The claimant had worked for the respondent, a company operating a call centre, for approximately eight years as a customer support worker. The respondent raised concerns about the claimant’s work; namely that he failed to respond to requests for live e-mail chats from customers, letting those requests pass to other employees and in some cases letting them be abandoned. He was invited to an initial fact-finding meeting when it was put to him about the large amount of unanswered calls and he initially blamed the situation on colleagues who took excessive breaks and missed chats themselves. At further meetings the claimant raised different reasons for the unacceptable behaviour.

The respondent investigated the matter, including interviewing other colleagues who worked