Tesco online shopping picker not fast enough

[WordsFailMeYetAgain]

Hoping someone will have advice for my son.

My son is 20 (almost 21) and works at Tesco as an online shopping picker. He is also at university, will be starting his second year in October and this job is so that he has money to support himself through uni.

He has ASD, Dyslexia and is hypermobile. Tesco are aware of this and knew this when he was employed. He has been with them since September last year.

He has just come home from work and told me that he has been called into a meeting tomorrow and is worried that he is going to be let go because he is too slow. Tesco have a pick rate and my son is consistently below this due to his dyslexia primarily but also his hypermobiity which makes it difficult when the trolley is getting full.

He is in the union and I have told him that at the meeting tomorrow, he must point out his disabilities and following the meeting he must seek out his union rep and tell them what has happened.

Does anyone know whether they can legitimately get rid of him because he is slow due to his disabilities?

It shouldn’t have happened at all. A disciplinary isn’t appropriate for performance issues which are disability related. They should have initiated a capability procedure which is designed to identify disability related issues and provide support rather than punish.

Tesco knew he was disabled when they took him on so they should be aware of their responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010. And l don’t think a disciplinary for the holiday mix up would stand either - again, they know he is disabled and that ASD/dyslexia can result in information processing difficulties. I would argue that he should have made sure he was aware that his holiday request had been rejected.

Im not talking about his disability or wether they have supported him sufficiently, I'm talking about the issue with him essentially being AWOL as his holiday wasn't approved, a disciplinary was mentioned, I'm asking was it mentioned that an investigation could lead to, or the next meeting was a disciplinary, as that affects the advice I'd give.
Yes he is at fault for not checking his holiday was approved but I know from experience if the process isn't followed to the letter a union rep will get everything thrown out

Completely agree with everything you said and I’ve never heard of a scan rate on checkouts in all the time I’ve worked for Tesco.

A disciplinary for AWOL is perfectly acceptable. You can argue about him not noticing his holiday request had been declined but if he can get on the app to make the request it’s not unreasonable for them to expect him be able to check if it’s been authorised.

I’m not sure if you’ve read the update but he wasn’t in a disciplinary meeting - it was an initial investigation in which all reasons considered, it was deemed as no further action regarding the annual leave mix up. You don’t need to inform an employee of an initial fact finding meeting, as no decisions are made prior to this. Tesco is not wrong here.

I agree with your points around reasonable adjustments, but you need to consider that we don’t know to what extent the employer knows of his disability. Whilst it is on the employer to provide adjustments when requested, the employee needs to instigate that formal process themselves. Unless via performance reviews the employee and manager mutually uncover that this process needs to be started, managers can’t just go around to everyone that mentions they are disabled saying ‘oh, you said you have ASD, I’m guessing you can’t do this job so I’ll take you off that zone’ - as that would be equally discriminatory. Tesco would be at fault here if he mentioned he needs help and they refused to engage in the conversation. OP did mention that they weren’t too interested in the investigation, but putting in accommodations wasn’t the purpose of that meeting, that needs to follow.

To be fair it sounds like a picking job was probably unsuitable for him given his disabilities . I think reasonable adjustments for this role would probably invoice a 5-10% reduction in the pick rate limit. ? Do you where he is at in terms of pick rate. Is he far away?

Sorry, I just checked with her and she says they stopped doing it she thinks about 2 years ago. But she said the manager used to get a weekly report of how they were doing against other local stores and would bring it up with staff if they were trailing and she personally was told to stop chatting to customers to get the scores up!

To answer a few questions:

1. Yesterday was an investigation. He is waiting for the letter for the actual disciplinary meeting. It’s expected to be next week or the week after. He accepts that he should have checked the app and it’s a hard lesson but he will check in future. I don’t know whether his manager is trying to prove a point but he’d asked for another couple of days holiday and all have been refused. Either she’s proving a point or being a cow!
2. He went to work this morning and got his pick rate up to 170 (target is 180) by taking chilled trollies first. He said there are others in the team that are slower than him but haven’t had performance reviews so I wonder whether they took advantage of the holiday issue to add that in. He did tell me that he has two managers and doesn’t think either like him. I know I’m biased but my son really is a lovely lad, he is kind, respectful and we have had such an easy time bringing him up. He’s had his moments but really they’ve been few and far between and only at home.
3. My son is hyper mobile and usually this isn’t a problem unless there is a particularly heavy trolley - think lots of bottled water etc. then he says it’s really hard to push but says that everyone struggles then. His hypermobility I don’t think affects the job.
4. His dyslexia is the main issue I think. He has aural dyslexia. This means that more than one verbal instruction at a time, just doesn’t go in. His brain cannot process multiple requests or items in one go. When he was little, before he was diagnosed, I would send him upstairs for, say, school bag, jumper and ask him to put his socks on. I’d go up a few minutes later and he’d done none. He was finally diagnosed when he was 15 after his upper school sent him for some tests, they didn’t have enough money for all the tests so we paid. He was finally diagnosed with mild Asperger’s and aural dyslexia.
5. He is able to do the job, there is no doubt of that, but he is just a little slower than others. My son is, for the most part, unaffected by his disabilities in his day to day life and is a happy chappy but this has made him quite anxious and he has been looking at other jobs. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that fits with his University studies as well as this one. He wouldn’t cope with something like bar work or waiting tables.

Thanks everyone for your valuable input, it’s been really helpful and I’ll keep you updated when I have more news.

Hopefully everything will get worked out for your son, but I just wanted n
oto comment on your post about his manager making a point by refusing holiday. The tesco holiday booking year opens a year in advance, on 1st April 2025 colleagues were able to start booking for the holiday year 1st April 2026 to 31st March 2027. If your son is trying to book weekends in the summer holidays with short notice he is going to get them refused as the holiday booking targets are met by the end of April in most teams as managers have a target for the number of hours they can accommodate each week. My refusing bookings is not me making a point or being a cow, it's following the holiday booking policy

Sounds like they should make reasonable adjustments and offer him another role. There are very slow pensioners on the tills.

Sounds like a nightmare.

Well he obviously can't do the job due to this, so he should look for another job. It sounds like they took a chance on him and probably shouldn't have.

Can he get a workplace needs assessment through the government Access to Work scheme. I believe someone would go in and make suggestions about adjustments that could be made.

But also supermarkets do have a high rate of cow managers so there's that.

OP he shouldn't be having this discussed in a meeting along with a disciplinary issue. It's fine that they're trying to help him to increase his pick rate but that doesn't really address some of the difficulties in the job and they should be discussing accommodations with him. That can possibly be a lower pick rate, or a different role. It might be worth him asking for an Occupational Health appointment.

Has he thought about taking photos of the chilled aisles and memorising where the products are? Might mean he gets to these items quicker and improves his pick rate. Obviously the ambient might be too hard to mesmerise - but surely part of any delays is delays in finding things? If he can develop a strategy for improving that it might help?

I did this job as a Christmas temp for 2013. It still sends a shudder down my spine now. I also am neuro divergent and it takes a while for new tasks to imbed in my memory - so store layout was a nightmare. I had only just got up to speed at end of the eight weeks of being there. I was the only one of six not kept on. I felt so humiliated and desperately needed the job as a single parent.
However, I went on to get a degree and a MA and now work in the building next door - pop in for my lunch. I now see it as a blessing - if they had kept me on I would probably still be there now 😂
It was a stressful job - especially when customers took items from your trolly!

Just to help- ‘aural dyslexia’ isn’t a phrase that is used in the uk.
he has a ‘poor auditory working memory’.

How’s he getting on at uni op? Do they have adjustments in place for him? He could explain those adjustments allow him to attend and succeed at uni so he should be able to work in Tesco.
What did he change himself to increase his pick rate?

My friend worked as a picker (she is hypermobile and suffers with painful joints and has ASD). She found the targets incredibly hard to keep up with and She became anxious and was regularly pulled up for been below target (sometimes by only a few items).

She did ask to move to tills, however due to cutbacks on tills it's harder than picking plus comes with abuse as a portion of the shift has to be manning self serve. She said half the trouble is that self serve is unpopular with customers, involves a lot of running about and solving issues at speed. Self serve has been sold to customers as "quicker" but with only 1 staff member running it if multiple customers need help then everyone gets impatient and grumpy. They also need to watch for possible shoplifting (very common in the self serve), approve restricted items, remove tags from clothing, replenish the bags, sort out the till rolls and technical issues. She said it is the most stressful role she ever undertook. She was verbally abused every shift and physically assaulted by drunk / drugged/ mentally unwell customers at least 1x per month. His shift times will mean he would probably end up manning self serve as in a lot of places tills are not open until after 9.

My friend (after her meeting with the union rep) has since moved to shelf stacking and stock rotation and much prefers it. She works on the lighter items. It's much more chilled and doesn't involve as much customer interaction. His shift times would also suit shelf replenishment so he might be better asking to move to that.

I disagree. He has done the job for the past 10 months. Today he has come home and due to doing mostly chilled picks has managed a rate of 184 (target is 180).

He’s doing really well at uni. The only help he gets is extra exam time. His course is not exam based but a series of assessments so that concession probably won’t apply.

So you don't think employers should make reasonable adjustments for employees with disabilities then? You think disabled people shouldn't be given the opportunity to join the work force, earn their own money and have the healthy self-esteem that comes from contributing to society? (Fortunately, UK discrimination law disagrees with you.)

@AnnetteFlixIve just googled and the AI bot says Tesco target is 269 items per hour. I
Thats insanely fast!

Whilst it could have been phrased better, the poster didn't say any of that.

I'm one of the first people to jump on comments that are discriminatory against the disabled, but it is a fact that some jobs are not suitable for some people with disabilities. And actually UK discrimination law agrees with that. That is why adjustments have to be "reasonable" not absolute. If the employer decided that he was not capable of consistently carrying out the role, then if challenged they must be able to show why they consider the role unsuitable based on their business needs, not on random internet posts, and what if any steps they could reasonably take to avoid dismissal on the grounds of capability/disability.

How this plays out going forward may or may not give rise to a valid claim of discrimination, but quite seperately that poster only suggested that he might be better off looking for another job - not in the most sensitive of ways, granted, but we can all say things that are taken in a way we didn't mean. And at no point did the poster say that he (or disabled people in general) shouldn't be in the workforce, earn money or contribute to society. And case in point "the healthy self-esteem that comes from contributing to society" does not have to come from paid employment. I'm sure you didn't really mean to suggest that economically inactive people don't contribute to society, and therefore can't have healthy self-esteem. Because since retiring from my full time job (which I undertook whilst also being disabled) I have never been more busy "contributing to society", supporting local asylum seekers and refugees, establishing a support group for people with disabilities in the local area, campaigning against the removal of the WFA and against benefit cuts for disabled people, and setting up a country park support group which also has a big focus on accessibility to the countryside. And my self-esteem hasn't suffered at all by not being in work.