Sainsbury’s call centre worker, 49, who was sacked for hanging up on dozens of angry customers loses unfair dismissal claim after saying she wouldn’t have been sacked if she was ‘white and Scottish’
- Muawana McCollin, 49, put the phone down on 62 of 129 callers in single month
- She said hang ups were due to phone system and someone was ‘setting her up’
- Bosses fired her and she claimed race and disability discrimination at a tribunal
- But case was thrown out after panel found she had ‘skewed perception of events’
A Sainsbury’s call centre worker was sacked for repeatedly hanging up on angry customers, an employment tribunal heard.
Muawana McCollin, 49, put the phone down on 62 of 129 callers who were ‘unhappy’ or ‘upset’ in a single month.
She claimed the hang ups were due to the phone system and that someone was ‘setting her up’ and ‘trying to make her look bad’, the tribunal in Glasgow was told.
But bosses fired her for gross misconduct after describing her hanging up on customers as the most ‘blatant and unreasonable’ case they had ever seen.
Ms McCollin, who is black and of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity, took her call centre employers to a tribunal claiming race and disability discrimination.
At the hearing she said her dismissal would not have happened if she was ‘white and Scottish’.
But her claims were thrown out after the panel found she had a ‘skewed perception of events’ with an ‘unrealistic view’ of what happened to her.
Muawana McCollin (pictured above), 49, from Glasgow, put the phone down on 62 of 129 callers who were ‘unhappy’ or ‘upset’ in a single month
The hearing was told that Ms McCollin began working as a customer service representative for Telecom Service Centres Ltd – which traded as Webhelp UK – in Glasgow in May 2018.
She was given responsibility for answering customer calls for supermarket giant Sainsbury’s.
The following year concerns were raised about her hanging up on customers ‘early’ and an investigation was launched.
‘From a review of (her) calls…it was found that, in the month of June 2019, 62 of 129 calls were terminated early when customers were upset or unhappy,’ the tribunal heard.
The hearing was told that when confronted, she claimed a medical condition she suffered from – ovarian fibroids – affected her eyesight and that she would terminate calls ‘in error’ because she struggled to press the correct button.
However, despite her denial she was doing it deliberately, Ms McCollin was sacked after being found guilty of gross misconduct little over a year after joining the company for ‘deliberately and wilfully cutting the customer off calls’.
Ms McCollin took her call centre employers to a tribunal claiming race and disability discrimination, saying her dismissal would not have happened if she was ‘white and Scottish’
Manager Paul Tausney, who listened to the calls, told the hearing they were ‘amongst the most blatant unreasonable disconnects that he had ever heard’.
He said he could not see any reason for her calls dropping off other than she was trying to avoid taking the full call.
In a letter the company told Ms McCollin she was being dismissed for ‘call avoidance… on the grounds that you released calls without reason or permission to do so.’
She then appealed the decision claiming her poor performance was due to her health.
She claimed she was being discriminated against because of her disability as well as other factors.
Ms McCollin was given responsibility for answering customer calls for supermarket giant Sainsbury’s. The following year concerns were raised about her hanging up on customers ‘early’ and an investigation was launched
Ms McCollin said she was drowsy due to medication she was taking, and sometimes could not hear the customer down the phone and was sensitive to light, a panel was told.
But bosses said they had never before had a call centre worker prematurely terminate a customer call due to drowsiness.
After losing her appeal, Ms McCollin made a series of claims at the tribunal including race discrimination, disability discrimination, harassment and victimisation, but the panel dismissed them all.
The tribunal – headed by employment judge Ian McPherson – concluded: ‘Her evidence was an unrealistic view of what she believed had happened to her, and she did not understand why others could not see matters as she saw them.
‘We are satisfied that (her employers) had good cause, with overwhelming evidence, to summarily dismiss (her) for gross misconduct, and as such dismissal was on grounds of her conduct, and not her disability, or race, it was not discriminatory.’
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