A worker who was sacked after calling a customer “a twat” in an email she mistakenly sent to him has won more than £5,000 in an unfair dismissal claim.
Meliesha Jones, who had been a part-time administrator at Vale Curtains and Blinds since 2021, was dealing with a customer complaint with a colleague when she hit the wrong button.
She was sacked for gross misconduct in June 2023, a week after she had sent the email to the customer instead of the company’s installations manager, Karl Gibbons, an employment tribunal in Reading heard.
Jones was awarded £5,484.74 after the tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed.
The customer had made “repeated complaints” about his order and had tried to get a full refund of the cost of his curtains.
She wrote: “Hi Karl – Can you change this … he’s a twat so it doesn’t matter if you can’t.”
But instead of clicking “forward” she had clicked “reply”, so the email was sent to the customer instead of Gibbons.
Shortly afterwards the customer’s wife rang up and said: “Is there any reason why you called my husband a twat?”
Jones was “shocked and upset” as she realised her mistake, put the caller on speaker so a colleague could hear and apologised “profusely”, but the customer’s wife wanted to speak to the manager, Jacqueline Smith, the tribunal heard.
In a later telephone call, Smith apologised for Jones’s actions and said she would be reprimanded.
The customer’s wife asked how she was going to be compensated and was told she could not get the curtains free.
She threatened to go to the press and detail the incident on social media and Smith said she would investigate the matter and get back to her.
Jones said she would offer to pay the customer £500 out of her own pocket as “a gesture of goodwill.”
The tribunal heard that an investigation took place and the Oxford-based company decided there also had to be a disciplinary hearing.
But the tribunal heard that neither Jones nor the customer was interviewed, no notes were produced by 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” Jones, the customer heard.
A letter was later sent to the customer’s wife informing her that Jones had been dismissed “following the disgraceful email that was sent to your husband in error”.
Jones lodged an appeal against her dismissal on 14 grounds, but it was denied.
The employment judge, Akua Reindorf KC, said: “I conclude from the evidence before me that the principal reason for his 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.”
She added: “I am satisfied that if a fair procedure had been followed, there is no chance that the claimant would have been dismissed.
“It is clear that on the day of the incident, Mrs Smith thought that the claimant’s mistake was regrettable but not a disciplinary matter.”
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).”
In 2005, Alastair Campbell mistakenly sent an expletive-laden email to a BBC Newsnight reporter, calling him a “twat”. Tony Blair’s former communications director emailed Andrew McFadyen after he inquired whether he was the mastermind behind adverts depicting Michael Howard as a flying pig and as a Shylock-type character.
Campbell wrote: “Just spoke to Trev [Trevor Beattie, creative chief at Labour’s ad agency, TBWA] think tbwa shd give statement to newsnight saying party and agency work together well and nobody here has spoken to standard. Posters done by tbwa according to polotical [sic] brief. Now fuck off and cover something important you twats.”
He later said the email was sent in error, adding: “Not very good at this email Blackberry malarkey. Just looked at log of sent messages, have realised email meant for colleagues at TBWA has gone to you. For the record, furst [sic)] three sentences of email spot on. No row between me and trevor.”
