A senior estate agent has won a £21,000 payout after he was given a desk that undermined his authority.
Nicholas Walker, 53, had been left “upset” after moving branches to Robsons Estate Agents in Hertfordshire, and was told he would not be sat at the “back” desk, which is considered the manager’s spot.
He resigned from his position and told a tribunal he felt that his seniority at the firm, where he had been employed since 2015, was not reflected by his “low status” desk.
Upon hearing that he was upset, sales director Daniel Young had said words to the effect that he could not believe “a f*****g 53 year old man” or “a man of your age” was making a fuss about a desk.
However, in March an employment tribunal ruled in his favour, meaning that employees who are given a desk beneath their status could seek legal action.
Such a seating arrangement could “logically” lead a senior staff member to conclude they had been demoted, and could “destroy or seriously damage” the worker’s relationship with their employers.
The hearing in Watford heard that Mr Walker had been a branch manager at Robsons in Rickmansworth since 2017.
In 2022, he was moved to the Chorleywood branch, but was asked to return to his original branch in 2023 after his replacement resigned.
It was decided by Mr Young that he should share the branch manager role with a junior colleague, but this had not been discussed with Mr Walker, who believed he was returning to his original position.
Upon returning to the office, he was offered the middle desk after his colleague had already been set up on the back desk, which is aid to have “practical and symbolic” significance as it was next to the books and ledgers.
He told the tribunal he had been “upset” at this news, and had messaged Mr Young to say: “I am not going back... and sitting in the middle”.
A meeting between the two “escalated quickly” and resulted in Mr Walker resigning from his position. When he tried to recover the situation two days later, Mr Young did not return his call and his leaving date was brought forward.
The tribunal concluded in March that he had been right to view the desk change as a “demotion”.
Judge Reindorf KC said: “From [Mr Walker’s] point of view, finding out that Mr Gooder was sitting at the back desk and he would be sitting at the middle desk amounted to being told that he would be assistant manager and Mr Gooder would be branch manager.
“This was a logical conclusion for him to draw in circumstances where communication with him about the logistics of the Rickmansworth move had been poor.”
The judgement continued: “Either becoming assistant manager or becoming joint manager with Mr Gooder would have amounted to a demotion by comparison to the role he was performing at Chorleywood and that which he had performed at Rickmansworth previously, since at both offices he had been the sole manager in charge of the branch.”
As a result, he has now been awarded £21,411.29 in compensation for unfair dismissal.
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