Hi apologises if this is in wrong forum.
I recently took a job with Tesco home delivery.
Some customers need us to enter thier homes dye to being disabled or bed bound which i understand.
Few days ago i made a call not to enter a house to to it not being very sanitary. To me the customer was just wanting somone else to unpack her shopping and could walk to the door ok.
When i offered to bag it for her and leave in the hall she got abusive and told me to take it away. On returning to the store my manager and union rep both told me i MUST enter any property im ask to. Otherwise i will be upstairs for a meeting.
I felt during corona i would have a choice if the property wasnt cleanly enough.
Any advise welcome please
I would like to see that stand up at an employment tribunal if they were to give you a P45.
You have rights and your right is to not do something if you feel if it is unsafe.
Health and safety 1st.
Throw that 1 at them and see what their response is.
And if no joy then tell them you contacting Public Health England.
Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk
Has the activity of entering an occupied unknown property during a global pandemic been properly risk assessed and a safe systems of work drafted for this?
Your employer has a duty of care to you, their employee under many legislation, not least under the Health And Safety at Work Act 1974 - If your employer fails to uphold that duty of care to you, perhaps start looking at ways to contact the Health and Safety Executive
Use H&S rules against them for once.
If you really wanted to get creative, some of the newspapers have advice sections where people can write in asking for their opinion. LBC radio do something similar for a couple of hours each week. I can’t remember which day or time but I’m pretty sure it’s during the night shift before midnight from memory. Keep the supermarket’s name out but do make it known it is a supermarket that offers home delivery for customer’s groceries.
In the mean time, have your manager and ideally, the union chap give you each letters on company headed paper, stating they require you to enter customer’s houses during this global pandemic etc - This might come in the form of a written warning, but as already mentioned, unfair dismissal will apply and you can take them to court - No-Win-No-Fee type law firms might even take it on??
WillieStevens:
Hi apologises if this is in wrong forum.
I recently took a job with Tesco home delivery.
Some customers need us to enter thier homes dye to being disabled or bed bound which i understand.
Few days ago i made a call not to enter a house to to it not being very sanitary. To me the customer was just wanting somone else to unpack her shopping and could walk to the door ok.
When i offered to bag it for her and leave in the hall she got abusive and told me to take it away. On returning to the store my manager and union rep both told me i MUST enter any property im ask to. Otherwise i will be upstairs for a meeting.
I felt during corona i would have a choice if the property wasnt cleanly enough.
Any advise welcome please
I think some needs to put this in writing, be it the manager or the union, yet again we see the union rep not defending its member.
She was a lazy idiot, you did the right thing. If I had of been the manager you would of been backed 110% … if you could made look for a decent job… no way were they in the right.
The first thing I would look at is my Contract of Employment and my copy of their Guidance on Best Practices.
If ‘you must carry in and pack away goods, at the customers request’, or something like it, is there in black and white, you’re goosed.
That doesn’t mean you cannot contact Public Health England and or the HSE, to ask for their guidance in matters of entering a dirty residence.
You do know that some disabilities are almost invisible and often then only visible to a trained eye looking for particular signs?
My wife got a slipped disc in her neck. In cases like hers, they don’t operate, because a slight slip during the op’ can result in paralysis, from hips down, to total paralysis from the neck down, depending on where the slip occurs. What they do instead is ‘leave it to develop’. What developed in my wifes case was fibromyalgia. She described it as, the tingling you get in your fingers for a few minutes after you bash your funny bone. But all over, all day, every day, from the neck down. She was on a cocktail of drugs to combat the pain, including self administered morphine. Eventually, once you’re at the stage of, ‘not much left to lose’, that’s when they do the op’.
Anyway, on a good day she could walk to the front door, she could probably carry all the bags into the kitchen and possibly put her shopping away all in one go. On a not so good day, she could walk to the front door without too much of a problem. After a breather she would be able to take one bag to the kitchen, probably without a breather half way. Depending on how many bags and what weight was in them, bearing in mind that you have to lean away from a heavy load in one hand which would put additional strain on her neck, it could take 2 or 3 hours just to get a weeks shopping from the front door to the kitchen. It would often take her 2 to 3 hours just to get out of bed and dressed in the morning.
In the end cancer got her.
To the point of all this about my wife and Fibromyalgia.
Do you think you would be able to tell that my wife was in severe pain? Going by how long it took her to get to and open the front door, at which point you see her and think she looks ok?
WillieStevens:
i made a call not to enter a house to to it not being very sanitary. To me the customer was just wanting somone else to unpack her shopping and could walk to the door ok.
Would you be refusing to enter “not very sanitary” properties if you didn’t have the Covid excuse to fall back on? 
Your second sentence says all : it’s nothing to do with Covid, it’s everything to do with you deciding they were able-bodied enough to unpack their own shopping and put it away, which you didn’t want to do. 
Thank you for your replies. A few things id like to address. To those who think im just being cruel or couldnt be arsed to help this customer you are wrong. Ive been trained on hidden disabilities and illnesses. My wife is just out of hospital so im trying to keeps her as safe as possible. Also on average out of 5 days i go into hones at least once a day to help unpack. On this particular delivery as i said it was a very unpleasant home. Hygiene was non existent to me here. I made this call, my first ive refused and offered to bag it for her and explained about keeping everybody safe. I just expected my union rep and manager to back me up and not tell me i must enter every home that ask me to come in. Ive already had 5 people tell me to my face the have covid without pre warning. My boss does nothing about this bar say he will put a note for the next driver. I thought i would have more protection during this pandemic.
You’re in the wrong job. Leave and let someone else have it who will be grateful for it and not moan about a “pandemic” with a 99.95% survival rate and you need a test to tell you if you have it . Tesco don’t care. They just want their stuff delivered. If you are on a probationary period I’d advise you to seek work elsewhere before the decision is made for you.
Mick bracewell i can tell from your use of quotation marks that your one of the clowns who dont take this “pandemic” seroiusly and probably dont wear a mask either. Tell the survival rate to my mother in law who died 7 weeks ago due to covid after 10 days in intensive care, but then your lot would just put it down to “static scaremongering”. Take it you wont be getting the vacines in case Bill Gates puts his microchip in you!
WillieStevens:
Mick bracewell i can tell from your use of quotation marks that your one of the clowns who dont take this “pandemic” seroiusly and probably dont wear a mask either. Tell the survival rate to my mother in law who died 7 weeks ago due to covid after 10 days in intensive care, but then your lot would just put it down to “static scaremongering”. Take it you wont be getting the vacines in case Bill Gates puts his microchip in you!
Firstly I have my own issues with the idea of a ‘vaccine’ and it has nothing to do with any bs micro chip.At best Gulf War type Syndrome issues more like.
I didn’t even know the job requires entry into people’s houses to pack their deliveries and would point blank refuse such a requirement.It isn’t a reasonable instruction and you should fight it.
If someone is too ill to load their own fridge they obviously need authorised carers not a bleedin random shop delivery van driver to look after them.
What next the postman is told to enter and go upstairs and put parcel deliveries in the loft.That whole requirement and scenario is a can of worms even without Covid risks.Let alone the clear restrictions of tier 4 which certainly don’t say it’s ok to enter other people’s homes to pack away their bleedin shopping in their fridge for them.
Let me guess you’ve got a class 2/1 and this is what they mean by a ‘driver shortage’.
Another one that asks a question, doesn’t get the answers that they want so resorts to abuse.
To the OP, its your call mate, if the house is filthy then walk away, mention health and safety to the managers and they will have to stand by your decision
end of story.
If you’re not happy with the job then begin looking for another.
All the above comments apply pandemic or no pandemic.
My son in law is a gas engineer he has refused to enter premises because of sanitary conditions, even before Covid , the Company backs him all the way its his decision its his call.
I suggest you have a word with your Union Area Rep by pass your local Rep as it looks like he is a prat
I would have thought you would be in a self isolating category anyway.
Wife out of hospital, MiL sadly passed apparently due to the virus.
If the house was as serious a health hazard as you suggest, maybe they need help and support, isn’t there a system where you work where you report the situation and the company your work for get in touch with social services or maybe send someone in a supervisory role round to see if they need any special delivery method?
Some houses have to be seen to be believed, last tenant opposite us was evicted and a full on hazmat team had to gut the place . The present tenant gets so ■■■■■■ he can’t be bothered to go to the loo , so he just craps on the carpet . Next door neighbours get the stench coming through the walls . This is on a decent. Disabled/retirement estate , not in a slum area . They all plead disability so they are excused their behaviour by the authorities .
lolipop:
My son in law is a gas engineer he has refused to enter premises because of sanitary conditions, even before Covid , the Company backs him all the way its his decision its his call.
I suggest you have a word with your Union Area Rep by pass your local Rep as it looks like he is a prat
My mate is an Openreach engineer who puts lines and internet into people’s homes. They’re allowed to refuse to go into a property if they don’t think it’s safe. In regards to online shopping I can’t recall having any delivery drivers do anything other than knock on the door and leave it there. I’d not expect anything else.
To the OP’s question. I worked for Tesco for 11 years from 2001-2012 the last 5 of which 2007-2012 I was a van driver on the home deliveries so have some idea about this, granted I left 8 years ago so what I put below may be outdated.
The manager will not have a leg to stand on as far as your refusal to enter the property and do as the customer asked and I am surprised the union rep is agreeing with them on this one. Mind you I am not surprised as the standard of some managers at Tesco was shocking (often due to their internal promotion scheme called “options”). We were lucky as we had a very good manager on dot.com but I know its pot luck across the company. Sounds like you have a poor one.
During my time it was operated as a “door to door” service, there never was any obligation to enter a customers property if you did not wish so, be it a customer just being lazy or the house not being hygienic. We were generally always supported when we had issues with customers being unreasonable. Like all things though it comes down to personal discretion and our manager let us use our own.
Personally, I never had an issue if someone asked me to bring bags or trays through to the kitchen and would gladly do so if asked, especially if they were elderly or disabled. Sure, sometimes the customer was just being lazy but it wasn’t any skin of my nose to do it. In truth though, the vast majority of customers didn’t want you traipsing through their house with your boots on so stuff would be exchanged on the doorstep. I would draw the line at being asked to put stuff away though - except extreme cases like they were elderly/frail or disabled and wanted a hand in which case I was happy to help, again it came down to your own personal judgement on the situation and whether they really needed help or not. Plus they would often offer you a coffee or a cold drink when it was hot.
Back on topic, for the people who mentioned the contract, well you just used to have a generic Tesco employment contract - it wasn’t tailored for an individual role so it didn’t matter whether you worked on the tills, the shop floor, the bakery, fish counter etc for example mine never specified anything about my role as a van driver and what I was or wasn’t expected to do at a customers premises, so highly doubt that one will help the OP.
Not surprised to see Carryfast pipe up and use this thread as an excuse to start babbling on about having to do something other than sit behind a steering wheel within a job role.
Question:
If the customer is unable to, for example, put the cornflakes away in the cupboard, then how is he able to get them out when he needs them?
The property was not clean enough? How are you going to prove that to your employer? Take photos of the customer’s hallway/kitchen? Their bins? Invite your manager and go together to the place for an unannounced visit/inspection? I mean you could say that for any property where there is one too many set of stairs or the customer ordered 20 sacks of firewood or whatever.
If you wear disposable gloves and don’t have a habit of licking your shoe undersides you should be fine. At least until spring comes along and it gets a lil over 0 deg.
Juddian:
I would have thought you would be in a self isolating category anyway.
Wife out of hospital, MiL sadly passed apparently due to the virus.If the house was as serious a health hazard as you suggest, maybe they need help and support, isn’t there a system where you work where you report the situation and the company your work for get in touch with social services or maybe send someone in a supervisory role round to see if they need any special delivery method?
If someone is too ill to unload their shopping tray at the door and put it in the cupboard or fridge item by item and doesn’t have the support required to help them.Then that by definition is a matter for social services and/or a hospital discharge plan to fix not a supermarket home delivery driver.
If it was me I’d check out the 'union rep’s credentials.IE exactly which union and membership card then if that checks out take the matter further to the area convenor.
The OP has made a rod for his own back by agreeing to such terms at all.