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.