14. CSI: Farnham. Tony Price, the managing director of WStore UK, an IT
company based in Surrey, demanded that his 80 staff submit to a DNA test
after a piece of chewing gum got stuck to a directors’ suit trousers. When
his global e-mail pointing out the firm's chewing gum ban leaked
to the media, Price cheekily suggested he would force staff to take lie
detector tests to flush out the culprit.
13. Hands on treatment. A 34-year-old masseuse sued the prestigious Old
Course Hotel at St Andrews for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination
after she was allegedly fired for accusing an A-list celebrity client of
lewd conduct; the employment tribunal later identified the celebrity as
Kevin Costner after his name was posted
all over the internet. According to the masseuse, the Dances With Wolves
star removed his towel and asked her to "touch him everywhere".
Costner, who was on his honeymoon and taking part in a golf tournament,
denied the accusation vehemently. The hotel later settled with the woman.
12. Porn at sea? No thanks. The cliché of men in the armed serves
cheering themselves up with top-shelf literature is well established, but it
was too much for the Reverend Mark Sharpe, 37. The trainee chaplain left the
Royal Navy declaring himself “horrified” by the amount of pornography below
decks and issued a claim for sexual harassment and discrimination on the
ground of his religious beliefs. At a tribunal in Exeter, the Navy admitted
sexual harassment but denied the religious discrimination charge. Reverend
Sharpe accepted an undisclosed sum in damages and is now a rural rector.
11. Fine whine. A Muslim insurance salesman took offence when his
employer began offering bottles of wine for good performance. Imran Khan,
25, said that Direct Line’s incentivisation scheme put him at a disadvantage
because his religion forbade him to drink alcohol, and he sought damages for
“hurt feelings”. He lost.
10. Witches have rights, too. Sommer de la Rosa, a former teaching
assistant at the Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton, accused
the school of unfairly dismissing her because she was a witch. The
34-year-old claimed she had been made to “feel like a freak” after she was
forbidden from wearing a pentagram and colleagues compared her Wiccan
beliefs to communism. The school claimed she had been let go because of her
poor attendance. The dispute was settled out of court.
9. Chard is for lovers. Sally Bing, a 31-year-old town clerk, won her
claim for sexual discrimination and victimisation against the mayor of
Chard, Tony Prior, after the 67-year-old putative lothario became infatuated
with her. “We were standing shoulder to shoulder looking at a wall map of
Chard,” the mayor explained. “When she stood close to me, it sent a sexual
thrill through me. That was possibly when I wondered whether she had sexual
feelings towards me.” The married Prior invited Bing on a walking tour of
Andorra, and his advances eventually became so bad she rearranged the
furniture in her office to create an escape route in case he appeared. Bing
was awarded £25,000 from the council and £33,697 from Prior. And all that
from staring at a map of Chard.
8. Wicked witchcraft. Sariya Allen, a teaching assistant who quit her
job after three years at Durand primary school in Stockwell, London, sued
the school for allegedly discriminating against her Pentecostal Christian
beliefs. Allen had been disciplined
for refusing to let a child read Harry Potter, claiming it glorified
witchcraft. She lost.
7. Don’t call me ginger. Sarah Primmer, a 41-year-old former
waitress at the Rendezvous Café in Plymouth, was awarded a “staggering”
£17,618 for unfair dismissal and sexual harassment after suffering taunts
over her ginger locks. Primmer alleged
the café’s night manager had made a series of lewd and embarrassing comments
in front of other staff because “they wanted to know if the colour of my
hair matched the rest of my body”. Despite her vindication in the eyes of
the law, Primmer was intent on ridding herself of her affliction. “I am
going to try and get it lighter and lighter,” she said. “It is not nice to
be ginger.”
6. Man’s best friend. David Portman successfully
sued the Royal Mail for unfair dismissal after he lost his job for
taking time off to mourn the death of his dog. The postman had missed 137
days in five years for reasons including breaking his foot when pushing mail
through a letter box, spraining his ankle when standing on a piece of wood
and being injured in a car accident. Throughout, his faithful hound Brandy
had provided unstinting companionship. When one morning he found her dead at
the foot of his bed, Portman took her demise badly and failed to show up to
work for a week. He returned to find he had been sacked. A tribunal found
that “none of the claimant’s absences were for other than wholly legitimate
and genuine reasons”.
5. Foamy sales pitch. Wayne Simpson, an EDF Energy salesman, lost his
£28,000-a-year job after he sent a customer a picture of himself sitting
naked drinking whisky in a bubble bath. Simpson had met the female customer
while selling door-to-door on Tyneside; he obtained her number and later
sent the picture with a message saying, “Fancy going out for a drink
sometime?” The woman didn’t and instead reported
him to the company and the police. Simpson accused EDF of lacking a sense of
humour. “I wasn’t even showing off my naughty bits,” he said.
4. The farting chair. Sue Storer, a 48-year-old teacher at Bedminster
Down Secondary School in Bristol, sought
damages of £1 million for sex discrimination and constructive dismissal
claiming she had been forced to sit in a chair that made embarrassing sounds
every time she moved. “It was a regular joke that my chair would make these
farting sounds and I regularly had to apologise that it wasn’t me, it was my
chair,” she said. Requests for a new chair had been repeatedly ignored while
male colleagues were given sleek, executive-style chairs, she said. Her
claim was thrown out.
3. Look out for the flour. Caroline Gardener, a lesbian shop worker at
a Booker Cash and Carry, won her claim for unfair dismissal after she was
fired following an altercation with a customer. Gardner, of Eastleigh,
Hampshire, claimed a customer abused her because he couldn't find any lime
cordial, telling her to "Get your sex life sorted out." She
responded by throwing a bag of flour at him. “When he called me a filthy
dyke I had a pack of flour in my hand and, although I regret it now, I threw
it at the back of his head,” she admitted.
“He then turned round and said, ‘You are a dyke and you’re going to get the
sack’.” Gardner lost other claims for breach of contract and discrimination
on the grounds of her sexual orientation.
2. Legal tender? Fred Raine was awarded £2,300 after an industrial
tribunal agreed that his former employer, Lee’s Coaches, in Langley Moor,
had underpaid him when he left the company due to illness in 2005. Nothing
out of the ordinary in that, but the same can't be said for his former boss
Malcolm Lee's chosen method of payment. The first £1,000 of Raine's
severance pay was paid by cheque, but the remaining £1,300 turned up at his
door in the form of a crate full of coins weighing 11 stone. Raine described
the gesture as "unacceptable" and said he was consulting his
lawyer.
1. An axe to grind. James Robertson, a convicted murderer who had
served his time and was working as a health inspector for Preston City
Council, found himself back behind bars after threatening a colleague with
an axe during an argument at an Indian restaurant in 2001. The council (not
unreasonably, you might feel) terminated his employment without notice, but
Robertson sued for breach of contract. The employment tribunal ruled
that the Council had acted illegally in not giving Robertson sufficient
notice and ordered it to pay him two weeks’ wages as compensation, amounting
to £807.50.
With thanks to: Henry Scrope at emplaw.co.uk; Richard Lister and James
Davies at Lewis Silkin.
Regrettably, this is life ! At The National Bullying Helpline we hear of bizzare and quite extreme cases (confidentiality maintained). Examples: 1. Our Marshmallow lady, a waitress who was instantly dismissed for eating a marshmallow handed to her by a customer on Xmas eve, or 2. The two gay gentlemen who threw sugar at each other across the office. 3. The caller who alleged her employer was a witch, casting evil spells against her. 4. Another allegation of witchcraft where dolls and pins were used to harass and exclude team members. We hear of alleged physical assaults, death threats and attempted suicides. Then there was the case where a 17 year old waitress was slapped by her manager across the face for delivering the wrong food to the wrong table. This was a criminal act - the employee was a child worker! Employers, you are responsible for the actions of your employees. Make sure line managers are trained, please ! Christine Pratt. CEO. www.nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk
Christine Pratt, Swindon, Wiltshire
Sorry, but the day to day work of the Employment Tribunal isn't like this at all. Yes, there is the occasional sex discrimination case and so there should be. Why should employers think that just because they pay a person's wage they also have the right to their body.
Tribunals are more likely to hear cases where people haven't been paid what they are due, or where employers have sacked someone unfairly. It is often a claimant in person arguing against an employer's legal representative, for perhaps a few hundred pounds of holiday pay rather than a lesbian shop worker who feels she has lost out somehow.
That is what gives Employment Tribunals their importance. It is often the only way an employee can achieve what is rightfully theirs - and that has nothingn to do with political correctness - it is about fairness for everyone. However,
it is worth remembering that there is no legal aid for claimants, which makes it more difficult to win a claim in any case.
Sue , London, UK
At least the UK HAS a government body which actually investigates claims such as these. We're not so lucky in the USA where I (as a returning adult student) was forced to leave college (SUNY), through denial of federal financial aid, after I had come to the aid of 2 young female classmates who were abused by middleaged male instructors.
All I'd done was take their concerns to the respective department chairpersons to 1) overturn grade fraud (F on an exam w/100% correct answers) and 2) sexual/verbal abuse implying rape victims deserve their fate ("They don't know when the **** to shut-up!").
I soon learned why the girls feared speaking out against their abusers as no government body would investigate nor would any attorney hear my case - even though the college administration violated several minor and felony statutes.
Now I've no higher education, career, pension or health cover - because I'd 'done the right thing' in a society which punishes 'do-gooders'.
Larry, Middletown, USA/NY
Gosh! We're just a normal employee~
Austin, FoShan, China
diverting read. New York Jeffrey, we're a sight more multicultural than the Land of the Free, and what a cruel irony this phrase now holds.
Dalton, London,
What a "multicultural' society!
Jeffrey, New York, USA
Richard - The Disney story isnt an employment case but is a tortious claim.
Geoff, edgware,
Great collection of stories, but here's another hilarious one - a couple sued Disney after taking their two young children, aged 3 and 5, to Disneyland, Los Angeles, CA. The couple got mugged in the car park, and Disneyland workers helped them behind the scenes, gave them food and drink and called the police, but the children saw two Disneyland employees take the heads off their Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck uniforms. The couple sued Disney, claiming damages for the children's 'Emotional distress' at discovering that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck weren't real. The court threw the case out. Just goes to show how bloody stupid people can be, really.
Richard Green, Watford, Herts.
Jason,
The "stone " is a unit of weight that is easily understand by English People!
Matt, Portsmouth, Great Britain
Mr Jason Schoenbrun from College Park USA, are you serious about the stones thing?
Using this logic it seems to me that £1300 would not weigh 100lbs but more like 1300 pounds!!! (See what I did there?).
Please dont sue me...
Matthew C, Southampton, UK
I think I found a typo. In #2, it says "weighing 11 stone", but I think you meant "weighing as much as 11 stones". It might just be better to give the weight though, because stones can really weigh any amount. You know, like "weighing 100 lbs" or something.
Jason Schoenbrun, College Park, USA
Very depressing reading- so fickle are ITs. This was not how they were menat to be used.
These were menat for 'ordinary' workers to be able to fight bosses in an arena that could be fair.
Now lawyers have moved in and sense has moved out
Ian, Leicester, UK
the wonderful disparate nature of employment law makes it one of the most enjoyable to work in, or study towards. where would law students be withough cases over wine rewards, and shop assistants who throw bags of flour over ignorant customers. the fact that individuals can have their day in court, looking supremely stupid is one of the most redeeming factors of a legal system in britain. long may this continue. if just to keep me awake on a tedious monday afternoon.
caroline burke , yorkshire, uk
the wonderful disparate nature of employment law makes it one of the most enjoyable to work in, or study towards. where would law students be withough cases over wine rewards, and shop assistants who throw bags of flour over ignorant customers. the fact that individuals can have their day in court, looking supremely stupid is one of the most redeeming factors of a legal system in britain. long may this continue. if just to keep me awake on a tedious monday afternoon.
caroline burke , yorkshire, uk
1 stone is equal to 14 pounds so 11 stone is 154 lbs.
Albert, Saint Clair, PA, USA
I was intrigued to read about the job title of "lesbian shop worker". Can anyone apply?
Jeremy S, Maidstone, Kent
What I wish did not surprise me is that any of these cases were bought to a tribunal and worst of all some of them were won.
Bye Bye common sense, say hello, again, to political correctness
John S, london, UK