Mary’s Story

Mary had been working as a full-time employee at a large supermarket for over 6 years. Late one evening, Mary was leaving her shift for the night when she saw an altercation with a member of staff and a customer. Mary stepped in to assist as she could see the customer was becoming more volatile. The customer was using threatening behaviour and verbal abuse towards both Mary and her colleague, leaving Mary quite shaken up and worried to return back to work for several days.

Mary took this issue up with her shift manager and told them that she was struggling with sleeping due to the incident at work. This is when Mary’s shift manager escalated the issue to HR and they made the call to the free and confidential GroceryAid Helpline.

HR relayed the details of the incident and explained her colleague’s worries, a Critical Incident report was then raised through GroceryAid and it was arranged for a trauma support specialist to provide on-site support to colleagues impacted at the store. Mary and her colleagues were encouraged to talk through what happened and given advice and support to help them manage in the coming weeks.

GroceryAid’s free and confidential Helpline and website was signposted to all colleagues at Mary’s supermarket for future support, advice and information.