A black sales worker has lost her case for race discrimination after colleagues asked her if her hair was real, whether her name was a nickname, and whether she ate food with her fingers.
Gifty Robinson, who is Canadian and of Ghanaian heritage, worked at Smile Publications selling advertising space in magazines.
The company told the tribunal that her dismissal in November 2022 was because of her poor sales technique. She was part-way through her probationary period, having started around six weeks before.
Robinson was the only non-white person on a team of six, and claimed that she had been subject to a “series of humiliations” based on her race, with her dismissal coming just after she had made a good sale that made her colleagues jealous.
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She told the tribunal that her colleagues had asked whether Gifty was her real name; that one had touched her hair (she wore a wig) and asked to see her natural hair underneath; that they had asked whether she ate with a fork or her hands. On another occasion, one colleague made comments that black people scared her.
The tribunal heard that there had been a lack of equality, diversity and inclusion training at the company. Robinson alleged that other black sales people had been employed before and dismissed after a short time.
She also claimed that she was a “token non-white employee” as she had replaced someone that was also black, who would be “recycled” by dismissal after a short time.
The tribunal said this allegation made “no sense”, adding that there was no reason to think the publisher had a policy of only recruiting white people.
Robinson detailed a further event where members of the team were discussing a health issue, claiming she was questioned insensitively about her condition compared with her white colleagues.
She felt her dismissal had been “abrupt, unprofessional and inhumane”, claiming that everything she had complained about during her employment happened because she was black.
In judgment, employment Judge Housego said Robinson was so “acutely sensitised” that there was “almost literally nothing” white colleagues could say to her without being accused of racism.
In one case, where Robinson had alleged a comment of “it’s dark in here” related to her race, the tribunal found that “in this friendly environment and given the circumstances of season and location and context”, this was unlikely to be the case.
It conceded that the way she had been dismissed was “unnecessarily abrupt and humiliating”, however, adding that this may have led her to conflate her protected characteristic and the manner of her dismissal.
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