Oxford admin worker unfairly sacked, tribunal rules

Meliesha Jones, who had been a part-time administrator at Vale Curtains and Blinds in Oxford since May 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 message to the customer instead of the company’s installations manager Karl Gibbons, an employment tribunal in Reading heard.

Ms Jones was awarded £5,484.74 after the tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed.

It happened after the customer had made “repeated complaints” about his order and had tried to get a full refund of the cost of his curtains.

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She tried to contact Mr Gibbons to say: " “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' and so the customer received it instead. 

Shortly afterwards the customer’s wife rang up to complain and although Ms Jones was “shocked and upset” and apologised “profusely” the customer’s wife wanted to speak to the manager Jacqueline Smith.

Mrs Jones was working at Vale Curtains and Blinds in Oxford (Image: Getty) READ MORE: Man 'shouts racial abuse at woman in Banbury car park'

In a later telephone call, Mrs Smith apologised for what Ms Jones had done and said she would be reprimanded.

After being told she could not get the curtains for free, the customer's wife threatened to go to the press and social media and Mrs Smith said she would investigate the matter and get back to her.

Ms 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 company decided there also had to be a disciplinary hearing.

But it was revealed that neither Ms Jones nor the customer were interviewed, no notes were produced by Mrs Smith and no written account of the decision was made.

It was understood that after the customer had contacted the company directly and made further threats about publicising the incident, in particular by leaving a poor review on Trustpilot, bosses decided to “get rid of” Ms Jones.

When she arrived at work, Mrs Smith, who was crying, handed her an invitation to a disciplinary meeting.

A letter was later sent to the customer’s wife informing her that Ms Jones had been dismissed “following the disgraceful email that was sent to your husband in error”.

Ms Jones lodged an appeal against her dismissal on 14 grounds, but it was denied.

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.”

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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).”

She added that the company had “decided to sacrifice the claimant’s employment for the sake of appeasing the customer and heading off bad reviews, and wholly unreasonably failed to consider other more proportionate ways of achieving the same outcome.”

She described Ms Jones’s sending of the email as “improper and blameworthy” and that she had been “careless”.