Advice needed for complaint against Tesco

pawsies

I can't believe someone like that is employed and passed the customer service assessment when I can't! :@

mazza111

shenmueryan wrote: »

The whole reason for this post and the complaint is that my partner doesn't find it easy to get on with her life, as previously explained. All I want is to know SOMETHING or ANYTHING is being done about it.

You may deem it to be just a flippant remark that can be smoothed over with someone saying sorry on their behalf but the emotional effect it has had and will have deserve more in my opinion.

First of all, I'm sorry your partner was treated like that. Psoriasis sufferers really go through it with people. I think if an apology was made and they have said that their staff would be getting spoken to or some sort of training. The thing is the stress of situations like this can flare psoriasis up, I do feel for your partner.

My DD also suffers, and some of the comments that are made are shocking, but if anything like that happened in our local Tesco, I think I would have acting like a raging bull!

DD is pretty clear atm, apart from her legs. When she had her shorts on the other day, I was really pleased with the local kids, they were asking her what was wrong with her legs rather than the usual teasing about it.

eilidh_s

I used to be a lifeguard in my youth and I know from painful experience that sometimes you can't help but stare, and sometimes you might have to closer to people then you might want to but that gives you absolutely no excuse to behave rudely. I used to live in terror that one of my old smelly teachers would be swimming and need rescued by me one day!

Last year I did an "equality and diversity at work" course which basically said that if you say anything that anybody could find offensive or discriminatory then you can be prosecuted for it. There is no way of giving an example of the ruling without offending somebody but if you think about how black rappers always call each other "nigga's", if I was walking past a pair of people calling themselves that and overheard it, whether or not it was a private conversation, if I took offense then I would be well within my rights to complain and chase for prosecution.

The example above is extreme but to be honest from the whole course I did, it is the only example that stood out for some reason as I was probably majorly distracted and/or asleep for most of it. The OP is therefore well within his rights to expect something more than an apology, even if it is just a report of how the staff are going through awareness training.

On the other hand, some of the staff of our local supermarkets are of the differently-abled variety and the slightly higher functioning of them are on the checkouts. I have witnessed several breaches of propriety from them but generally they are ignored as they can't be helped. We are a community where we all know each other however and so some things can be forgiven.

OP stick to your guns and if I could remember what regs that course came under then I would tell you so you could quote them on your next letter. I suspect they are HSE but I have no idea what section they are.

mynameistallulah

eilidh_s wrote: »

Last year I did an "equality and diversity at work" course which basically said that if you say anything that anybody could find offensive or discriminatory then you can be prosecuted for it. There is no way of giving an example of the ruling without offending somebody but if you think about how black rappers always call each other "nigga's", if I was walking past a pair of people calling themselves that and overheard it, whether or not it was a private conversation, if I took offense then I would be well within my rights to complain and chase for prosecution.

I think they were trying to scare you a tad there! You can be prosecuted for using offensive language, but not in the circumstance you described.

OP, I agree with those that have said you need to leave Tesco to deal with it now. They do not have to tell you what has happened to the staff member, and in most circumstances they cannot tell you.

jackieb

Last year I wrote a letter to a local bus company after my son was put off the bus 8 miles from home. He had to wait for over an hour before I could pick him up as I was out of town. He has a companion concession card for the bus, and his companion had left the bus before my son - after he had got off the bus, the driver walked up to the bus and shouted at my son to get off. When the bus was making its return journey and it passed the stop where my son had earlier been put off, the same driver wouldn't let him back on again, despite my son having a concession card. I got a letter of apology back. I wasn't seeking compensation either. I just wanted to let them know what had happened. The apology sounded sincere and it said that they couldn't discuss personal details but we were to know that behaviour like that wasn't acceptable and that the driver responsible had been dealt with accordingly. We live in a fairly small town and we since heard that the same driver had had previous complaints made, and that he'd been sacked.

My son has aspergers and severe excema. His confidence isn't great. I just wanted to get an apology for him to show that it wasn't alright for someone to treat him like that.

dickydonkin

eilidh_s wrote: »

There is no way of giving an example of the ruling without offending somebody but if you think about how black rappers always call each other "nigga's", if I was walking past a pair of people calling themselves that and overheard it, whether or not it was a private conversation, if I took offense then I would be well within my rights to complain and chase for prosecution.

OP stick to your guns and if I could remember what regs that course came under then I would tell you so you could quote them on your next letter. I suspect they are HSE but I have no idea what section they are.

Telling a company how to train their staff and quoting regulations at them is not the way to go.

Staff may have had awareness training and it may be just a rogue employee who did not realise the ailment in question came under the Equality Act or was just a nasty person anyway.

No amount of training can eliminate a vicious trait in a person. Removing the person is usually the best solution in that situation.

Let the company investigate, draw its conclusions and see how they will remedy the issue.

If the manager deems after this incident that there are training issues that need to be addressed, then let him deal with it - it is what he is paid to do. It may be that the training was inappropriate or ineffective - then if that is the case, let him/her deal with it.

The example you provided above highlights how each situation should be judged on its own merit and dealt with accordingly.

The 'N' word used in the example is deemed acceptable when used in the context you described, although having heard two 'rapper type' guys talking to each other like this in a queue at a car rental outlet in the US recently, it was quite funny and I certainly didn't find it offensive at all.

Obviously, if I used the same word directly at these guys, then that is a different situation.

grayme-m

mynameistallulah wrote: »

OP, I agree with those that have said you need to leave Tesco to deal with it now. They do not have to tell you what has happened to the staff member, and in most circumstances they cannot tell you.

Why can they not tell?