A bar worker who was sacked after sharing a Facebook post alleging her boss had acted inappropriately has won a claim for unfair dismissal.
Damaris Trench liked and shared comments about how ‘creepy’ owner Himesh Patel allegedly asked a colleague for a ‘threesome’, bought underage girls drinks and tried to kiss female staff.
Her boyfriend Dan Sargeant had made the post after he was sacked from student venue Trebles in Lincoln, an employment tribunal heard.
He had been accused of drinking on shift and being repeatedly late for work, and chose to resign instead of facing disciplinary action.
Following this, he wrote a lengthy post on Facebook and Snapchat criticising Mr Patel for ‘wildly inappropriate’ behaviour.
Miss Trench shared posts on both social media platforms, and was sacked despite deleting them hours later and apologising.
She is now in line to receive compensation after an employment tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed, as she hadn’t acted ‘vindictively’ and the bar didn’t have a social media policy for staff.
The East Midlands tribunal in Nottingham heard Miss Trench began working at Trebles in November 2018.
Mr Patel visited ‘most days’ both as owner and as a customer, the hearing was told.
Sargeant’s post, initially shared on the Overheard at University of Lincoln Facebook page, read: ‘Trebles is a messed up place. I’ve worked there over a year until tonight.’
Among other allegations, it claimed the owner ‘came in drinking one night and tried to kiss a member of staff, she had to stop him 3 times before he finally f***ed off’.
Mr Sargeant also alleged that Mr Patel regularly ‘creeped’ on tables of girls – some of whom were said to be underage – and would ‘tell them he’s the owner’ and ‘buy them drinks’.
The post further accused owner Mr Patel of having ‘no interest’ in staff wellbeing, saying he ‘cut corners’ in providing PPE equipment, didn’t follow Covid safety procedures and didn’t give staff breaks after seven hour shifts.
Moderators on the site took Mr Sargeant’s post down from the page within 20 minutes, and he shared it again on his personal Facebook profile.
The tribunal was told Miss Trench then shared the post on her Facebook and Snapchat accounts, to help ‘spread awareness’.
An hour or two later she deleted the posts – but not before her managers at Trebles had seen them.
Miss Trench was invited to a meeting the following day, during which managers accused her of supporting defamatory statements made about the bar.
She argued she had been supporting allegations made against Mr Patel as opposed to the bar, and said she wished to make a complaint about Mr Patel’s behaviour.
But she was suspended at the end of the meeting and no investigation into her complaints was carried out.
Miss Trench was sacked at the end of October, just six days after sharing the Facebook post that was ‘detrimental to our business’ for gross misconduct.
However, Employment Judge Kirsty Ayre ruled Miss Trench’s behaviour fell below this threshold – especially seeing as there was no social media policy for her to have adhered to.
Judge Ayre said: ‘Miss Trench’s behaviour was not gross misconduct.
‘Trebles had no social media or disciplinary policy warning employees that the behaviour engaged in by Miss Trench is even a disciplinary issue.
‘There was no evidence of any previous misconduct by Miss Trench. She took the Facebook post down very quickly and apologised for it.
‘She clearly had insight into what she’d done and that it had the potential to damage Trebles.
‘She did not write the post and was not acting vindictively or deliberately to damage [the bar]’s interests. She made a mistake, for which she paid.
‘No reasonable employer would, in our view, have dismissed in these circumstances.’
Miss Trench’s claims of unfair dismissal succeeded, and a remedy hearing to decide upon how much compensation Trebles owner Performance Bar Limited will have to pay will be held in due course.
Her other complaints of automatic unfair dismissal and victimisation failed.
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