Nurse reduced to tears after receiving abuse from Aldi customers for using her NHS card

By Samantha Day • Published: 31 Mar 2020 • 22:51

An embarrassed nurse “cried all the way home” after she said customers queuing outside Aldi made snide comments about her using her NHS card to avoid a large queue.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, had just finished a 13-hour night shift at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool and stopped at Aldi supermarket at around 7.55am yesterday.

Coronavirus social distancing measures mean that lengthy queues have formed outside some supermarkets as stores seek to limit the number of customers entering at a time – but Aldi has announced that NHS workers do not need to stand in line.

The unseemly incident came only days after millions across the nation stepped outside and clapped for the NHS – a show of support in a time of unprecedented crisis.

The nurse, who has worked at a Liverpool hospital for more than 30 years, said: “I had just finished work and the girls had said to me Aldi opens at 8am and the NHS don’t have to stand in the queue.

“I got there, got out of my car and there was a big queue. I walked over and there was a security guard standing there. I said ‘where do I stand?’ and said I was NHS and showed him my card, so he said ‘stand here’.

“And then the comments from people in the queue, they started saying ‘oh yeah, we’re all NHS here’, ‘so what NHS that’s your job.’ There were about six or seven of them saying things, and I didn’t answer back because I thought it would just fuel it.”

The nurse said she felt so upset by the incident she rushed around the store and left.

But she was again aware of snide comments as she walked out of the exit, with one woman heard to say: “There she is, I know the NHS do a good job but so what?”

The nurse said: “I couldn’t believe it. After feeling so humbled the other night.

“After the clapping for the NHS, to being abused this morning from a few people who haven’t a clue what I had endured on my night shift.