A staff member who was sacked for accidentally calling a customer a “f***ing bitch” in an email sent to her has won more than £5,000 in an unfair dismissal claim.
Melisha Jones, who had worked as a part-time manager at Vale Curtains and Blinds since 2021, was dealing with a customer complaint with a colleague when she pressed the wrong button.
She was dismissed for gross misconduct in June 2023, a week after sending an email to a customer rather than the company's facilities manager, Carl Gibbons, the Reading Employment Tribunal heard.
Mr Jones received compensation of £5,484.74 after the tribunal ruled he had been unfairly dismissed.
The customer had made “repeated complaints” about her order and wanted a full refund for the curtains.
She wrote: “Hi Carl, can you change this…he's an asshole so it's ok if you can't change him.”
But instead of clicking “forward,” she clicked “reply,” so the email was sent to the customer instead of Gibbons.
Shortly afterwards, the client's wife called and said, “Is there any reason why you are calling my husband a jerk?”
Mr Jones said he was “shocked and upset” when he realised his mistake and put the man on speaker so his colleagues could hear and apologised “profusely”, but the customer's wife wanted to speak to manager Jaclyn Smith, the court heard.
In a subsequent call, Smith apologized to Jones for his actions and said he would be disciplined.
The customer's wife asked how she could receive compensation but was told she could not receive the curtains for free.
She threatened to go to the press and give details of the incident on social media, and Smith said he would look into the matter and be in touch.
Jones said he was offering to pay the customer £500 from his own pocket as a “show of goodwill”.
The tribunal heard an investigation had taken place and decided the Oxford-based company also needed a disciplinary hearing.
However, the court heard that neither Mr Jones nor his client had been cross-examined, no notes had been produced by Mr Smith and no written explanation of the decision had been given.
The customer contacted the company directly and further threatened to publicise the incident, particularly by leaving a bad review on Trustpilot, after which the customer was told management had decided to “fire” Mr Jones.
A letter was then sent to the client's wife informing her that Mr Jones had been fired “due to a derogatory email being sent to your husband in error”.
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Mr Jones appealed his dismissal on 14 grounds but was dismissed.
Employment Judge Aqua Reindorf KC said: “From the evidence before me I conclude that the main reason for this sentence is that my client and his wife had threatened to publish the plaintiff's emails in the press, on social media and on Trustpilot.”
She added: “I am convinced that had a fair process been followed, the claim would not have been dismissed.”
“It is clear that on the day of the incident, Mrs Smith considered the plaintiff's mistake to be unfortunate but not meriting disciplinary action.”
“The disciplinary proceedings and dismissals were a false omission to appease clients,” the judge said.
“This is evident from the fact that Mrs Smith immediately notified her client that (Mr Jones) had been dismissed (and in particular without any regard for the plaintiff's data protection rights).”
In 2005, Alastair Campbell accidentally sent an expletive-filled email to a BBC Newsnight reporter, calling him a “moron”, and Tony Blair's former communications director emailed him after asking if Andrew Macfadyen was the mastermind behind adverts that portrayed Michael Howard as a flying pig and a Shylock-like figure.
Campbell wrote: “I just spoke to Trev. [Trevor Beattie, creative chief at Labour’s ad agency, TBWA] TBWA should issue a statement to Newsnight saying that the party and the agency work well together and that no one here is talking about standards. According to Politico, the poster was made by TBWA. [sic] “That's brief. Now go away and hide what's important, you idiot.”
He later said the email was sent in error, adding: “I hate this email Blackberry nonsense. I looked at the log of messages I sent and noticed that an email addressed to a colleague at TBWA had gone to you. Just for the record, [sic)] The statements in those three emails are accurate. There is no dispute between me and Trevor.”
