Disciplinary 'sham' | Worker who called customer a tw*t in email blunder was sacked to avoid bad press

An employment judge has criticised a company's "sham" disciplinary process, after it sacked a part-time worker who accidentally called a customer a "tw*t" in an email.

Meliesha Jones, employed as an administrator at Vale Curtains and Blinds in Oxford since May 2021, had been handling a customer complaint when the email blunder occurred. Instead of replying to her colleague, the company’s installations manager Karl Gibbons, she accidentally forwarded the message to the customer directly.

The email in question read: "Hi Karl - Can you change this... he's a tw*t so it doesn't matter if you can't." 

A week after the incident, in June 2023, Ms Jones was dismissed for gross misconduct.