The British fast food chain Pret a Manger has been fined 800,000 pounds (about 930,000 euros) after an employee was trapped in one of its freezers for more than two hours, even using boxes of croissants to avoid hypothermia .
The Westminster court has confirmed that the worker was wearing jeans and a T-shirt when she was trapped in an industrial freezer with a temperature of -18ºC and after being found she was in a state of distress, struggling to breathe, and her legs and feet had gone numb.
Immediately afterwards, she was transferred to the hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia, a situation that the employee tried to avoid in every possible way, going so far as to try unsuccessfully to break a cardboard box full of chocolate croissants to protect herself from the ventilation that expelled air. frozen.
The judicial inquiry has found that there was no proper risk assessment for employees working in temperature controlled environments, a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act which has resulted in a fine of £800,000, plus £23,667 in damages. of costs.
“The shocking details of this case demonstrate a lack of due care and attention. This incident shows that ignoring basic security measures can have very serious consequences”, denounced the vice president and member of the Cabinet for Communities, Citizen Protection and Licensing, Aicha Less.
This is not the first time that a case like this has occurred with the Pret a Manger chain, since in the previous 19 months there had been several calls related to defective or frozen push buttons, such as another worker trapped in a freezer after not being able to open his door from inside.
