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

None, in fact having a man on the department dramatically increased sales at x was / valentines and reduced returns dramatically - lots of men buy lingerie for their wives / girlfriends and get the wrong sizes etc, and felt a lot more comfortable being served by a chap.

I'm surprised a shop would put a man in the lingerie department.

Would be good to hear whether you ever approached teenage girls to offer to help. Was this issue discussed in training?

Ah, again it suited the male customers better.

how did it reduce returns? How did it help choose the correct size for their wives/partners?

Of course, and never intreated anything different, I would actually consider it in-appropriate for a member of store staff to be approaching and offering to help any child choosing clothes - and probably unwanted help by adults.

The goods are clearly on display, my role in a retail setting was to answer customer enquiries, not to approach them - I can't remember anyone at M&S in my time approaching customers, always the other way round.

Yeah, but then we could rely on that other great universal stereotype of autistic behaviour - the drive to follow rules. And, as an ex member of staff has mentioned above, M&S policy is to not approach customers with offers of help. And the OTHER great universal autistic stereotype of avoiding social interactions would also decrease the likelihood of this interaction. It's much more likely that he's a fucking chancer.

Simple really:

Me "do you know your wife's size sir?"

Customer "No but I think this is about right"

Me "The sizing system has quite small tolerances and you could easily get the wrong size, I'd suggest checking the labels on her garments and coming back with the details so I can sell you the right size"

Customer "OK" off they go, come back next day with some info

Ergo, less returns

That chimes with what people experience - M&S staff don't approach with offers of help. Ever.

Was there safeguarding training ever, given you would encounter children?

I mean girls shopping for underwear is incredibly common in M&S, surely? The sensitivities in this situation must have been discussed?

At what point did Mrs Slocombe arrive to discuss her cat?

The girls and I did the "are you free", "I'm free" routine quite a lot for a laugh!

Fair enough.

still putting males feeling above females though.

you say no one was put off by a male in the department. But how would you know? I would have just left and shopped elsewhere. You wouldn't have known that your presence would have put me off.

i do agree with what you said in a later post though. I've never been approached by a member of staff in M&S while looking at underwear.

I’m curious about this type of conversation, which resulted in fewer returns. Were female shop workers incapable of giving the information that you provided? Or was it just that male shoppers either wouldn’t approach them, or wouldn’t listen if the female shop workers did give them the information. Because I can’t see how you being a man, and saying words that a woman is capable of saying, would have made any difference to the number of incorrectly purchased items.

i would love to see the actual evidence as opposed to annecdote for this as I also worked in a lingerie dept for 4 years. In my anecdotal experience men buying underwear for their wives/gf nearly always came in on
the day before or oN the day of their birthday. They never bothered to check the size and they generally didn't have time to go back and do it because they wanted to buy right then because they'd left it to the last minute. It usually ended up with guessing games involving me discretely pointing at random female customers and asking "is she more that size or that size?"

if they had given it even half a thought they'd have checked the size already!

I know a couple of women who, when serving men buying lingerie for their wives, were told "she's about a handful" or, while staring at their tits, "she's about your size/bigger/smaller".

Even in retail, we do not occupy the same worlds. Also, what kind of fool goes to buy his partner lingerie and doesn't check the size first?

Interesting question - we were certainly told not to approach customers as the company policy was one of peaceful browsing.

This was 2000, safeguarding as a concept wasn't really around then - I finished teacher training and started teaching in 2002, but have no recollection of the term "safeguarding" and certainly never had any training in it until 2012 when we had a training day at school, still got the handouts. It evolved slowly through the 2000's in the background following Soham and the launching of DBS checks (which again were not a thing when I started teaching) and blossomed in the 2010s

Interestingly in 2010 I was doing some PT work at a combined FE/HE college and remember the official HR department line was that if a lecturer entered into a "personal" relationship with a student they should let HR know! and that was that.

Oh yes definitely used to get that too and not checking the size was incredibly common 🤦🏻‍♀️

Did anyone read the part about reduced returns and think ‘yes, well as a woman I would have gone to a different store where possible than approach the man at the lingerie counter to explain why I am returning this bra’? I wonder if if ever crossed anyone’s mind who worked there that there was another reason people didn’t return (or return things).

I can see that having a man to help male customers shopping for women might sometimes have been helpful, but what is making me smile is the thought of how devastated 'I'm enjoying this' man would have been to find a bloke behind the counter,

I was unsurprised by the posters who sought to censure women discussing this safeguarding fail and the motivations of the male person who crossed the boundaries with a 14 yr old girl. The tactics were fairly standard including the demonisation of those who were discussing it even when the posters doing the demonising agreed that this male employee acted inappropriately.

What I do hope though, is that the mum’s public statements will force retailers in the UK to have safeguarding at the centre of their service policy from now on. And that the daughter is ok and appreciates that the mum is working to make sure the system is better.

That was my exact same thought tbh.

So 40 pages of discussion and all that happened is a shop employee asked a customer if they needed help?! I would LOVE to live inside the head of a mumsnet user for a day.

Hi, is this the Telegraph? I saw a trans woman tying up his shoes in the street today. This instantly made me suspicious he was travelling somewhere to abuse children, so I decided to follow him. He noticed and said good morning to me, which instantly made me even more suspicious. Was he was saying it's good to abuse children?!

He then ducked into a women's toilet, obviously because he was looking for a child to abuse in there. I banged on the door and confronted him, only for him to start crying that he was actually just a tall woman! He showed me his passport which indeed said he was a woman, but I ALWAYS KNOW so I snatched it and ran away. I was incredibly traumatised by this horrific experience!

So we have another poster thinking it's okay for men to approach 14 year old girls in the bra department, unprompted, asking if they need 'help'?

Seriously, you're going to bat for this man? What the hell is wrong with you?

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about University staff pushing back against a proposed ban on relationships with students.

The general justification seemed to be that the students were adults and having an affair with your tutor was a rite of passage

It all seemed a bit unprofessional and wrong

Yes, I had to return underwear once to m&s and was praying I would get the woman at the tills rather than the young lad. He handled it well, I handled it well but I needed to debrief about how awkward it was with my mate afterward and it's not an experience I'd willingly repeat.
My first thought was that they probably don't want to have to hand back the lacy little fripperies to a bloke in exchange for some sensible comfy knickers.

Gosh. A new bit of hyperbole to dismiss the inappropriate behaviour of a male store employee. Maybe you should read the fucking thread to begin to understand the safeguarding issue of an adult male approaching a female teenager to offer help in the bra department.

Your hyperbolic dismissal of the issues simply show that you don’t understand safeguarding and seem to have an entrenched prejudice about women discussing safeguarding failures.

The question remains.

Why does one group expect this special treatment, that of being exempt from being treated as their sex for safeguarding purposes? Particularly because this special treatment they seek is based purely on their personal philosophical belief that doesn’t reflect material reality.

Why does a group of male people believe that they should no longer be treated as being a male person based on this belief?

Are there any other groups in society that hold a belief that doesn’t reflect material reality where society treats their belief as if it was materially real?

Especially if that other group’s demands conflicted with the needs of female people to be protected from harm?