Waitrose asked Tom Boyd not to return when he asked for a few hours of paid work after years as unpaid shelf stacker
An autistic man who was let go as an unpaid shelf stacker at a Waitrose supermarket despite volunteering there for years has been offered a job at Asda.
Tom Boyd, 28, had worked in the Cheadle Hulme Waitrose store since 2021 with a support worker, as his mother, Frances Boyd, said the role gave her son “a sense of purpose and belonging”.
In a Facebook post last Friday, she wrote that her “autistic son has been treated so unfairly, and we feel deeply let down” by Waitrose. She said the supermarket declined to give him a paid job despite him offering more than 600 hours to the store “purely because he wanted to belong, contribute, and make a difference”, and that he was a well-liked member of the team by his co-workers.
Boyd added that they had only asked for a few hours of paid work “not as charity, but as recognition for all the time, effort, and heart” Tom had given to the store, and that she and her family were “shocked by how dismissive and cold” the management’s response was, and that Tom was asked not to return.
