Disabled people are 50% more likely to be unemployed than abled people, with attitudinal barriers being some of the most prevalent challenges we face when entering the world of work. My name is Carys, and I'm blind. This is my story, a story of how I was hired and fired by one of the most 'ethical' retail brands on the High Street.
Getting the job
In the words of Maria von Trapp, 'let's start at the very beginning' - July 2017. My local LUSH store had advertised sales assistant vacancies on their Facebook page. Interested applicants were required to email a CV and cover letter over to the store. I did this, assuming that nobody would get back to me. I had just finished a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, but I had no experience working in retail. I had no experience working
anywhere. I was an employment virgin, essentially. So I sent off my cover letter and thought nothing of it... until I received an email inviting me to a group interview.
I was bloody ecstatic. I'd never been invited to a job interview before. Every other job I'd applied for in the past had never gotten back to me. But my excitement was somewhat dampened by a red flag. This wasn't just a 'job interview', it was a
group interview. So, with the thought of potentially unsuitable and/or inaccessible group activities in the back of my mind, I sent the store an emailing, giving them a very brief overview of my visual impairment. Honesty really is the best policy. I thought that by giving the store a little warning about my additional access needs, they'd be able to prepare for the group interview accordingly. I expected an email back requesting a little more information, or even a run-down of what activities the interview would consist of, for my own peace of mind. After all, they did have a
legal duty to make sure that I could access all parts of the interview. Do I enjoy having to single myself out as disabled before even meeting an employer? Absolutely not. But I needed this interview to go well. I had no expectations of actually getting the job, but I really wanted some positive interview practice that I could learn from.
But nobody got back to me. I was a little concerned, but not alarmed. I assumed that my email had been seen, and my comments taken on board. I assumed that, with LUSH being such an ethically-driven company, that their standards for disability awareness, equality and inclusion would be sky-high. Basically, I thought they had it covered.
The 7th came around quickly, and before I knew it, I was standing outside the store with the other candidates waiting to go in. Long story short, the interview went terribly. Being in a brand new store that I was unfamiliar with, i felt lost and disorientated. To make things worse, one of the evening's activities consisted of a 'supermarket-sweep' style game where we were put into groups, given a list of products found on the shop floor and told to find everything on the list as quickly as possible. I was appalled and upset. In what world is that kind of activity suitable for a blind person? Spoiler: it isn't. I was told that i could 'sit the activity out' if I wanted to. I was also given my own member of staff, who essentially followed me around and tried to help as best she could. But it wasn't good enough. I wasn't able to participate fully because the activity was unsuitable. I'd given the store plenty of notice about my access needs, and they had not been met. As soon as the interview was over, i cried. I cried on the bus on the way home, I cried to my boyfriend at the time and I cried down the phone to my parents. I knew I had every right to be upset. After all, in the eyes of the law, I hadn't been treated fairly. i'd been discriminated against. I wasn't given the opportunity of a fair interview, as the other sighted candidates had.
The next day, shit hit the fan, after contacting a few organisations for some basic legal advice, I contacted LUSH's Head Office and my mum took to Facebook. She made a post that received many shares and many comments. People were appalled, and the store undoubtedly had some backlash over the whole situation. They invited me in for an informal chat, apologised for the way they'd treated me, and agreed to offer me a trial shift. I made it incredibly clear during this meeting that I had no desire to be offered a job there off the back of the mistakes they had made at the interview stage. That isn't equality, and that wasn't the way I wanted to start my journey into employment. I wanted to work for a company that wanted me. Anyway, I did my trial shift and was offered a job the following week. 12 hours a week, my first ever job. I cried with happiness, pushing all thoughts of
why I may have been given the job to the back of my mind. It would be some months before I would find out that both senior and junior staff members openly discussed my employment on the shop floor. The fact that I'd been given a job 'because my mum had kicked off on Facebook' was apparently common knowledge, and a source of considerable shop-floor and staff-room gossip.
Doing the job
To start with, my time spent actually working at LUSH went well, I'd be doing the store an injustice if I sat here pretending that it was all bad from the start. It wasn't. At first, I thought they cared. I thought they cared about making their store inclusive, and I thought they cared about putting in the support and the accommodations I needed. I thought they were really keen to learn from their mistakes and move forward from them. I was given the support I needed to do my job, and I thought I was making good progress.
Things started going downhill in the December. I received an email from the store's Assistant Manager, asking me not to take on any extra shifts over the busy Christmas period. I was absolutely gutted. None of the sighted staff members had received this email, and I felt completely and utterly singled out. The store insisted that this measure was being taken for my safety, and while I appreciated that, I also knew that I had just as much right to pick up overtime as the abled staff did. It was nearly Christmas, after all. Who wouldn't want a little bit of extra cash? I went in on my next shift and spoke to a member of management, but they were unwilling to budge on this. I was told that I would be able to pick up extra shifts again after Christmas, but of course this made me feel no better about the situation. To me, it felt like the store just wanted me out of the way while it was busy. Rather than sitting down with me and working out a way around the issue, they were sweeping me under the carpet. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Up until that point I genuinely believed that this was a company that cared about its' staff. I was wrong. I suppose this was the turning point, where I realised that this store did not see me as equal to my abled co-workers.
The next red flag for me was the store's 'one size fits all' approach to training. LUSH employees are given regular and continuous training, both on and off the shop floor, but this training was not, at least in my store, tailored around each staff member's learning needs. The training that I was given on the shop floor was very general, and didn't cover every product in every section of the shop, which was what I needed. Sighted staff were able to look around the section they are in while working out which products to recommend to customers. Being blind, I couldn't do that. I asked for and was promised a more detailed level of training, but never received it. As a result, there were some products that had sat on higher shelves in the store, completely unknown to me until the last few weeks of me working there. Most of my specific product knowledge was picked up from making my own training aids at home, in my own unpaid time. I learnt a lot while I worked there, but the vast majority of this was learnt off my own back. I made spreadsheets for every section of the store and poured over them night and day, trying to learn what products each contained, their ingredients and their prices. Nonetheless, incorrect labelling on the LUSH website meant that many of the products we sold in-store didn't make it onto these spreadsheets, due to them being incorrectly marked as online exclusives. This combined with the fact that I was never caught up on training sessions that I missed due to illness left me feeling incredibly undersupported. I never felt that I was given the same quality of training as everyone else was, because I wasn't trained in a way that best matched my needs.
Despite being very aware of my level of vision, the store never provided me with written training materials in an accessible format. When I requested that these were emailed to me so that I could read them at home, I was told that 'nobody had the time'. Many of these training aids were handwritten, photographed and uploaded into the staff Facebook page. They would be small titbits, like an 'Ingredient of the Week' or an 'Ethic of the Week'. A couple of lines of text, essentially. To be told that nobody could find five minutes out of their working week to type these small snippets up and send them across to me felt like a massive slap in the face. I was told that I would have to find the information myself using the LUSH website. In what universe is that fair? I spent weeks asking myself why someone had the time to hand-write, photograph and upload these snippets for everyone else to see, but not for me? Similarly, when out-of-hours training was provided and I was expected to just sit and listen along while everyone else followed written mystery shopper reports or other written materials, I asked myself the same questions. Everyone here knows I can't see, why didn't anyone at least try and include me in this training? My eyes don't work great, but I can read some text if it's large enough. Why did they forget about me... again?
Losing the job
In the May of 2018 I lost my job. After eight months of employment, I was let go by LUSH. Essentially, I didn't pass my eight-month-long probationary period. The store extended it a number of times due to the fact that I took a lot of time off because of poor mental health. The reasons the store gave for letting me go were as follows:
1. I had taken too much sick leave. I provided doctors' notes when they were asked for, but yes, I did take a lot of time off. I was incredibly, incredibly unwell. So, in short, I was sacked partly because I had taken too much time off because of my poor mental health. That hurt.
2. I was not up to the
company standards. That hurt a lot more. After being given such a low standard of training, and being on the receiving end of many false promises of things getting better, I was sacked for not meeting the company's standards. I get it, every business had goals, an expectations, targets to hit, standards to meet... but I wasn't given the support I needed to reach those standards. When I reached out and asked for the support I needed, I was told that 'nobody had the time', I was told that I would receive things that were never put in place.
LUSH did not have the understanding or the tools in place to make sure that I reached my full potential within my role at the store. I was good at my job. I received a lot of positive feedback, both from staff and customers. I was learning, my skills were improving, and I was doing most of this alone and in my own time. I felt like I'd been dismissed unfairly, but I didn't pursue it. Given that I was still a probationary employee, I didn't have a legal leg to stand on. Looking back now I suppose I should have done more. Fought a libit harder for the training and resources I needed, rather than asking for things once or twice and biting my tongue when they weren't given to me. But I didn't want to ruffle feathers. I already felt like I was only on the books because my mum had kicked up a storm. I wanted to put all that behind me, and just get on with my job. But ultimately I left LUSH on that Tuesday afternoon last May feeling like a joke, and a burden. Now, every time I think about looking for another job, I feel physically sick. I've spent so much time agonising over the prospect of this same thing happening again.
LUSH, why didn't you support me? Why didn't you do your best to make sure I had all the tools I needed to thrive as a sales assistant in your store? Why didn't you listen when I came to you with my concerns? Why did you brush me off when I came to you and told you what I needed?
I didn't make this post to drag LUSH through the dirt. Do I think they're a terrible company? No. Do I think that the store I worked at treated me terribly? Yes, I do. Not due to malice or hatred, but due to ignorance, a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding. I don't think the company or the store I worked at deserve to be slandered or boycotted, but I do think they need to do better. I know that I deserved so, so much better as a disabled employee. I'm now at a point where I can acknowledge and understand that I was discriminated against by that store, and that I was treated very unfairly.
I shouldn't be sitting here telling this story, because this chain of events never should have taken place. But, I am here telling this story, and this unfortunate chain of events did take place. It's a story that needed to be told. I just hope that LUSH are listening.
