Meliesha Jones, who was a part-time administrator at Vale Curtains and Blinds in Oxford since May 2021, was dealing with a customer complaint when she accidentally forwarded the email to the customer rather than reply to a colleague.
She wrote: “Hi Karl - Can you change this… he’s a twat so it doesn’t matter if you can’t.”
She was sacked for gross misconduct in June 2023, a week after she had sent the message to the customer instead of the company’s installations manager Karl Gibbons, an employment tribunal in Reading heard.
Ms Jones was awarded £5,484.74 after the tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed.
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Shortly after she had sent the message, the customer’s wife rang and asked: “Is there any reason why you called my husband a twat?”
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The tribunal heard that a probe took place and the company decided there also had to be a disciplinary hearing.
But the tribunal heard neither Ms Jones nor the customer was interviewed, no notes were produced by Mrs Smith and no written account of the decision was made.
The customer had contacted the company directly and made further threats about publicising the incident, in particular by leaving a poor review on Trustpilot and bosses decided to “get rid of” Ms Jones.
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Employment Judge Akua Reindorf KC said: “I conclude from the evidence before me that the principal reason for this decision was that the customer and his wife had made threats to publicise the claimant’s email in the press, social media and/or Trustpilot.”
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The judge said: "The disciplinary process and the dismissal were a sham designed to placate the customer.
“This is clear from the fact that Mrs Smith immediately informed the customer that [Ms Jones] had been dismissed - notably, without any apparent regard for the claimant’s data protection rights.”
She added the company had “decided to sacrifice the claimant’s employment for the sake of appeasing the customer and heading off bad reviews, and wholly unreasonably failed to consider other more proportionate ways of achieving the same outcome”.
Man, sometimes I wish courts were a lot sassier.
the customer and his wife had made threats to publicise the claimant’s email in the press, social media and/or Trustpilot.
Bam! Perfect evidence that the customer is a twat.
Eh, I’d probably do the same if I was trying to get help from customer support and they just sent me an email calling me a twat.
I probably would skip the threatening step and just post immediately.
“After due deliberation, it is this court’s learned opinion that the plaintiff’s subsequent actions have validated the initial assessment. Pass me the twathammer!”
Bonk…?
During the official investigation, it was found that the initial email triggering the incident was, and still is accurate, the customer has provided written evidence to the fact. To strive to be accurate this report will therefore refer to the customer as “twat” going forward.
In this case, everyone’s the twat (except Karl, at least on the evidence presented).
Yeah, but Karl’s a wanker, everyone says so.
Carl gibbons is the name of the security guard at Cyberdyne offices that was tied up during the building raid in T2. spelt different but I just felt the need to point it out
Good trivia all the same!
Don’t believe the graffiti in the toilets or you’d believe that poor old Anne in accounts is a monster.
I know, and Anne’s such a dear. Have you tried her cupcakes?
I wouldn’t touch them personally as I know what she adds to them for her “medical condition”.
As soon as I saw that the employee had been awarded something, I knew this did not happen in the US.
Also, they tend not to award British pounds in the US either.
I wish I had British pounds instead of American ones
Obviously, but making that point is just pedantic, as everyone knows that already.
“Is there any reason why you called my husband a twat?”
Probably because he was being a twat.
I’m not allowed to talk to customers.
But the tribunal heard neither Ms Jones nor the customer was interviewed, no notes were produced by Mrs Smith and no written account of the decision was made.
[…]
The judge said: "The disciplinary process and the dismissal were a sham designed to placate the customer.
What I know about HR is that the employer actually has a tonne of leeway to get rid of people as long as they can demonstrate they have followed a proper process with an audit trail.
The reason this person was fired that’s mentioned in the headline (which I think isn’t unreasonable - of course you can’t call the customer a twat!) is kind of irrelevant here, it’s the fact the employer didn’t run a true process to back up the decision that has got them.
And that’s exactly the reason why you don’t call customers names - neither in private, nor email. They might be the biggest twat, cunt, idiot imagineable but you simply don’t do it. You never know who reads the emails - reminder that your org most likely has access to them and will be checking them when need be. At the end of the day it could’ve been left at “can you change this? It’s okay if you can’t”. She still would have her job, the customer wouldn’t have been insulted to their face and life would go on.
Exactly.
If you have a workplace culture where you’re emailing backwards and forwards calling the customers names and that’s seen as totally acceptable workplace ‘banter’ then of course it’s going to go wrong sooner or later.
The blame is equally as much on the management for allowing and normalising that behaviour, and the tribunal recognised that.
Me…
Two email threads on the same subject with the same subject line, slightly different recipient lists.
It was a really deep thread and at one point I had emailed the internal version with “the customer is not good at math.” And included the correct math.
Some time later we had resolved the issue and I replied to the customer, but somehow ended up on the wrong thread. Fortunately it was so deep that I don’t think they ever saw it. But one of our VPs did. We had an entertaining conversation.
To this day I hate threads that go on for ages and I hate it when people reuse threads.
You’re right. Always insult customers to their face 👍
The US needs a labor party now!
ETT
