Had a reply from Morrisons about their Taunton store Manager and the 89 year old poppy seller.... Good afternoon Ms Daniells Thank you for contacting us regarding your concerns relating to the well being of an elderly volunteer who was collecting for the British Legion Poppy Appeal outside our Taunton store this weekend. At Morrisons, we take the safety and comfort of all our customers, staff and visitors to our stores extremely seriously, and as you are probably aware, we do receive many requests for collections to take place both inside and outside our stores from various charities throughout the year. If I may explain, the Manager of our Taunton store was asked if a volunteer from the British Legion could collect at his store this weekend. The option was given for the collection to be held inside the store or outside at the store entrance. It was decided by the volunteer that if the collection was at the store entrance, this would capture a wider audience. However, at lunchtime their volunteer changed to an 89 year old gentleman. We can confirm that our Manager was not made aware of this and therefore his comment re “wrap up warm” was exceptionally inappropriate and as such, he is very saddened by this. We at Morrisons are very sorry at how this misunderstanding has looked, we will of course donate to the British Legion, and will be making a special gift to both Veronica (the lady who highlighted this) and our 89 year old veteran as a token of our regret. Veronica is a regular to the store and is known by lots of the staff as well as the store Manager and this issue has caused concern to everybody. We have now spoken to the British Legion and the store have removed a number of static items in the foyer to enable the collection to take place inside the store. The British Legion and Morrisons are managing this situation together and are both concerned regarding any adverse reaction towards the store. We can confirm that Veronica, The British Legion and Morrisons have worked together to resolve this matter and would ask you to respect their action. We do appreciate your concern and can fully understand why you have felt the need to contact us about this. We are deeply sorry that this has happened, but once this was realised we did act quickly to rectify the issue. Lessons have been learnt from this most unfortunate incident and I would like to thank you once again for taking the time and trouble to contact us. Kind regards Charlotte Customer Services
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 19:09:14 +0000