M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department (Telegraph)

[WimbledonWhites]

How many “cis” male members of staff do you suppose would approach teenage girls in the lingerie department?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/04/ms-apologises-over-trans-employee-in-bra-department/

https://archive.ph/nTDB9archive.ph/nTDB9

It’s a shame we lost the laugh emoji, but man I need the 🤯🤬😤

1 Not acceptable for any man to approach a lone teenage girl in the bra department and say this. If it needed said, leave it to a female

2 This is not the M&S approach anyway. They don't approach you unprompted.

3 He had no business on that floor anyway. He was supposed to be in another department.

Like some sort of shit travelling minstrel of sexual harassment.

"I worked in retail banking for a long time, if I saw a customer looking around when I was between appointments I'd check if they needed help."

In fact, I have worked for a long time in retail banking AND done stints in large department stores. I can fucking assure you - the protocols and experience between them both don't compare with the situation you are trying to shoe horn your limited experience into!

No. They know they are not women, and unless they are genuinely clueless, they know that it's inappropriate to approach a 14 year old girl and help her with bras. They know. They're not stupid.

I'm going to make the point AGAIN for the onlookers.

Why exactly aren't you engaging with the concerns about safeguarding and why safeguarding policy denote you avoid situations which will lead to you potentially putting yourself at risk even if you are innocent?

The default assumption when you put yourself in these situations is to denote you as a safeguarding risk, because your lack of observance of appropriate boundaries allows these boundaries to become blurred. These blurred boundaries allow abuse to go without appropriate challenge.

I think this is now the third or fourth time this point has been dodged by you @Lun82...

...why is that?

Tilts head.

Oh, geezo.

Every time, I try to maintain the benefit of the doubt. Every damn time.

Oh I gave up on that years ago, you have more patience than I do. Nearly all of these stories that make the media have a shitshow of wrongness behind them, either from the participants or their supporters. Merrily glossed over by the Guardian, Independent etc.

So you accept that this man approached what he thought was an unaccompanied child? In the lingerie section?

And asked if she needed any help?

As a retail employee is in the lingerie section asking a young girl if she wants ‘help’ what product do you think he was offering help with? It’s not going to be hummus or some nice place mats, is it.

The choice is bra, knickers or maybe a stocking/suspenders set (to consider the full range of products available). Which of these would it be appropriate for a man to ask a young girl if she wants help with?

Well Londonmummy, Lun has tried many tactics on this thread to try to convince others that they have the right interpretation. However, they just keep highlighting the fact that they don't have anywhere near as much information that they believe they have to make the claims they have.

And they have certainly shown that they join Bee in not having experience as a girl buying bras at 14. I suspect it is all theoretical guesswork. There is certainly no experience there and no empathy either.

But hey... a great way to try to shame those nasty bigoted mummies who are pointing out the safeguarding issues is to just keep doubling down and repeating the same thing over and over without any engagement with the facts.

What safeguarding concerns are you thinking about? This was a public shop floor, not a sensitive single sex area. There wasn't any risk of this employee being alone with her. The original complaint by the mother says that it was a polite offer of help, there wasn't any inappropriate language or contact.

She was IN the bra department!!!

I’ve been trawling through gifs. Nothing seems quite right
I think we should have one we can post in these situation's ( like ‘bananas’ in Downton 🤣)

Any ideas everyone

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1miybfa/marksspencerapologisestocustomeraftertrans/

It's interesting how men people on Reddit are responding to this story.

A mother complaining about a man acting inappropriately towards her daughter is called:

'snotty nosed cunt'
'harpy'
'bigot'
'fucking bigoted cunt[s].'
'scum'
'evil'

Please read the thread.

People have already answered this point over and over again.

You really are not engaging with any good faith here.

maybe she couldn't find the sports bras or wanted a specific type of bra. Sure, she may not want that help from a transwoman or man and could decline, but how would that be wrong? the worker isn't going to get involved with helping them chose, they're just asking if they can help point in the right direction.

I'm clearly also an idiot because I cannot see the safeguarding issues that wouldn't fundamentally mean that men can't be employed in shops or interact with the public generally.

Clearly people posting on Reddit are entitled idiots

Of course nobody's saying men can't be employed in shops. But I suspect most women, even when adult, shopping for underwear would prefer not to have to engage with a man about it.

Anyway anecdotally I was in M&S with my elderly mother recently as she wanted new knickers, we were there for bloody ages going from stand to stand as she couldn't make up her mind/find the right style in the right size, not one member of staff approached us.

It's the viciousness that's telling. To me, it looks like the social media equivalent of 'overkill'.

Not how M&S work !!!!

Haven’t you ever shopped there. Haven’t you read the comments here.

Customers ask for help if they need it.
Staff do not approach customers.

As a pp said, the scolder on this thread seems very keen to keep on asking whether the male M&S staff member asked the child their bra size.

The answer to this was given pages ago. Funny how this little detail is of so much interest. No answers to the specific questions, just honing in on this one.

Bra shopping & fitting is generally a pain for most women, pretty excruciating for young teenage girls. Of course you’d have to be a woman to know this. Clearly other groups of people find it of interest for their own reasons.

Exactly this.

I've looked through the thread, apologies there is a lot of it, but I haven't seen where the evidence of this was posted?

Not an idiot.

However, you have just shown that you don't have any empathy for teenaged girls while shopping for bras and likely you have very low personal boundaries. Any male person approaching a teenaged female in the bra section is highly likely to cause extreme embarrassment and distress. Any male person approaching a teenaged female in the bra section is also highly likely to get involved in a product discussion about those bras.

The act of approaching a teenaged girl in a bra department as a male person is crossing the boundaries of appropriate behaviour.