Misinformation correction: M&S Staff

[BeeSourianteAgain]

M&S have responded to people's enquiries, here's one:

https://bsky.app/profile/dpdormouse.bsky.social/post/3lvuzitrplc2f

As expected the staff member was just doing their job, something that happens thousands of times a day in shops all over the country.

As per normal, the trans panic was manufactured.

I fully expect all the GCs and media pundits who were pushing all sorts of hate to apologise, but as a person on their second LGBTQ moral panic I know very well how it goes.

Just to go back to the OP, here's a screenshot of the email response from M&S that's doing the rounds on SM - I've seen it addressed to a few different names, so it's likely to be the M&S damage limitation standard reply.

It's being used to suggest that both the mother involved and JKR are lying, although neither suggested that the employee were offering bra fitting, just help with her bra.

Ah one of the TRAs protests of choice.

Strangely you don’t see many all female protests where we all get our tits out for display.

Nor do we do piss protests.

Yes it’s been quoted as the response by several TRAs that I’ve seen, they have mixed feelings, particularly as it isn’t condemning the mother as a horrible transphobe and saying men are fine to do women’s bra fitting (some of them are aggrieved at the implication that “trans women” doing bra fitting would be unreasonable)

Amazing really that Maddy70 doesn’t get safeguarding

Well let us hope that child safe guarding and protection are weakened just to take on board the feelings that TRAs have.

I had in mind any context where a transwomen mistakenly thinks (or doesn’t give it any thought) that someone has no issue with them being male. I’d welcome TRAs providing a preferred way of letting this be known - one that helps them mistakenly attributing this as transphobia

Not a great response from M&S, very much just takes on board adults with no sensitivity towards a young adolescent.

I think we are now up to three moob protests in the UK. A couple of them were marching a couple of weekends and speaking with their male breasts bared and words written on their chest.

I still remember the two men at the NY let women speak event. One of them was most impressed by his own breasts and kept waggling them around.

Of course he was waggling his breasts around 😂. It’s all look at me I have breasts so I must be a woman. Bet his chromosomes didn’t change.

I’ve never been approached by an assistant in M&S, and I shop there frequently. I’m amazed how many people think it’s normal for a man to go up and talk to a 14-year-old girl, let alone in a lingerie department.

No, actually I don’t believe they think it’s normal. They know it’s inappropriate. They just don’t care. What men want, men must have.

I agree.

They don't think it's normal. They know it isn't.

But they've backed themselves into a corner here, because in order to support this sacred caste of men, you must make out that they are incapable of doing anything wrong. Therefore this poor 14 year old girl must be a 'bigot'.

Total fucking madness. How do their brains cope with this mental gymnastics?

People are suggesting that the underwear department is always busy and always have men in there buying underwear. So no one should expect female only experience.

Even though thats not the point of the complaint, underwear departments tend to be placed out of the way, so they arent used as a cut through and not overly busy.

Although it has just dawned on me that perhaps men do always get asked if they need help, so this TW thought that wasnt strange behaviour?

That says without making it obvious that he contacted the child.

OmeOmy.... oOO da fook is running damage control???

Thanks we do have a Media rebuttal statement.

We are Inclusive of staff then customers.
Data breach on M&S (?) side And fudge about staff rota plus it is possible that a male could work in bra fitting And admission that he made first contact with the girl and after his contact he can be asked to fetch someone else.

We accept that he would have asked her about her underwear; he was not assigned to do bra fitting and (we trust) he was not going to offer to discuss which style was best for her breasts in a private fitting room.

Thanks....

Eeeeeek!!!
Just NO!

PR would be much better off just saying

Thank you for your contact today.

M&S endeavour to respect the privacy of all our customers so we will not be a public statement as this time.

We policy is to communicate privately and directly with our customers.

Thanks....

Yes, in a “buy something or fuck off” kind of way.

Understanding why people had issues…based on falsehoods though.

Look at the repeated use of the term ‘accosted’ here. Accosted has a specific meaning about approaching someone in an aggressive, confrontational or threatening way. It is objectively not what happened here and yet it doesn’t stop people claiming it is.

Look at the repeated claim that the employee didn’t even work in the department. Except that M&S has confirmed that the premise of that statement is wrong, since employees can work across all departments.

Look at the claim that M&S policy is not to approach customers - and yet they are explicit in a job description that employees are in fact expected to ‘proactively engage’ with customers.

Three demonstrably false premises underpinning arguments on here, casually thrown about with no regard for the truth.

This is just wrong. JKR repeatedly posted that this employee had offered help with bra fitting.

It was a lie each and every time she did so.

Now that the line appears to be working at M&S is a fluid experience and that staff are supposed to proactively engage with customers, I’d like to channel and paraphrase Elle Woods and ponder whether said employee proactively engaged with all customers who were peacefully browsing during his traverse across departments and if not, why this girl in that location.

Thankfully the gif doesn’t take us to the exact scene in LB when Elle ‘started thinking like a lawyer’

@PlanetJanette accosted too strong but the other two aren’t.

The company told the mum the employee wasn’t in the correct department. When she went public they claimed staff work across all departments. So yes, as it stands M&S is telling its customers it’s fine for Gavin in food to hang out in lingerie if he fancies it. That’s the issue. But they still hire for specific departments and those are where staff are stationed.

Covered the M&S generic “proactive engagement” wording of jobs in the other thread and how this clearly doesn’t mean “do approach lone children re. underwear.”

M&S staff just don’t hover round customers asking if they’re looking for anything in particular. If customers were used to that approach from M&S and knew it as a place men worked in lingerie that’d be one thing. But customers know M&S don’t do cold approaches and why would a staff member do that to a child in a different department from the one they’ve been assigned to.

He made contact with her

He was not working in the bra section

Like fuuuck will M&S suggest (let alone say) that he or any other male member of staff will told to proactively engage with children in the womens underwear section.

But here is the time to prove us wrong.

Write to them
• see if M&S will confirm that M&S expect male staff to proactively engage with women anywhere in the womens underwear section.

• see if M&S will confirm that M&S expect male staff to proactively engage with girls anywhere in the womens underwear section.

• see if M&S will confirm that M&S expect male staff to proactively engage with boys anywhere in the boys or mens underwear section.

And while your are in communication see what is expected of female staff too.

It’s such bullshit that M&S staff “proactively engage” with customers and even more so with teen girls in the lingerie department. Top tier gaslighting.

As I said yesterday to you before being met with tumbleweeds.

M&S could easily have resolved this by stating that all staff are trained in safeguarding and awareness of customers needs about when it appropriate and not appropriate to do anything and this is standard.

They didn't. Because they can't.

This is what the mother wanted. Reassurance.

Instead she's been told something different to what is doing the rounds apparently from customer service who are clearly out of their depth and fucking clueless.

And as I said before.

Why are you so desperate to erode standard safeguarding protocols?

Anyone who does is a walking red flag.

@PlanetJanette Is there any way a large adult male could approach a lone 14 year old girl standing surrounded by underwear that wasn't confrontational and threatening, even if not outright aggressive?

I've been using the word accosted to describe the fact that the man accosted the girl. Objectively.

I find it quite telling that the TRAs seem more furious at having it pointed out that treating young teenagers this way is unsafe and unacceptable (for any male, trans or not trans) than they have been about anything else for ages.

It's as though underage children are meant to be fair play. Or prey. For men.

Helen Saxby at helensaxby11
We've had days of sneering insults now, directed at a 14 year-old girl buying her first bra, feeling embarrassed by a male assistant in the M&S lingerie dept.

From the same people who take very seriously the sad feelings of grown men when someone uses the correct sex pronouns.

Nails it. Women and girls know what creepy is, but one again we're supposed to 'be kind'. We learn what creepy is from a very early age, just like we learn to distinguish the difference between men and women in milliseconds.
This obfuscation around how the mum and daughter knew the employee was male is utter nonsense. If I am walking down a dark street alone and I see a figure coming towards me, I am instantly assessing if they are male or female and if they might pose a threat. And generally even in poor light, I can still work out almost instantaneously someone's sex, so this would be very easy to do on a shop floor.

Accosted is too strong a word. You’re right. And used in order to lie about what happened here.

The other bits don’t make sense I’m afraid. The only line M&S have communicated on this is that their employees work across Departments. An anonymous Twitter account claiming someone in the shop told her something is a far less authoritative source of M&S operating model than the actual words from the company itself. So those claiming that this employee was somehow wrong to help customers in a Department that wasn’t their own are just lying. They were acting in line with M&S’s confirmed operating model.

And even in your own post you need to lie about what happened. You know that ‘M&S staff don’t just approach customers to check if they need any help’ would sound ridiculous. So suddenly the employee was ‘hovering around’ (zero evidence) and asking if they wanted anything in particular (which is a different and far more unusual question to ‘do you need any help’).

Why is it that you think so many people have to lie about this story? If you were so convinced that what happened is wrong, why not just describe it accurately as a ‘trans woman (not confirmed but let’s assume) politely asked a mother and daughter whether they needed help while they were shopping in the lingerie department, and when they said no, went about her business’?

If what actually happened was so self evidently outrageous, then there would be no need to invent that they were ‘accosted’ or that the employee was ‘hovering around’, would there?