A female banker who was shouted down by male colleagues with the catchphrase "not now Stacey" has won more than £2million in compensation for sexual discrimination.
Stacey Macken, 50, sued French bank BNP Paribas after being belittled by her boss, who used the phrase so often that colleagues copied it.
The finance specialist, who earned £120,000 a year, claimed that over a four-year period she received hundreds of thousands of pounds less than her male peers in salary and bonuses and that once she complained, managers targeted her with unfair treatment.
Now Miss Macken has won £2,081,449 in one of the largest awards ever made by a British tribunal.
The London Central tribunal heard Miss Macken was hired by BNP Paribas in 2013. Unbeknown to her, a male recruit hired with the same job title and responsibilities was being paid £160,000.
Within months of joining, she claimed she was exposed to sexist behaviour involving one of her bosses in the Prime Brokerage team, Matt Pinnock.
His former PA, Georgina Chapman, told a tribunal that a "large Halloween-style black witch's hat" was left on Miss Macken's desk after some of the team, including Mr Pinnock, had gone to the pub towards the end of the day.
Ms Chapman said "they were visibly drunk" when they returned to the office that evening.
The next morning, upon discovering the hat, Miss Macken asked Ms Chapman if she knew who had put it there.
"I told her that I did not know, but I suspected it was one of the drunk team members, because they were the only people in that area of the office the evening before, which, combined with their drunkenness, made them most likely to have done it," Ms Chapman said.
"Stacey was visibly upset and confided in me that she felt really uncomfortable working with those male colleagues, knowing that one of them had purposefully gone out of their way to leave a witch’s hat on her desk."
Another boss, Denis Pihan, was accused of routinely demeaning her by replying "not now, Stacey" when she tried to talk to him.
"When (she) asked him questions he would tend to say 'not now, Stacey'", the tribunal heard.
"He did so often that the (her) colleagues made sarcastic comments about it. "In a chat on 21 March 2016 in which Mr Pihan was being discussed one of (them) wrote 'NOT NOW STACEY :-)'."
Miss Macken made repeated internal complaints about her treatment, in particular relating to her pay and bonuses.
Eventually she took the bank to a tribunal, claiming more than £4 million in compensation and back pay.
The tribunal heard in her first four years her male peer was paid more than £167,000 in bonuses compared to the £33,000 she received.
The bank claimed they had hired her as a 'junior' and that her male colleague deserved his higher salary because he was her senior.
Miss Macken, from Fulham, west London, was successful in her claims of sex discrimination, victimisation, and unequal pay.
The tribunal ruled that leaving a witch's hat on her desk was an "inherently sexist act" and the regular use of "not now, Stacey" was branded a "demeaning comment".
At Miss Macken's compensation hearing Employment Judge Emma Burns said that "Mr Pinnock and Mr Pihan behaved spitefully and vindictively" because she had raised concerns about her pay, and that they had a "discriminatory motive".
"We consider the [bank] should apologise more fully from a purely moral perspective, but we decline from ordering it to do this.
"In our judgement, for an apology to be effective it needs to be genuine and heartfelt rather than ordered... We have taken into account the bank's failure to apologise when awarding aggravated damages."
Mr Pihan "apologised for causing distress" at the tribunal but "did not acknowledge that he personally discriminated against Miss Macken, nor did he apologise for discriminating against her".
The bank claimed it has now adopted a 'detailed Gender Strategy and Gender Action Plan' in response to its poor gender pay gap and is "trying to increase the number of women at senior management level".
Miss Macken's claims of harassment were dismissed and she lost a claim for damages over the 'stigma' she suffered in this case.
As part of her £2 million compensation fee, Miss Macken received £51,400 to cover 'pain and suffering' caused, £35,000 to cover injury to feelings, and £15,000 in 'aggravated damages'.
