Jones v TGI Fridays UK Ltd and Zurybida is an interesting case as it shows a further form of prejudice that regrettably can take place in the workplace. Here a gay employee was falsely accused of harassing a teenage colleague and a tribunal found that he had been harassed by the staff who had made the false allegations and who had encouraged the teenager to complain.

Mr Jones (J) is gay. A 16 year old male kitchen worker (M) complained to the manager Mr Zurybida (Z) that J had said that he was ‘fit’ and ‘hot’ and co-workers had been teasing him about it. J denied the allegations, but the manager thought there was “no smoke without fire” and something must have happened for the teasing to take place, so J was suspended. A manager from another restaurant conducted an investigation which revealed that J had no case to answer. Although some of the workers repeated the allegations, there was conflicting evidence. The manager concluded there was a culture of banter and the kitchen workers had teased M, telling him that J had said certain things [although he hadn’t] which should be reported to management as harassment. Z spoke to the staff involved, emphasising that such banter was unacceptable, but J was then ignored by his colleagues, who made it clear that he should not be back at work and this made J’s working environment very unpleasant.

The tribunal upheld J’s claim of sexual orientation harassment. J’s colleagues had made false accusations to M that J had said sexually motivated things about him and then explicitly or implicitly encouraged M to complain about J to management who found as a fact that the alleged incidents did not happen. Whether or not the allegations were made as a stupid joke, they were repeated by those that invented them in the context of the investigation when J was facing an extremely serious allegation of being being sexually predatory towards a teenage boy. These clearly created an intimidating, hostile and offensive working environment for J.