Estate agent who quit after being denied a ‘symbolically significant’ seat was right to view it as demotion, panel says
Allocating a senior employee a desk that they believe to be associated with a junior position amounts to a breach of workplace laws, an employment tribunal has ruled.
The panel said being made to sit somewhere in the office where junior staff work could “logically” lead a senior employee to conclude they have been demoted.
As a result, such a seating arrangement could “destroy or seriously damage” the worker’s relationship with bosses and lead to a successful legal claim, they found.
The ruling came in the case of a senior estate agent who resigned because he wanted to sit at a “symbolically significant” desk.
Nicholas Walker had been asked to move branch but was “upset” when he was told he would sit at a “middle” desk rather than the “back” desk, typically where the manager sat.
When his boss heard about the 53-year-old’s resistance to the desk allocation, he said he could not believe “a man of his age” was “making a fuss” about a desk.
Walker – who was also a director of the firm – immediately submitted his resignation and is now set for a payout after successfully suing the firm for unfair constructive dismissal.
The hearing, held in Watford, heard that Walker was branch manager at Robsons in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, from 2017.
In 2022 he was moved to the nearby Chorleywood branch but in May 2023 was asked to move back because his replacement...
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