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.

More frequent event where I work are visits from people trying to sell calendars or collect for caused I have never heard of. Or local organisations wanting raffle prizes. 'We have specific causes we support, leave the details '.
Toilet requests are much less frequent.

@wombat15 I worked in retail for 2 decades.
I couldn't break the rules just because I wanted to.
(I will confess I did take a colleagues little niece up to the toilet once)

Nailed it.

I'm sorry this happened to you OP.

I am also sorry about all these posters on here literally bullying a heavily pregnant woman that had a horrible experience.

Common sense and humanity should prevail in these situations. Reasonableness should have been exercised here by the shop assistant and you should have been allowed to use the toilet.

Nothing would have happened. You are not unreasonable to have expected a tiny slither of common sense and humanity. Only in the UK would this happen, no where else.

All the best with the rest of your pregnancy.

I did too although admittedly more senior than staff on minimum wage.

Obviously tills can't be left or the shop floor unattended. But not letting customers with medical needs ever use the toilet in an emergency even if there were staff on the shop floor was not a rule.

Not letting customers into staff-only areas is 100% a rule, don't be daft.

Not in the 100s of shops they have worked in apparently

Actually access to toilets is often worse overseas. It's bad in the UK, but certainly not the worst.

@Hankal

Only in the UK would this happen, no where else.

Where have you travelled?
Many shops in countries I have lived in don't even have staff toilets.

If co-op are on twitter or Facebook someone could # /link the thread (I'm sorry I'm not on twitter and don't know hiw to). It would be interesting to see what their response would be.

They really have to stick to the general rules and the general rules are there for a reason. If you allow pregnant women then surely you allow young children and maybe old men with prostate problems.
This could be a danger for the staff . Anyone could stuff something up their clothes. Really if I was staff I wouldn't want to share the toilets with anyone off the street.

you're not invested in increasingly pedantic point scoring but trying to infer (again) that I'm overly invested isn't pedantic?

There is a function called control and f which takes about half a second and tells you how often someone's name appears. I didn't actually go through the whole thread and count all your posts 😁

IT/computing also not a strong subject of yours at school I'm assuming. Together with reading comprehension, grammar, and debating skills...

Yes, those "staff only" signs are for fun. And staff training is just to waste our time. And specific safety equipment is just to look pretty...

And not that there are dangers that need to be considered. We have an area that is staff only. Visitors are taken another route to entirely avoid that section. A route that is only accessible at certain times, so visitors are only invited in at certain times

No, mine was the legal field. Hence knowing why these rules exist. And they do commonly exist.