Imagine, if you dare
, that you'd queued up for a fair old while and met this response once your little pork chop or chipolata
was placed before the "Checkout Attendant" hands. Would it be reasonable for you to have to go and join a queue elsewhere? Surely, the position of the till operator permits him/her not to handle certain goods should be made clear to prevent anyone queuing up there?
I think my respnse would be the same as others. I would leave my groceries in the basket and go elsewhere.
But, the point of the post was a typical example of picking a story as means to harangue a member of society simply because they have different views. Whereas, in reality it was not the fault of the till operator at all, but the fault of the employer.
Let me use an analogy or two.
Jones, the window cleaner needs an assistant. He's thinking he can do half the round while his assistant does the other half, after suitable trial/training, etc.
Two likely candidates arrive, one is leaping form cill to cill, hanging from guttering by his fingertips and not doing a particular good job at the windows either.
The other candidate, Bert, admits that he doesn't like heights but is OK up to three metres. But he does a good job cleaning the ground floor windows.
Jones has a think; can he calm down the monkey and teach him to clean windows properly, or should he re-arrange his round to employee Bert.
He decides to employee Bert. He asks Bert to only clean ground floor windows, and Jones will do the rest. A NOP has been agreed.
Is it Jones' responsibility to ensure the NOP is observed or Bert's
Noblesse Oblige used to work but now we have Industrial Law.
Later if Jones asks Bert to climb ladders and clean first floor windows, then Bert is quite within his rights to refuse.
Another scenario might be that Bert has no such limitation when he is employed, but develops vertigo during some point in his career.
Jones now has a legitimate argument that Bert can no longer do the work.
However, even then a tribunal might rule that Jones can introduce a long pole system to clean windows making it unneccesary for Bert to climb ladders.
So, being reasonable, we can presume, from other bits of the article that M&S was aware of the faith of the individual and had a NOP for the situation but it failed on this occasion.
Who's fault was that?
There might be other explanations (Hypothesis testing again).
M&S were aware of the situation and either were testing the faith of the employee, or perhaps M&S couldn't give a damn if the customers were inconvenienced.
