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.

And if I accompany a pregnant lady to the toilet, who is watching the shop floor? If the previous shift left stuff in the corridor, who's fault is it when the pregnant lady trips over? If the toilet is gross and she complains? Any number of possibilities, all the while, knowing that I am not allowed to be doing it.
Obviously i don't know which 100s of shops you may have worked in, or in what capacity, but it certainly isn't representative of retail as a whole.

Seriously?! 26 pages of discussion!! Of course they’re out of order not letting a heavily pregnant woman use the toilet FFS

@wombat15 yes but the "occasional" person can easily turn into dozens a day.

@Errors do you or have you ever worked in a small convenience store?

If someone / staff member is trained on all the risks that come with making your way to the toilet through a loading bay, is with this said member of the public, then said member of the public that is pregnant and wetting themselves is also safe. Unless they start doing the highland jig infront of fast moving machinery.

my point is, there is a way around it. There always is. Though common human decency is a thing of the past.
Insurance, only required if there’s an accident and if staff member is safety conscious then all individuals will be ok. Before anyone says, who minds The shop, who minds it when you go??

I would NEVER, I mean NEVER let anyone wet themselves!! Let alone a heavily 🤰 woman.
that’s inhumane. so Before any one says, so you would put them in danger taking them to the toilet, no, I wouldn’t, cause if there were any dangers, I’d of been trained on them, if I was a good employee I would have listened and therefore can safely escort heavily pregnant lady to toilet to avoid her the total humiliation of wetting herself in the shop 🤘🤰💓

that’s all I have to say.

edited to say- how safe is it if an elderly lady through the door and slides in the wet puddle the pregnant lady left cause she couldn’t safely get to toilet.
broken hip, hospitalised for weeks. 🤔

@AW24 going by what the OP said she wouldn't have actually made it to the staff toilet anyway.
I have big sympathy for her. I too have "issues" with needing a toilet quickly. But I just know that I can't ask to use non public toilets in shops or any other business.

Would you stake your job on that principle though? Maybe you're a far better person than me, but I wouldn't.

Why would it? You are being ridiculous.

If you insist in hyperbole, perhaps you would lose your job for refusing to help the pregnant women leading to urine all over the floor which an elderly person then slipped on and was hospitalised. Not exactly good publicity for the company you work for.

@Fluufer
I 100% would stake my job in the CoOp to give another human some common decency- 100% would.
Would rather feel bad for helping someone than feel bad for not.

@wombat15 because as this thread has shown many people have issues - the "Can't Wait" card has been mentioned several times.
You do it for one pregnant woman and then word gets round and then it's her pregnant friends asking, people with the 'can't wait' cards, old fellas with iffy prostrates, toddlers......and so on and on.

True but this thread has spiralled out of control, grown arms and legs now and is no longer about the op, seems to be more about arguing with people that have a different opinion 😩
Instead of writing your opinion and leave it.

Any way, I'm only off night duty and quite clearly not in the mood so rather than offend anyone else, I'll leave you all to it 🤘

Have a lovely day guys.

Is that speaking from experience? Or purely hypothetical world where you have no responsibilities and a new job ready and waiting?

Oh yes, I am sure the word will get around the neighbourhood that a heavily pregnant woman was once allowed to use the toilet and pregnant women will be queuing en mass to use the toilet too. 😂

Presumably they immediately cordoned off that area and cleaned the urine, so no, unless they violated health and safety protocols by ignoring it, they would not at risk of losing their job because they followed company policy.

Maybe they didn't see it straight away. I doubt anyone would advertise the fact that they had wet the floor. Anyway, enough with all the ridiculous extrapolations and hyperbole. I think this thread is filled with jobsworths who will always find excuses not to help anyone.

Either way, no, they wouldn’t be held responsible for following company policy by not allowing OP use of the toilets.

Allowing customers access to employee only areas poses a very real risk, and not just for the future employment of the retail assistant. They didn’t know for sure that OP’s reason for wanting access was genuine - if they allow someone in ‘to help’ and end up getting robbed, or someone was attacked, the store insurance would be invalidated and the person allowing it could be held liable. If OP had been injured in the staff only area they could be held liable for granting her access. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s basic risk management reflected in company policy.

‘Helping’ someone may provide the warm virtue-signaling fuzzies, but the warm virtue signaling fuzzies don’t pay your bills if you lose your job. They don’t shield you from potential litigation.

@wombat15 oh word would get around.
In one of the shops I worked in we were not allowed to hold products for people to come back and pay for another time.
Why? Because 50% (probably more) would never come back and while that item was sat in the stockroom waiting to be paid for other customers who would have bought it right then were told "sold out". But because it hadn't actually sold out the reordering system wouldn't send anymore.
It all worked perfectly fine until one member of staff decided to ignore the rule and hold back "Christmas Must Haves" for customers a few times and we were literally then had numerous customers saying "but that member of staff did it" or "my mate said you could" etc.
That member of staff got a bollocking by the way.

It isn't Coop company policy though. I can't think of anywhere where I've been specifically told that customer with medical needs can never use the toilets under any circumstances.

The example you gave is not the same thing at all. Using a toilet because you have a medical need isn't something people really want to talk about and most people don't want to discuss their medical conditions and toilet needs with shop staff either. People are only going to do that if desperate and there is no alternative as in the case of OP.

@wombat15 no it is the same - you do something for one customer that technically you shouldn't be doing then you will have dozens of other customers wanting the same thing.

it will be policy, even if just that of the insurance company.

A shop worker cannot know if a customer has a genuine medical need, or if they’re trying it on. They cannot be expected to assume that risk to ‘be nice’. These rules exist because people that thought ‘it will be okay’ found out that it wasn’t, in fact, okay.

It doesn’t matter what you have personally been told. If that is what these workers were told, they were correct in denying OP access.

How do you know that "these rules exist". Multiple people have told you that they don't where they work or have worked and multiple people have told you that they have let people use the toilets in an emergency without it leading to a huge crowd of people using the toilet. Do you work in a chain where there is this policy? I would be interested to know which one because it all sounds a bit hypothetical.

Given that you have clearly never done anything for a customer with specific needs you wouldn't actually know.

@wombat15 I would assume that all retailers have basic rules about "don't leave the shop floor when the shop is open" or "don't leave the till unattended".
You learn that on day one.
(which is what the assistant would have needed to do)