To be shocked by what DD told me about her workplace?

[whatinthenameofcrapisthis]

DD(17) has a part time job at Greggs around her college hours. She told me today that they (the staff) regularly find used needles in the toilets from people injecting drugs, and that it's well known that particular people spend a long time in the toilets doing that. The same people also often shoplift sandwiches and drinks. I asked DD what the policy is for dealing with this, ie do they contact the police, and she said "we don't ring the police, we just report the drug use via a specified number", ie a drug hotline for Greggs itself (?), and that some staff have protective equipment to pick up needles. I was so baffled by this.

Surely used needles being left in toilets is a matter for the police? Greggs staff are not paid enough to have to deal with this surely? I told my daughter she should not be doing this.
Granted it's not the best area where the store is that she works at, lots of poverty and crime etc, but still... This has really shocked me!

AIBU to expect my teen daughter who is paid minimum wage in Greggs not to have to handle used needles?!

Can I please just point out that it’s not that the police “aren’t interested”.

Like lots of public services, we are ridiculously short staffed. In order to fund the extra officers the government promised (but did not adequately fund) most forces have had to cut staff from other areas meaning a lot of the behind-the-scenes functions are now done by the officers themselves. For example, we used to have file prep teams - officers would obviously write their own statements and take statements from victims and witnesses, collect CCTV etc but there were members of staff who could put together the rest of the file. CPS require a frankly ridiculous number of documents, many of which seem to duplicate information, to accept a file. They also won’t accept individual files of CCTV or body worn video over 10 minutes in length so this often needs to be clipped/redacted. Used to be the job of the video unit, now it’s my job as a response cop.

Taking the example of a few sandwiches from Greggs, costing say £20, it would take me somewhere in the region of 4-5 hours to put a file together, clip footage. That’s not including the time to interview the suspect, the cost of their free solicitor, the cost taking it to court etc. And it’s 4-5 hours I’m unavailable to attend potentially more serious incidents. Unfortunately it’s not worth it - it would cost thousands of pounds in police time/legal costs just for them to walk away from court with a slap on the wrist.

We have to prioritise the jobs we can attend and investigate because there simply isn’t enough of us and we are thinly spread, spending large amounts of time completing admin tasks that could and should be done by someone else. It really isn’t that we don’t care.

I saw Greggs staff member chase and shout at shop lifters recently. I thought she was mad to rusk it.

The toilet needs a lock. I would take this further as your daughter is under 18.

I said upthread about how a Greggs I go to has recently taken away it's sit in option and is just takeaway only now.
I also realised that they have also put the drinks fridge/baguette/crisps etc behind the counter now.
Everything is behind the counter - nothing on the sales floor at all.
I assume that was due to shoplifters.

@Mynewnameis Very good point that this girl is under 18 as well.

OP, if you wanted to put together a case to complain/ prosecute Greggs over this, you would have good grounds to do so. (Regarding the needles, probably not so much the shoplifters).

It's up to you if you/ your daughter want to do this. I would say it would be a good shout to protect future employees, but it's your call.

The other options are that your daughter puts up with it (not ideal), or finds another job.

I work in Costa and we get the same. Weekly we get the toilet covered in shit too so we put a code on the door and only allow paying customers to use it

We've had a lot of angry non-paying customers demanding to use the loo but we refuse.

One larger gentleman comes in a few times a week on his mobility scooter and shit sprays the toilet, it's everywhere and we have to close it for a couple of hours to deep clean it. We can't stop him apparently because it's ableism and discrimination but it stresses up out so much and it's not fair that we have to clean up after him

She or her manager need to attempt contacting head office- key codes for customers and safety training are the least they can do.

The best veins have collapsed. They're using the ones which are left.

I'm not surprised that there are sometimes needles left in a toilet in a Greggs if it's a rougher area. Happens in McDonald's, certain pubs, railway stations, bus stations, shopping centres etc as well. I can understand why you don't like the thought of your daughter having to deal with it. But it is something that happens in a lot of places.

The fact that your daughter is 17 is irrelevant to the nature of the work she does, though. You keep saying 'Why should a teenager have to deal with this?' but she's doing the same job as anyone else who works at Greggs in that role and if they have to do it then so will she. It's horrible, and in an ideal world nobody would have to do it, but obviously they can't just leave the needles sitting there or close the toilets, so essentially, someone has to remove them and there's no reason it shouldn't be your daughter as opposed to any of the other staff.

She should have been formally shown how to handle the needles, but apart from that, her employer hasn't done anything wrong.

For example DD said she was told about the last toilet drug user "if she comes back tell her she's banned". DD said she didn't feel comfortable doing it so didn't.

Telling people you can't serve them or that they aren't allowed in the establishment - for any reason - is part of working in retail/hospitality unfortunately, so she probably needs to get comfortable with it. I occasionally had to tell people they were barred from a department store where I had a Saturday job at 15 (not for drug use, but for previous shoplifting or abusive behaviour) and when I turned 18 and did bar work it was obviously quite a regular occurrence.

We had this issue when I worked at Morrisons, they installed blue lights in the end and it stopped the issue after a short while. It's not a nice environment to work in but you do get used to it.

The blue lights don't stop them. A social worker told me they just mark the vein with a biro before they go in.

Do they throw away the kettle when that happens? :/

Its the same issue that these types of places all encounter in certain locations.

I'm surprised you're surprised.

It's exactly why most fast food places in certain area have toilet codes etc. And even then staff will still be dealing with it.

What are the police meant to do? I'd say the shoplifting is something they should be dealing with. But the actual fact of finding needles in a toilet, no crime has actually been committed? Even if they found someone with some drugs on them, it would be unlikely they would even make an arrest. It's obviously grim though. I'd be most concerned about when they find someone in there that had OD'd and passed away. I guess that's a hazard of any 'public' toilet in a busy and urban area.

This in the theory, but in my experience it doesn't seem to pan out. Some use them, but plenty don't. And they seem to draw more addicts into the area. So you get worse problems in the end.

I often wonder where this problem, for the shops, and also with the lack of police response (and I do NOT blame the police for this) is going to take us.

I can see two possibilities. One is retailers will just close, especially in rough areas. Like Walmarts in some inner cities in the US, these areas will be left as wastelands with no services.

The other possibility seems to be what I am seeing increasingly in the city near where my mum lives. The area has more expensive shops, and they are now locking their doors and have a security guard who will let in customers.

I also think if this approach of not prosecuting at all carries on, we will see some kind of push by retailers to be able to defend their own stock. I know that sounds mad, but I cannot see allowing people to just come in and take things without consequence as sustainable. It's part of the social contract that citizens can't use force except in real self-defence - but that depends on the state taking on the use of force to maintain law and order. If they simply can't or won't do it, I think we may start to see individuals taking back that role for themselves like it's the wild west.

I work for Greggs and sadly can't say I'm surprised. We don't have customer toilets so no drug use to deal with but have constant (10+ a day that we see, undoubtedly more that we don't) shoplifters. All reported, I can't remember the last time we had any contact from the police beyond them coming in for a coffee.

One is particularly aggressive and routinely throws punches at us and other customers, hurls bottles of Coke across the shop if we so much as look at him, let alone confront him. Came in brandishing a length of wooden post towards the end of last year. He's banned from the entire section of market but again - police don't care. I can name 6 staff he's assaulted, including myself, might be a couple more that I'm not aware of.

It isn't just the police that don't care, the company don't either. They refuse to pay for security in the vast majority of shops - another local to us with even worse issues was just told to close 3 hours earlier to stop losses in the evening, and we're advised to minimise stock on display so 'they can't take as much' absolutely no advice regarding our safety.

This is a good example of what I mean. What happens when some staff member doesn't want to just accept being assaulted, and gives a guy like this a shit-kicking?

I wonder, would the police suddenly feel like they should intervene and charge the staff (rather than the guy actually causing the trouble.) Would the other staff cooperate though? Maybe they'd all just say they never saw a thing, who knows how the guy ended up with his face smashed in?

Lol welcome to retail in a rough area. I've seen worse. Needles in the bathroom isn't unusual at all.

And people wonder why no one wants to work these minimum wage jobs.

Yes.

Nothing will be done until a retail worker gets killed by shoplifters, aggressive pissed customers. Or dies from injuries inflicted by the above.

Its always too little too late

Sadly that seems to be the case with a great many issues / wrongs in our society. When someone dies all hell breaks loose and suddenly actions is taken, yet the cause is known and often ignored for years. Actions have consequences and can lead to far worse issues and we seem to have forgotten how early behaviours start that manifest in to far worse issues in society. Those that take drugs, whatever they may say, feed the issues / pushers / drugs industry, that then leads to the desperation to inject in a Gregg's loo. Yes, this post is about someone's daughter, but it could be any of us given the wrong time and place, that has to deal with the 'what next'.

It's not unreasonable to want your child to be safe at work, and to have had training for things which could have potentially dangerous outcomes. But no, I'm not surprised by this at all; nor am I surprised they don't ring the police. This happened regularly in the fast food place I worked in as a teenager 30 years ago.

God, imagine your life if its come to shooting up in Greggs...

It is low paid workers who do the most dangerous jobs.

Drug deaths have been rising since 2012 and it's split between opiates and cocaine (ONS stats). There's an ongoing debate about the Government setting up drug consumption rooms. If they were widely available, it would cut down people shooting up public toilets.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/11/drug-consumption-rooms-could-save-thousands-of-uk-lives-study-finds

Unfortunately, shitty behaviour requires sanctions, shame and barriers to solve. Shoplifting has gone up thanks to the cost of living crisis - criminal gangs have a growing market of people prepared to turn a blind eye so they can eat. I think shops will bring in their own measures - in my town the independent stores warn each other if a prolific shoplifter or gang are in the area and they have locked their doors in some instances, to stop the thieves from coming in.