14yo Girl Messaging DH

[Mansplanation]

DH works in a pub and there’s a girl who collects glasses who works with him occasionally who, as of Wednesday, has sent him 250 Facebook messages. Girl is 14.

DH showed me the messages tonight (we work opposite shifts a lot so it’s the first chance we’ve had since it started to chat) and he is very concerned that this girl has become attached to him inappropriately.

Her first message says ‘hi, you came up in my people you might know but and I recognised you. Hi!’

He said ‘hi (girls name), you ok?’

Then she says she’s cleaning her room and has loads of boxes of memorabilia from a fandom DH is into (he’s a big nerd) and proceeds to send him pages and pages and pages of photos of her collection.

DH says ‘wow that’s cool’ to a couple of things, but then once she starts sending more photos of stuff and it became evident it wasn’t just chit chat, he didn’t respond again. In all, he sent 7 messages back to her, none of which could be interpreted as anything other than being polite.

At work, he says she doesn’t really speak and they’ve not really interacted. They’ve spoken about their shared fandom a couple of times with a few other people present.

DH is a lovely guy and can and will chat to anyone (useful in the pub trade!), he’s also innocent minded and it won’t have occurred to him until now that this 14 year old could become a bit infatuated.

I trust him 100% that he’s not done anything to purposefully create this situation and he’s adamant he isn’t going to message her again so as not to encourage her.

My question is: how do we handle this? We can contact her mum and also DH’s manager at work is female, so we could potentially ask her to talk to the girl on his behalf.

I don’t think DH should talk to her directly about it as i think that could be quite damaging for her, but it’s 15 years since I was a 14 year old.

She needs to be told gently that DH can’t be her friend even though they work together but who’s the best person to do that?

Sorry that was long. Help?

It sounds to me like an autistic youngster with an obsessional niche interest that she is thrilled to find DH shares. Hence the endless lists of niche memorabilia, and the failure to perceive social cues that the messages are unwanted.
Tread carefully as she could be very hurt if rebuffed insensitively, and become resentful and seek revenge.
I’d definitely recommend contacting the manager, preferably in writing so there is a record. And then very gently explaining to the poor girl that if messages are unanswered it’s time to stop sending them, and that bombarding people with hundreds of them is inappropriate.

Sloth, apologises for the tone of my message, it is thoughtlessly light hearted. I had lied and told the 29 year old I was 18, so I do fully blame myself for the incident when I was 14. I was very lucky nothing bad happened to me. I developed early, and took full advantage of it. I’m nothing like the same now, so I was just adding a different point of view.

On another note, hope everything gets resolved today or as soon as possible.

DH just called. He spoke to his manager this morning and it turns out he’s not the only one she’s messaging. She’s messaging all the male members of staff in the same way but about different things. One of the lads is 22 and came to her last week to report the same thing, he’s friends with one of the regular customers and says she’s also messaged him, although not to the same extent because after she said hi he didn’t respond at all.

She then messaged the 22 year old staff member to ask if she had the right Facebook account, he confirmed she did not knowing why she wanted to co tact the regular and since he responded, she’s messaging 22yo all the time now too.

I think she’s got Facebook very recently, there needs to be a conversation with her mum.

I just want to say this again as it seems to have been missed..

14 year olds are not allowed to work in pubs. Or at night. This needs to be addressed. This child has been put in a situation out of her depth. It's not helping the obvious issues.

Seems like the situation is being handled which is good, thankfully your husband isn’t the only one she has been messaging. I think being in such an adult environment can’t be that good. I’ve seen others say 14 year olds aren’t allowed to work in pubs. So why is she?

*Under the Licensing Act 2003 children can work in pubs and restaurants: they can wait on tables, collect glasses, clear tables and take orders from customers. They are even allowed to work behind the bar, pulling pints and pouring glasses of wine. In a bar they can make sales of alcohol as long as each individual sale has been specifically authorised by a responsible person. A responsible person is either the holder of the premises licence, the designated premises supervisor, or anyone aged over 18 who has been authorised by the premises licence holder or the DPS to themselves authorised sales made by under 18s.

Specific approval is required for each case, which means that each time an under-18 makes a sale, authority must be given by the responsible person. Practically this means that the sale made by the child must be witnessed by the responsible person in every case.

However, if you are running a restaurant, or a specific area of your premises is set aside for the service of table meals, then there is an exemption under the Act, which means each sale is not required to be authorised by a responsible person.*

Is that true?

It contradicts the Government website, however, even if true, 14 year olds are not allowed to work at night.

It’s completely legal for a 14 year old to collect glasses in the evenings. Come off it.

She does 4-8pm a couple of times a week and in the holidays it’s usually during the lunchtime rush.

That’s not the issue here. The issue is she’s clearly the wrong 14 year old. And not ready yet to be in an adult environment.

Is someone going to speak to her parents?

It’s completely legal for a 14 year old to collect glasses in the evenings. Come off it.

The law says different.

She does 4-8pm a couple of times a week and in the holidays it’s usually during the lunchtime rush.

When you said evenings I thought you meant later. Although she shouldn't be working after 7pm.

That’s not the issue here. The issue is she’s clearly the wrong 14 year old. And not ready yet to be in an adult environment.

It is part of the issue. The pub should be employing people who are able to be in that environment, and those people are generally not 14 years old.

Mansplanation It doesn’t sound too bad then but clearly not a great environment for her.

On the plus side it seems less likely that she has formed some kind of crush on you DH and simply that she's not to a firm grasp on the usual boundaries. Her mother will probably be horrified to find out that her DD is spamming these men on FB, but she needs to be told!