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    Waitrose-rejected autistic volunteer receives job offer from Asda
    United Kingdom

    Waitrose-rejected autistic volunteer receives job offer from Asda

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    14 Comments

    1. Much_Regulars on

      This is just an advertisement for Asda. Pure virtue signalling. 

      They’ll have done the calculations and seen that this good PR will be more beneficial than the amount of money he’ll cost them as an employee.

    2. NoExperience9717 on

      Asda always strikes me as a consumer as a pretty hard place to work with often middle aged staff having lots of self service tills to cover and very few manned tills available. Good luck to this guy, will have to see if he’s got the capability to survive the expectations.

    4. CreativeAdeptness477 on

      This is gonna sound mean, it’s not intended maliciously, but he can’t do any worse of a job than most of Asda’s current staff 🤷

    8. Gardener5050 on

      The workers in my asda all look they want to die, and the workers in my waitrose are very friendly and full of energy. I know which supermarket I’d rather work for. Poor guy

    9. AidyCakes on

      Leave it to the users of this sub to shit all over a story with, what we should take as, a positive ending

    10. OGDSound on

      Can’t be any worse from the dribbling fucking idiots that work on the self checkout tills in my local Asda.

    11. BluebirdMarisa on

      I really don’t see the problem. PR IS a way of making money, it’s a business expense. If a multimillion pound corporation making money is so important, then they are still doing that this way. it’s just a disabled person is also happier. People don’t seem to realise with these placements, they aren’t just getting free labour they are usually also paid by the taxpayer whether directly or through charities for it. it’s actually his support worker, not the company’s, they would be supporting him do some other task anyway so why not instead support him to work and be part of something meaningful to him? There is a massive issue with disability discrimination in the UK, which we then weirdly turn to blaming disabled people for being on benefits and not working. Companies can and should be opening up work opportunities and their staff demographics reflecting the UK population. It would take the pressure off taxpayers.

    12. randomoverthinker_ on

      Omg how many more of these stories do we need to see? This is just an ad for Asda. Let’s be realistic here, Waitrose was doing this lad a favour. He was doing two shifts, and that only at the end, he started with an hour a week. He probably needed someone to keep an eye on him even if he was with a support worker. Thats more work rather than less for Waitrose. There isn’t a job where you only stock shelves. If they hire someone I’m sure they would require them to fulfill more than that, inventory and dealing with customers. Could have Waitrose handle it better? Yeah.

      I’ve actually talked about this with my husband before, there’s so many jobs out there that -could-be therapeutic and rewarding to lots of people, like stocking shelves, packing Amazon packages, doing repetitive actions, but in today’s market environment all of those things are stressful. Difficult quotas and ever expanding job descriptions. The problem here isn’t Waitrose. It’s the whole system. Maybe it would have been better for his family to seek volunteering at a charity, a food bank or something? Where it’s clear there won’t ever be payment involved.

    13. shysaver on

      I think this is an interesting story but very unusual – the guy was volunteering for 4 years without pay, that seems way beyond just “work experience” and more….free labour.

      There’s probably something more to the story, the support worker being one of them which isn’t really discussed that much in the article – did Waitrose provide that or was it private? I guess there’s insurances and stuff they have to think of there.

      Anyway good on ASDA for the free PR and glad the guy got paid work out of it.

    14. setokaiba22 on

      Just an overall comment on my experience with volunteers and as an employer – it’s incredibly challenging to hire employees with disabilities especially like this chap. And it’s not realistic that many places will do so if we are blunt.

      He requires extra support – who pays for that support would depend but many companies would balk at that cost if it fell to them. He would require extra supervision and training too, if he can’t socialise/communicate it’s a further struggle with customers and the wider team.

      In essence you would need to be a company happy to foot the bill (it doesn’t matter the company size.. let’s be honest the one thing at a store level that can impact instantly are payroll costs and everyone is judged on this and it’s the first thing to get cut should sales fall or the fiscals lol bad) and leadership that is willing to put the extra support in too.

      And herein lies the massive problem there is with hiring a lot of people with extra needs and disabilities. It’s horrible but if you can hire someone who is able to do the job and give you 100 times more productivity then that is who 99% of people will hire.

      That is why you often only see people such as this chap in volunteer roles because there’s no cost and a lower expectation on both sides and if you deal with the public a lower expectation/more empathy from a customer.

      I don’t know what the answer is really became just telling companies to do better isn’t really convincing or realistic and governments know this.