience in an overwhelmingly female generation is not negated by your blind acceptance of a journalist's assumptions in the daily press.

I remember my mother opening her first bank account and having to take her father with her to open it.

No one is saying that women didn’t have bank accounts but they wouldn’t be opened with out a man being involved

No one is saying that women didn’t have bank accounts but they wouldn’t be opened with out a man being involved

At Barclays possibly. That does not mean it was illegal for a woman to open a bank account, just that some imposed sexist requirements.

Not all women had male relatives to act as sponsors, they still had bank accounts.

C8H10N402 I'm wondering what generation was overwhelmingly female and where most women didn't marry, because that wouldn't even apply to women who were adult during or just after WW1.

@1Morewineplease why don’t you get her a Pockit card. Go to post office with cash and put it on there and then she can use contactless.

[quote user1471462428]@1Morewineplease why don’t you get her a Pockit card. Go to post office with cash and put it on there and then she can use contactless.[/quote]
Ooh! I’ve never heard of them.
I’ll look into it.
Thanks for that!

C8H10N4O2

It didn’t have to be a male relative.

The bank manager could act as guarantor if he knew the family and there were no male relatives

It was the WW1 generation of women and there were not enough men of that generation left to marry. It was her generation, not the total population.

Most of them never married, single women adopted children, they had to work and support themselves independently. If they had had brothers many were lost. One of my great aunts talked about being told in school that most of them would never marry and that they would need to be independent.

About 900,00 deaths from WW1, overwhelmingly young men out of a total population of less than 10 million men. Its not surprising that so few of DGM's peers married.

The bank manager could act as guarantor if he knew the family and there were no male relatives

So the bank manager could open an account for women in Barclays at his discretion? So women could get an account without a male relative, as I said upthread.

My DGM, her sisters, DM did not have Bank managers in their social circle, the decision would have to be based on name, address, employment just as it is now.

@letmethinkaboutitfornow

# just to add to the above, the shop needs to close for deep cleaning and what not

This has to be one of the most ridiculous posts ever.

(99% of businesses are still taking cash, even if they ask you to use card where possible. Do you seriously think they all close for deep cleaning when someone has handled cash?

Someone at Birds is clearly paranoic. To sack (not give a warning to) someone who has worked for them for 40 years, when she put absolutely no-one at risk by her actions (the money went straight into her purse and was touched by no-one else) is simply ridiculous.

No good deed goes unpunished.

She's an angel. Making sure those elderly and often bewildered customers got fed.

How horrible to have lost your job over feeding people.

She herself wasn't handling the cash so the risk of her spreading the virus with her hands was eliminated.

I hope there are repercussions for this company.

What about randoms who didn't know the Bank Manager?
Why would the BM want to be guarantor for potentially loads of women. What happens to him if they default?

Its nonsense to say women needed men to open bank accounts. Possibly pre WW2 but during the war women were left at home doing a mans job, earning a mans wage, doing everything men do, inc dealing with the money.

@saraclara how do you know she hadn’t had a warning, for this or other reasons?
That’s her personal information, so the news reports would not include a statement from Birds saying, “yeah, we told her 3x that week to stop it already, and she already had a warning on her file for persistent lateness.”

Maybe they’ve been shamefully heavy handed, maybe they haven’t.

What’s certain is that if she really was sacked without warning just for that, she can take legal advice on whether she has a case for tribunal.

I don’t think she can be deemed an angel, on so few facts.

I really hope people now realise where an employee using their common sense actually gets them.
And no one agreeing with the decision ever complains that a shop assistant hasn't used their common sense but stuck to the rules and it's meant they can't get something they wanted.

@Blackbear19

What about randoms who didn't know the Bank Manager? Why would the BM want to be guarantor for potentially loads of women. What happens to him if they default?

Its nonsense to say women needed men to open bank accounts. Possibly pre WW2 but during the war women were left at home doing a mans job, earning a mans wage, doing everything men do, inc dealing with the money.

I remember my mum telling me that she couldn't open an account in what was the Midland (now HSBC) in the early 70's as they refused to see her without my dad being present. So yes it did happen.

Someone at Birds is clearly paranoic. To sack (not give a warning to) someone who has worked for them for 40 years, when she put absolutely no-one at risk by her actions (the money went straight into her purse and was touched by no-one else) is simply ridiculous.

saraclara She put the company at risk with her actions. She committed gross misconduct with her cash mishandling and that is extremely serious; in any workplace that is more than likely going to get you fired.

@C8H10N402 it was still not an overwhelmingly female generation. There was a shortage of men but most women did still marry. My great gran was one and when she left her drunkard husband and moved to another town she had to pretend she was widowed to get a job. She lived in fear of being found out and sacked as the bank she worked for, like many employers, operated a marriage bar and would not employ married women.

@planningaheadtoday

No good deed goes unpunished.

She's an angel. Making sure those elderly and often bewildered customers got fed.

How horrible to have lost your job over feeding people.

She herself wasn't handling the cash so the risk of her spreading the virus with her hands was eliminated.

I hope there are repercussions for this company.

Exactly, it's such a low thing to do to someone who was doing their best by their customers. Some things are more important than petty fogging rules.

I hope Birds are made to see the error of their ways via customers
giving them a miss now.

Some things are more important than petty fogging rules.

Laundrywoman It’s not a “petty” rule, it’s cash mishandling which is serious gross misconduct.

One of my great aunts talked about being told in school that most of them would never marry and that they would need to be independent.

Financial independence for woman was widely seen as something quite shameful, a sign that the woman had failed to attract a male. It was surrendered by women when they married - or it was legally taken away by marriage bars in jobs.

Women who married also surrendered the assumption that they were individuals with financial rights and they became essentially chattel, in the same position as a minor. Up to the 1980s wives could be included along with children on a husband's passport.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36662872
The ramifications of having your financial identity subsumed into your husband's - no credit history for perhaps hundreds of thousands of elderly women. My widowed mum had to pay cash for the car she bought in the early 2000s.

And incidentally, the press sometimes used the term 'superfluous' to describe the surplus women in the population after WW1.

Ghosts crying down the vistas of the years,
Recalling words
Whose echoes long have died,
And kind moss grown
Over the sharp and blood-bespattered stones
Which cut our feet upon the ancient ways.

But who will look for my coming?

Long busy days where many meet and part;
Crowded aside
Remembered hours of hope;
And city streets
Grown dark and hot with eager multitudes
Hurrying homeward whither respite waits.

But who will seek me at nightfall?

Light fading where the chimneys cut the sky;
Footsteps that pass,
Nor tarry at my door.
And far away,
Behind the row of crosses, shadows black
Stretch out long arms before the smouldering sun.

But who will give me my children?

• Vera Brittain, 'The Superfluous Woman'.

@countrygirl99

Yes indeed, most women did marry. Women married into their 40s and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. This despite losing their legal identity when they did so.

Women also emigrated to various points of the Commonwealth in great numbers, as did men, in the interwar period.

After WW1 marriage bars became entrenched in teaching, nursing and the civil service, and in industry and service industries women could be barred from employment upon marriage and also paid far less than men (this continued to be legal up to the 1970s and remains a battle today). The idea that women were only working until they could become respectably married was a very strong current in the culture, and the idea that men deserved jobs and higher pay because they were supporting families was also very durable.