HERE’S A BAKERY TO GIVE A MISS: Birds Bakery employee of 40 years sacked for taking cash payments and using her card to pay instead to help a 94-year-old who doesn’t have a card

A woman who has worked for Birds Bakery for more than 40 years has been sacked after she was found to be taking cash from customers and using her debit card to pay. Megan Metcalfe says she was dismissed from the company for gross misconduct.

During the Covid crisis Birds has said they are not accepting cash for hygiene reasons and they wanted to minimise any risk to staff and customers.

This week Nottinghamshire Live reported that a 94-year-old customer who wanted to buy bread from the Bulwell branch of Birds had to leave empty handed because she only had cash. A lot of customers at the Birds store in Radcliffe-on-Trent where Megan worked are elderly and don’t have a card, the 60-year-old of Ruddington said.

To make sure they didn’t leave empty-handed, she would ask them to put the money straight into her purse and then put the payment through on her card before showing them the receipt.

The bakery business said it was “with regret” that they had to dismiss Megan because of her actions.

“I realise what I was doing was against company policy. But they had picked up the items and already gotten to the till ready to buy them,” Megan told Nottinghamshire Live.

“There’s no way I could let an elderly man or woman walk away telling them they could not buy it because they didn’t have a card. They had also already handled the stock so that would have to be binned or cleaned.”

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