A male marketing executive at a party balloon company has lost a sex discrimination claim lodged after his female boss had allegedly ‘victimised’ him at the firm’s Christmas party by saying a man would not win an award.

Mr Blakeley, 27, made complaints of unfair dismissal, discrimination on the grounds of sex and age, harassment, victimisation, and a claim for notice pay and holiday pay against his former employer Bubblegum Balloons of Farnborough, Hampshire.

On 21 November 2022 the respondent, which employs 44 people, almost all of whom are women, held a Christmas party to which all the employees were invited. Prizes were awarded in various categories based on votes cast by the staff.

Mr Blakeley stated that at the party, Laura Slater, a director, announced: “Now it’s time for the awards. Spoiler alert – It’s not going to be any of the men”. He claimed that “at the time of the director’s discriminatory comment, many employees of the respondent in the crowd looked at me and laughed. I recall turning bright red and feeling embarrassed to have been one of three men in the room at the time in a predominantly female workforce. I was disappointed that a director of the respondent company felt it necessary to publicly state I would not receive an award based on my gender and/or target me because of my gender.”

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The tribunal found, on reviewing video evidence, that Mr Blakeley’s account was mistaken. It was actually company founder Megan Robertson who had read out the results and inadvertently pre-empted the gender of the winner.

She told the tribunal: “When I read out the results for one of the award categories, I introduced it by referring to ‘she’ and then went on to say ‘Sorry boys…’. At the time I was awarding the prize, I had the name of the person who had won the prize, which is why inadvertently I said “she”, as I was about to name the person, in other words giving away that the winner of that particular prize was female. There was no discrimination in any way, and [Mr Blakeley] did not raise any issues about this during his attendance at work up to and including 22 February 2023.”

At a work meeting on 21 February, the directors raised concerns about aspects of Mr Blakeley’s performance at work, who then returned home in an agitated frame of mind. The claimant’s mother, at 10pm, then phoned Ms Slater to discuss her son’s work-related stress. In addition to mentioning the work performance meeting, she complained that Mr Blakeley had had to clean the women’s toilets (the company’s staff all had to clean the premises on a rota basis) and had not won an award at the work party.

Mr Blakeley listened in to the speakerphone conversation (unknown to Ms Slater) and later claimed he understood that Ms Slater had dismissed him during it.

Ms Slater said she found Ms Blakeley’s tone threatening. She told the tribunal: “I felt extremely … upset by her actions as I was trying to calmly explain that [Mr Blakeley] did not need to attend work if he was unwell when she abruptly ended the phone call. At no point did I state that [Mr Blakeley] was dismissed, and in any event no such decision would be taken without discussing it first with my co-directors.”

The tribunal accepted that Ms Slater did not verbally dismiss Mr Blakeley. However, she did then block his access to work systems pending an investigation into his performance issues.

On 23 February 2024, the company informed the claimant that he was being suspended from work on full pay pending an investigation. On 31 March he was dismissed for gross misconduct. He was invited to but did not attend the investigation and disciplinary meetings and had initially failed to return his work laptop as requested.

The Reading tribunal judge found that Mr Blakeley’s account of the office party was incorrect and that he had been dismissed on 31 March, not during the phone call between Ms Slater and his mother.

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