A man who called his female manager a ‘bint’ has lost his case for unfair dismissal.
Scott Chatterton worked for bus company First Travel Solutions and was sacked after he had been found sending messages to co-workers calling his manager a “dozy bint” and “dumbo”.
The company said he had breached its workplace bullying rules and launched an investigation into his conduct.
Chatterton initially tried to deny sending the messages to his manager, Dominique Ainscow, and promised to apologise “if he had caused any upset”.
Unfair dismissal
At a disciplinary meeting, he told the investigating officer that he felt the language was commonplace, that it was “just how people speak”, adding that ”bint” was a word he had heard on the soap opera Coronation Street.
He said that his manager’s conduct had agitated him and had driven him to use unprofessional language.
The officer explained that this was a derogatory term for a woman and that allowing male employees to use discriminatory language to describe colleagues was “the exact opposite of [First Travel’s] values”.
Chatterton was dismissed and appealed against the decision, but First Travel upheld his dismissal.
In judgment, employment judge Zoe Thompson said Chatterton “avoided answering direct questions” about whether he felt the language was derogatory.
“He was clearly trying to minimise the acceptance of any wrongdoing by using such phrases to describe his female line manager,” she said. “There was no evidence that this type of language was acceptable in the respondent’s workplace.”
The judge found that sacking Chatterton had been a reasonable response to his conduct and denied his claim for unfair dismissal.
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