Employees can call their boss a dickhead, tribunal rules
According to a recent tribunal, it’s not a sackable offence for an employee to call their boss a dickhead.
One office manager in England is responsible for this new finding. Kerrie Herbert previously lost her job after calling her boss and another director dickheads during a heated argument, but has now come out the victor in a legal battle.
After uttering the words in the heat of the moment amid a row, Herbert was sacked on the spot. However, thanks to the tribunal, she has been rewarded with £30,000 compensation after it was ruled she had been unfairly dismissed from her role.
Sonia Boyes, the employment judge, came to the decision after concluding that the scaffolding firm had not “acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her”.
Boyes also took context into her decision, stating, “She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business. The comment was made during a heated meeting.”
She concluded: “Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further … this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal.”
According to The Guardian, the argument came in May 2022 after Herbert found documents in her boss Thomas Swannell’s desk related to the cost of employing her. When he criticised her performance, she became tearful and feared for her job.
During the tribunal, the company said it was a sackable offence due to being a “provocative use of insulting or abusive language”, which was listed in the terms of her contract. However, the judge ruled that a prior warning would have been needed unless it was “threatening and intimidating language”, which would have been gross misconduct.
While it’s not a clever idea to call your boss a dickhead, and unlikely to lead to winning ‘Employee of the Month’, if this tribunal is anything to go by, it’s not a severe enough swear word to get you sacked. However, nobody wants to go through the rigmarole of a tribunal, so perhaps it’s best to keep it to yourself.