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?

Oh this is something else, I thought it was when they refused to let OAP pay by cash and it hit all the National News headlines! Wow Birds certainly creating attention this week!

I can't open the link but there was an article on Nottinghamshire Live website about a 94 year old refused service. She did not have a bank card, never has had apparently. It mentioned that there had been 8 cases of elderly customers trying to pay in cash and being refused.

I appreciate that they may be avoiding cash and if every single customer wanted to use it they would have a problem. But eight? You can easily take extra steps to wash hands etc after 8 incidents, and no fuss. Using discretion without adding to risk can be done for a small number of cases, and no trouble is caused to customers or the business.

It seems a bit chinny reckon to me that not one but two news stories about old people and Birds have emerged. You'd think after the negative publicity regarding the 94 year old going home with no bread, they wouldn't want it hitting the papers that now they've sacked someone for being a bread enabler!

I appreciate that they may be avoiding cash and if every single customer wanted to use it they would have a problem. But eight? You can easily take extra steps to wash hands etc after 8 incidents, and no fuss.

It wasn't eight customers if she took in £180!

This is what standing in front of the rules looks like. Sometimes that means you get fired but you can’t fault her principles. Besides if this is who I think she is, she will probably be taking a lot of her customers with her to the next bakery she works for.

Surely shops with more than one worker can have one person serving food and one person handling cash/payments?
Card only policies discriminate against anyone without a bank account.

Just like to say Chatwins sausage rolls are tops... Birds come second.

No cash culture is discrimination against the elderly. The shop worker had the right intentions but she has left herself and Birds open to scrutiny

It is not possible to form a view based on the information here. She can raise an unfair dismissal claim if she wishes and let a tribunal decide.

My local Sainsburys were refusing cash.

I'm sorry @KrisAkabusi, I couldn't open the link and I was referring to a different article on Nottinghamshire Live. Maybe a different Birds!

I think the exceptions would be few and far between if they made them for people who genuinely do not have a card, like the 94 yr old who gets her pension in cash from the Post office. That, or someone who for some other reason has genuine problems using a card, must be relatively rare. People who put up a slight resistance but could easily do contactless might be more common and can be firmly encouraged to just use the card if they want anything.

A bit 50/50 here- even if the intentions were good- I doubt they had the correct money on them, and it doesn't sound like she was giving them change. The cash was going in her wallet- so she was working whilst potentially contaminated (seriously unlikely but that is the cash argument) this was never going to go for her. It's a huge breech, even if it's done with the most honest of intentions.

@SD1978

A bit 50/50 here- even if the intentions were good- I doubt they had the correct money on them, and it doesn't sound like she was giving them change. The cash was going in her wallet- so she was working whilst potentially contaminated (seriously unlikely but that is the cash argument) this was never going to go for her. It's a huge breech, even if it's done with the most honest of intentions.

I would think the correct change was paid. There is no mention of her profiting from this.

I hate this no cash bollocks. The woman in Next touched everything I had touched when scanning my items but then looked at me like an arse hole for trying to pay in cash. You would think I had just licked inside her mouth from the look she gave me.

I wonder what % of Birds customers are elderly & don't use/have a contactless card. If they take covid seriously then they should have one member of staff, wearing gloves, accepting cash payments.

It isn't fraud or money laundering...

They were right to sack her; she wasn’t following the rules they’d put in place to keep everyone safe and couldn’t be trusted. Messing around with money like that is gross misconduct.

While sacking her seems a bit extreme, I think this is very emotive one.

On the one hand we have some elderly people who don’t want to use a bank card and want to pay with cash, and on the outside, a bakery employee helps this by paying for their shopping on her card and then taking the cash from them. So far, so altruistic.

But one of the reasons why these shops are discouraging cash isn’t just because of the staff handling it, it’s because of the customers handling it. And by doing what she did she went against their procedures, because for every customer who put their cash in her purse, and then selected their change, that was someone handling cash that had been handled by a different customer, so against the rules of the shop.

As an employee her job is to do the sales, and to also uphold the rules. By allowing various customers to handle what could be contaminated cash on the shop premises, she has directly broken the rules.

The elderly are in one of the most vulnerable categories. Imagine if one of these elderly people caught COVID and died from it, and it transpired that they had caught it from cash dispensed in a shop who had a specific no cash policy to avoid that from happening. There would be outcry.

"Like many other food outlets, during this pandemic we have asked customers to only use debit cards because notes and coins are not clean – and this poses a risk to our staff who are handling that money."

I'm thinking there must be abusive men out there who hold the debit and credit cards and give their wives a little cash every week.

I can't help feeling that there are women and children who will suffer greatly from this.

Re bank cards - why didn’t they get one in the last two months when the no cash policy came out? I am truly puzzled by it

There are older people out there who genuinely don't understand how cards work and don't trust technology, people who listen to the news and don't join the dots or it goes straight over their heads, and people who feel very timid about approaching a bank to order a card, or think the bank would have sent them one if they needed one.

The thing is, bank cards have been around for well over twenty years; the majority of elderly people now wouldn’t have been elderly when they brought in.

So it’s not like bank cards have been sprung upon them; they’ve had decades to learn how to use them and chosen not to. Now they’re having to face the consequences of that.

For a great many reasons, some older people don't move fast in response to circumstances. Some don't change with the times, and the reasons for that are complex.

Many feel completely nonplussed by modern technology, still have land line phones, don't have a computer of any kind, maybe don't even have broadband. They are afraid that technology is terribly complicated or even afraid of breaking a computer if they push the wrong button. They are afraid that their money could easily be stolen if someone were to get their hands on their card. Many have so little that this fear represents utter disaster for them.

The biggest divide in society is the divide between those who are comfortable with and have access to the digital world and those who are not and do not.

The 94 year old would not have been young when cards became widely used, and if you get your pension in cash at the post office and that's always worked for you, I can totally see why you might not have a card.

Change of this kind can be very daunting and difficult for many people of all ages.

My mum has been popping to some local shops and they are all accepting cash, so there is no general 'no cash policy' that I know of. i don't know if she has done card or cash but the choice is there.

I doubt anyone has been thinking, I must sort out a bank card because soon there may be a pandemic and I won't be able to get even a loaf of bread with cash.

Covid is one thing, and there's probably no one more paranoid than me about germy coinage, but I hope it is not used as an excuse to further push us towards a cashless society. That would come with all sorts of issues, but that is another thread.

Change of this kind can be very daunting and difficult for many people of all ages.

It can, though it's probably less daunting than being on a ventilator of dealing with that e fact you've caused other people to die. Which isn't to say it's right, just that these are unprecedented times and even 90+ year olds who are out and about can adapt when it's important.

For a great many reasons, some older people don't move fast in response to circumstances. Some don't change with the times, and the reasons for that are complex.

Oh I understand that. But like I said, cards haven’t been sprung upon them; they’ve had decades, and they weren’t older people when cards came out.

There’s really no excuse for them not to have learnt so I have no sympathy; they chose this path when they were younger and it would have been easier for them to learn.

I think their families/carers have also done them a disservice by allowing them to get to this point.

So no bread for them then.

Sad.

Change of this kind can be very daunting and difficult for many people of all ages. just because it can be daunting doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done.

They’ve been talking about heading for a cashless society for years now and it hasn’t come about. But statistically, only around a million of the UK population are only cash users. That’s not a high enough number to not push more for the use of bank cards. Added to which, less cash means you will have less instances of e.g. an older person dying and their family finding thousands in cash under the bed after the event, also it’s one of the reasons the elderly are targeted by burglars, because they are more likely to have cash in the house.

Mugging someone for their credit card achieves nothing because that card can be stopped in a matter of minutes. Take someone’s cash and there is no way to get it back.