Managers and supervisors brace yourselves: calling the boss a dickhead is not necessarily a sackable offence, a tribunal has ruled.
The ruling came in the case of an office manager who was sacked on the spot when – during a row – she called her manager and another director dickheads.
Kerrie Herbert has been awarded almost £30,000 in compensation and legal costs after an employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed.
The employment judge Sonia Boyes ruled that the scaffolding and brickwork company she worked for had not “acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her”.
“She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business,” Boyes said. “The comment was made during a heated meeting.
“Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further … this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal.”
The hearing in Cambridge was told Herbert started her £40,000-a-year role at the Northampton firm Main Group Services in October 2018. The business was run by Thomas Swannell and his wife, Anna.
The tribunal heard that in May 2022 the office manager had found documents in her boss’s desk about the costs of employing her, and became upset as she believed he was going to let her go.
When Swannell then raised issues about her performance, she began crying, the hearing was told.
She told the tribunal that she said: “If it was anyone else in this position they would have walked years ago due to the goings-on in the office, but it is only because of you two dickheads that I stayed.”
She said Swannell retorted: “Don’t call me a fucking dickhead or my wife. That’s it, you’re sacked. Pack your kit and fuck off.”
[…]
Boyes found that Herbert was summarily fired because of her use of the word “dickheads” and ruled that the company had failed to follow proper disciplinary procedures.
She concluded that calling her bosses dickheads was not sufficient to fire Herbert and ordered the firm to pay £15,042.81 in compensation.
In her latest judgment she also ruled it had to pay £14,087 towards her legal fees.
Robin Edgar
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