A teacher who tried to sue her employers after claiming the school failed to replace a “farting chair” has lost her £1m discrimination claim.
A Tribunal heard that deputy head teacher Sue Storer’s requests for a new chair were ignored, while male colleagues had theirs replaced.
“It was a regular joke that my chair would make these farting sounds and I regularly had to apologise that it wasn’t me, it was my chair,” she told an employment tribunal last month.
Storer said she became the butt of jokes and was “victimised, harassed and bullied” because she was a woman.
She resigned from her £48,000-a-year post at Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol and lodged claims against Bristol City Council for constructive dismissal and sex discrimination.
However, the tribunal said that she had not been discriminated against and was in a position to buy her own new chair.
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In the judgment, the Tribunal’s chairman, Michael Griffiths, said: “The claimant asserts that the provision to her two male colleagues of new chairs was discriminatory.
“We find that by reason of her status and seniority, she was free to arrange for the purchase of such necessary office equipment without prior reference to any of her colleagues.”
