It’s fine to call your boss a d**k – but only if you do it once, court rules
An employee won a court case after he was sacked for calling his boss a d***.
It is not a sackable offence to call your boss a d***, so long as you do not do it for a second time, a court has ruled.
An employee for a smoked fish company in Madrid was fired for calling his manager a ‘gilipollas’, which is a common Spanish swear word which loosely translates to ‘stupid d***’.
He was told he must attend a meeting at 2.55pm, five minutes before the end of the shift, the Telegraph reports.
The employee he would not be attending and was rushing to leave the office, when his manager warned him he would be punished for doing so.
The worker then slammed the door, shouting: ‘Let’s see if you dare, you d***.’
He later received a letter of dismissal, as he he had already been sanctioned a number of times.
But the Madrid High Court ruled he should not have been punished so harshly as the insult was ‘isolated’ and ‘not sufficiently serious’ to lead to dismissal.
They added it was only when the language was used repeatedly it demonstrated ‘a serious and culpable breach’ of labour rules.
The company was ordered to either reinstate the employee of pay £20,000 in back pay.
They said: ‘Although the employee’s reply and behaviour when addressing the manager were unseemly and rude, slamming the door behind him, they were not sufficiently serious or blameworthy to justify his dismissal.’
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