Supermarket boss bans transgender employee from meeting customers
(Photo: Getty)
A transgender supermarket worker has revealed how she was banned from working in front of customers after she began presenting as female.
The woman, in her 50s, wrote that management told her “the shop floor was not ‘for women like me'” if she continued to wear women’s clothes.
The ruling came despite another boss in the supermarket trying to support her transition.
In a letter to Daily Mirror agony aunt Coleen Nolan, the woman wrote: “I’m a transgender woman who has just come out.
(Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)
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“Although I’m in my 50s, I intend going through the process of fully becoming a woman and, as you probably know, part of this process involves living full time as a woman.
“With this in mind, I had to speak to my boss (I work as a checkout operator) and she said that she’d support me and would inform the other staff.
“Fine, I thought, and made arrangements to go into work as a woman.”
However things changed when her department manager saw her working on the checkout.
(Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
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“I asked why and he said that the shopfloor area was ‘not for women like me’.
“I asked him to explain and he said that if I intended to continue wearing skirts and/or other female items, then I should be kept out of sight.
“I asked him if one of the other girls in the store changed her way of dressing, would she be treated the same, to which he replied ‘no’, adding, ‘but then you’re not a real girl’.”
Despite one manager being supportive, they refused to overrule their colleague who undermined her rights as a trans woman.
(Getty)
Coleen Nolan wrote back that the woman’s boss is “ignorant”, adding: “Your bosses should be informed and should put a plan in place to help ease the transition at work. They ought to be fighting your corner.
“On an emotional level, of course it’s upsetting and disappointing to experience this attitude and feel unsupported and degraded.”
The woman’s identity is not known nor which supermarket she works in.
