Friday - March 05, 2010

Just another silly story about silly, stupid people in a nanny state. Whatever happened to logic?

This is pretty silly and in fact it’s plain STUPID which is why .... it deserves the Bat Award.  How do folks like this get hired? Or perhaps it doesn’t show at the time of employment. What are schools turning out?  This is nothing serious compared to all the bad stuff going on these days.  There has always been that.  But there seems to be less common sense.  Less logic.  And before anyone points a finger at Brits alone, let me tell ya that I’ve seen it at work back home in the USA long ago.  Maybe not as often back then, but it was beginning. So then, here.
Just Another Stupid Story about silly stupid people.

Staff at a WH Smith store refused to sell a mother a pair of children’s scissors in case she let her three-year-old daughter use them unsupervised.

By Murray Wardrop
Published: 7:30AM GMT 05 Mar 2010

Nadine Martin was left shocked and angered after a sales assistant said she could not buy the brightly coloured scissors for her three-year-old daughter.

The high street chain yesterday apologised for embarrassing Mrs Martin, admitting that the staff member had been “overzealous” in applying safety guidelines.

Mrs Martin was buying art supplies for her daughter at the firm’s branch in Chichester, West Sussex, when the toddler spotted the scissors which were marked “3+”.

But when the youngster placed them on the checkout counter, the woman sales assistant asked: “Will you be supervising her?”

Mrs Martin said: “She called another woman over and she said it was company policy that because my daughter had put the scissors on the counter it called into question whether she would be supervised using them.

“I can’t believe a parent can’t buy plastic scissors. They were clearly labelled and had ‘3+’ on them. There was a queue of about four people and it was embarrassing.”

In protest, Mrs Martin left the shop without buying any of the items they had picked up.

A spokesman for WH Smith said: “Customer safety is of paramount importance to us.

“To that end we insist our staff complete regular training updates to remind them of their obligations both legally and in accordance with our own policies.

“On this occasion a staff member may have been a little overzealous in their interpretation of that training and we apologise for any inconvenience or embarrassment that may have been caused.”

SILLY SOURCE FOR STUPID PEOPLE

I think one other item stands out here like a red flag. See it?  Management says a staff member “may” have overreacted. May have?

There isn’t any “MAY” about it.  That implies there’s still a question of some kind, to my way of thinking.  No. There isn’t any “may” involved here.
It’s just another example and one of many I’ve been confronted with lately, where people in management or authority of some kind just can’t being themselves to state the obvious without any qualifications. 
Oh well. Big deal, right? Yeah, I guess.

Posted by peiper     on 03/05/2010 at 06:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People • UK •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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