It’s that time of year again when things can get a little … spooky.
In an interesting 2023 case, an employee brought a claim of unfair and wrongful dismissal against his employer. The reason for his dismissal? Some poorly thought-through workplace pranks.
The Claimant, Mr Richardson, had been employed by West Midlands Trains as a train driver since 2018. During his employment he learned that a colleague, referred to as ‘Driver A’ throughout the judgment, was afraid of spiders and insects. After this conversation, Mr Richardson decided to play a prank on Driver A by leaving the exoskeleton of a tarantula in her pigeonhole. Driver A was not impressed told him as much.
Some time later, Mr Richardson decided to place a snake shedding in her pigeonhole. After finding it, Driver A reported the incident both orally and in writing to her line manager, describing how she felt “intimidated, bullied [and] harassed”.
Following this, the employer started a disciplinary process against Mr Richardson, resulting in his dismissal without notice for gross misconduct.
The Judge noted several issues with the way in which the employer had handled the disciplinary process; they didn’t attempt an informal resolution and they forgot to pass a written apology for the prank from Mr Richardson to Driver A.
Ultimately, the Judge didn’t think that the pranks were serious enough to warrant dismissal. He seemed to want to put on record that pranks were a “common and well-understood phenomenon”; Mr Richardson won his claims.
This case sets no precedent, as it was an Employment Tribunal decision. It does, however, raise some interesting questions, i.e. What if Driver A (or another claimant) had a diagnosed phobia (eg arachnophobia)? Would this be more serious because it would be disability harassment? One thing that stands out is that it’s perhaps better for an employer not to be overly autocratic and lose sight of alternatives before summarily dismissing.
Image used under cc courtesy of Shreyank Gupta