Not allowing heavily pregnant woman to use a loo

[pelvicfloorisnomore]

I’m imminently due my third baby and have a massive bump. Popped to the local coop post school run and as I was checking out was desperate for the loo. My pelvic floor is pretty shot from previous 2 kids, the baby had dropped during the school run walk so I was feeling like I could not wait. The store was empty bar a couple of pensioners. I asked if I could use the staff loo as desperate, there are no other loos nearby and I was unlikely to make it the half a mile home in time. The member of staff said no against policy and I soiled myself before I even made it the front door of the shop. Completely humiliating and had to walk home like that and could have been avoided if a little kindness shown.

AIBU to expect some flexibility in branch policy to accommodate for those in need? It hardly fits with the coop key value of caring for others.

We get asked all the time (charity shop) and the answer is always no. Old, young, pregnant, whatever - we just cannot let you use it for insurance reasons. I always tell prospective lavatarians how to get into the entry behind our row or how to sneak into the loo at the nearby pub though.

As you didn't make it out the door before weeing yourself.

Would you weed yourself in the stock room?

Agree with this - someone can't risk their job for you. I sympathise with OP though and it's hard being in that situation. I vomited in my office once - that was fun(!) Thankfully the cleaner was a lovely man

I get it from both sides
As someone who had had both bladder and bowel issues for over 30 years - there have been many times when I’ve been caught out
At work however, we have had money and phones stolen by allowing members of the public to access staff only areas, possible GDPR breaches and another occasion when I took pity on an elderly homeless person to use staff loo who then used it to take drugs and unfortunately died during the process
I won’t go into further details but it was an absolute nightmare

My local co-op allowed my children to use the toilet when they needed to go. That was years ago maybe things have changed. I suppose another hazard was on the floor someone could have slipped.

Yes...a puddle on the floor needs cleaning. Small shops don't have cleaners. I prefer a flushed toilet to dealing with pee on the floor.
As an aside...we have had an occasional toddler accident but never a dog.

I haven't seen anyone saying 'they probably couldn't allow it because of insurance/policy and that's a good thing,' just that if said policy is in place it's not fair to blame the individual staff member following it as they are obliged to do - if OP or anyone else feels that strongly about shops allowing people to use staff loos they should be writing to head offices and their MPs, not being dicks and blaming the minimum waged staff members and calling them cruel or pedantic for not wanting to risk their jobs.

okay so what if senior management DID give shopfloor staff the discretion to decide whether to allow people to use the loo or not and a staff member decided on this specific occasion not to, because it was really busy, or because she didn't want to leave the sole other staff member alone on the floor. Or perhaps she has the opposite views to some posters on this thread who think that pregnant women are the only people with weak bladder control and therefore should be the sole exceptions to the 'no public in staff loo' rule, and thinks she would allow an elderly or disabled person but not a pregnant woman. Or the loo is down a steep flight of stairs and she just doesn't want to risk being the one to accompany a heavily pregnant woman who might trip down them. Or she sizes you up and thinks you look a bit dodgy and a potential theft/false insurance claim risk. Then you would be blaming her for not using her discretion the way you think she should interpret it.

If you are focussing on the 'company culture' argument then you'd be better off arguing that they should put dedicated public loos in all their stores rather than relying on discretion and personal morality to make individual decisions to access the staff ones.

Plus you still haven't answered how, given you couldn't get to the shop doorway without losing control, you know you would have managed to wait for a staff member to be free to accompany you and then get to the staff loo without doing so, without knowing how far away it was or easy to get to.

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and imagine that you are intelligent enough to
understand why your argument is both ridiculous and unreasonable. I seem to have inadvertently triggered you and in response you are falling back on the boring and predictable mumsnet favourite of attempting to shame and chastise me. Sorry it took so long for me to reply to your comment by the way, but I have been busy all day taking care of my severely disabled dc. In case you are wondering, he was perfectly healthy until about an hour before he was born. Unfortunately the paramedics refused to help me out of the house so I could get to hospital in time to save him because they were not allowed to due to “insurance purposes”. So they stood there and did nothing. But hey, you do you. The main thing is that people like you can keep their jobs for ticking boxes and obeying the rules.

Well I haven’t seen anyone directly blame the minimum wage shop worker either! They are mainly blaming shop policies and managers for not using their discretion.

And the op certainly wasn’t a “dick” when the situation occurred. If you read the thread properly, you see she asked once, and when refused she left immediately.

Pubs and restaurants are your best bet.

It is so frustrating that this happened to you!

bookies are good to,

This, and the women's toilets are worse then the men's

I agree that the state of some public toilets makes me wonder what people do in them and what their bathrooms are like at home.
Pubs and restaurants are a good place to pay an emergency visit. But tend not to be open after dropping kids to school.

I was having a think about where we might have loos. There are public loos but they've been closed for years. However there is a shopping centre with loos which is open early. And the library has its own loo and there's another one in the same building. But none of those are very near a school. I think finding a secluded bush would have to be the goal!

Well you've got very poor best reading comprehension then. Even in the very first post OP said "The member of staff said no against policy and I soiled myself before I even made it the front door of the shop....could have been avoided if a little kindness shown."
An inanimate policy isn't capable of "showing kindness" and a manager wasn't involved. OP was directly blaming the staff member and saying she was unkind. It was only later when people pointed out this wasn't fair she changed her view.

Then just from a very brief skim further comments like "Seems very mean they wouldn't let you use the toilet"

"They should have let you use the staff toilet. When I worked in retail we often did."

"Some people are empathetic and would break a rule to help, others would not."

"I think it was quite degrading for the staff member to deny you of using their facilities. It really doesn't matter about their policies"

All of these and many other comments on this thread are clearly blaming and insulting the individual staff member personally or expecting them* *to go against policy and risk their jobs.

Mate I am sympathetic, I have had all sorts of accidents everywhere. Urge continence is really hard sometimes. It’s a shame the shop couldn’t help.

Please, once the baby is born, look into pelvic floor physio. It’s difficult to make progress when you are pregnant because of the weight of the baby and the relaxin in your body. But honestly there is a lot that can be done after birth - it doesn’t have to be like this.

I had a birth injury first time round, with stress and urge issues afterwards, physio really really helped. But then my 2nd pregnancy meant everything relaxed and I just had issues very frequently (at work! The worst!). Everything is much better now with proper physio and only have very occasional stress continence issues.

You seem very invested in this! 😀

Despite all of your meticulous quotes; the majority of posters have acknowledged that the individual shop worker isn’t responsible, in the sense that they have some sort of character flaw or innate lack of kindness. Most people understand they have to follow rules.

However the majority of people who live in the real world also understand that rules can sometimes be over-ridden, and in exceptional circumstances, that might be the humane and correct thing to do.

Also, the majority of posters are I think blaming a societal issue, rather than individual staff, which leads to everyone very much being focused on profits and commerce and not so much on compassion for the elderly, the very young, those who have chronic illnesses, or who are pregnant.

How absurd! The OP has at no time suggested any kind of punishment for the frontline worker. Where is this silly attack coming from? Its not what she is talking about. She is talking about common humanity and shared concern for the wellbeing of another person.

@ThisHangryPinkBalonz plan better? @pelvicfloorisnomore was on a school run.

Its ridiculous. If I worked there I would have let you and to hell with a fucking policy. It’s not a male problem… if it was there would be loos everywhere for this reason.

I am very sceptical that anyone has ever been sacked for letting a customer with a medical need use the staff toilets if they also accompany them. Many shops and organisations including the Co-op recognise the "can't wait" card.

In her original op "AIBU to expect some flexibility in branch policy to accommodate for those in need? It hardly fits with the coop key value of caring for others." That was the original question. She wasn't directly blaming the staff member she was debating the policy and what co-op claims to stand for. I remember what I read about what a CEO was doing in his spare time.

Use the school toilets. They will be appropriately insured for your use

I’m a bit astonished by the replies on here. I can’t believe that the shop would not let you use the toilet resulting in you wetting yourself. That’s awful. Why would anyone be so inhumane? Perhaps they will be kinder to the next person who asks.
Insurance seems to be mentioned a lot but a shop would have public liability insurance.

From what you have said you asked a young staff member, and when she said no as she was likely taught to do, you did not ask to speak to her manager for a sense check but remained polite and went to leave the shop....and then decided to blame, name and shame co-op because of one young staff member?

If it was me I would have asked to speak to the manager, and then if it was still no, you could take a view on co-op's policies....but you yourself said she was a young staff member....so just how as this escalated to blaming, naming and shaming co-op on a public forum? She could have made a mistake!