“DO you think we would have hired you if we knew about your feet?”

This is what a 20-year-old man claims he was asked by a manager at Smyths Toy Store when he informed them about chronic pain he suffers from caused by collapsed arches.

Brandon Weathersbee, from Basingstoke, was due to be part of the new team that would be working at the Smyths store in Brighton Hill Retail Park when it opens in November.

However, he was forced to quit after his superiors refused to let him use a stool whilst serving customers, saying they were only for pregnant women.

A spokesman for Smyths Toy Store refused to comment directly on the incident and said the firm had not received a complaint.

 

Brandon said he has not lodged a formal complaint but said he felt forced to quit as a result and described feeling victimised by the comment

“I didn’t want to quit then and there so I did my best to see what would help me and my ankles,” Brandon told the Gazette.

“I thought this (job) might help me, it was a bit of experience and it was only temporary, but they made me feel disappointed in myself that I couldn’t do it,” he said.

The incident, which allegedly took place on Monday when staff from the Basingstoke store went to another store for training, gave Brandon an anxiety attack, and left him stranded in Surrey for five hours whilst he waited for the company coach home.

In the end, he paid to get the train home, and his mother Dannii Oates-Jones said that she was disappointed by the way her son had been treated. 

“You just don’t say that to people,” she said.

“I just want to be a little voice for other people, this shouldn’t be happening.

“First of all it was packing the shelves, if he keeps moving and exercising his ankle and then has a little break here and there, he would have been alright.

“But standing in the same place, you can’t get your ankle moving.”

Brandon says that the ordeal has made him become more anxious about how future prospective employers will handle his disability.

“I thought they’d try to help me,” he continued. “As it’s not a big job we’re easily replaceable, and there was a lot of people there so I don’t think they would have cared if I was there or if I wasn’t.”

A spokesperson for Smyths Toys refused to directly comment on the incident, instead saying: “Should any employee or former employee lodge a complaint with us, then we would address that directly and privately with that person. We have had no such complaint.”