Implying your office colleagues have stolen your work mug when it goes missing will probably come across as 'out of proportion', tribunal rules as worker loses race discrimination case
Adeel Habib began working as a credit support associate for the electrical giant at an office in Poole, Dorset in January 2023, but he only stayed at the company for under four months.
He claimed he was discriminated against when colleagues 'cold shouldered' him after he got 'greatly upset' by someone else taking his cup in March, a hearing in Southampton was told.
A co-worker explained that if Mr Habib had left the mug in the kitchen then someone else had probably used it as those cups were seen as communal.
After this, she then offered to go around the office with Mr Habib and ask colleagues if they had seen the mug.
The support associate said that after this incident he was 'cold shouldered' by his colleagues and claimed at the tribunal that this amounted to race discrimination.
The employment tribunal heard his reaction - in which he implied fellow staff were guilty of theft - seemed 'out of proportion'.
His race claim against the electrical retail giant was dismissed with the panel finding any 'resentment' towards him was caused by his 'confrontational' attitude to the mug going missing.
Employment Judge David Hughes said Mr Habib likely 'caused some resentment' towards him by coming across as 'confrontational' in his search for the mug, implying that it had been stolen.
However, he added that it had nothing to do with his race.
He added that the associate was 'ill-equipped' to manage the nuances of social interaction in the workplace which could have 'eased tensions'.
'We find that Mr Habib was probably very upset about his mug,' the judge said: 'Just how upset he was probably seemed to his colleagues to be out of proportion to the loss of a mug.
'Mr Habib can use language that is apt to strike others as confrontational, even if he does not intend to be.
'We find that he probably did give his colleagues reason to believe that he viewed the loss of the mug as stealing.
'We find that this is likely to have caused some resentment towards him.
'Sad though it is to have to say this, it seems to us to be likely that Mr Habib is, unfortunately, ill-equipped to cope with the nuances of social interaction in the workplace, and lacks the sort of social skills that might have eased tensions that arose around the mug incident.'
Mr Habib also tried to claim that his manager denying him five weeks annual leave to go back to Pakistan for a series of weddings, which he requested just a month into his employment, was race discrimination.
The tribunal found that the rejection of his holiday request was not race discrimination and was merely his manager following Currys' standard policy.
As well as the race discrimination claims, Mr Habib alleged that during his time at Currys he had been sexually harassed by a female co-worker.
However, his allegations were dismissed as 'simply incredible'.
At the end of March, Mr Habib was dismissed by Currys and was not given an opportunity to appeal.
His unfair dismissal claim was struck out because Mr Habib had not been employed long enough to make that claim.
However, he was awarded three weeks' notice pay because there was no mention of a probation period in his notice and therefore he was entitled to one month's notice not one week.
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