If I'm reading this timeline correctly, she was employed for a year or less (don't have months, only years), before signing off for long-term sick and in and around this managed to fire off 20 claims for racial and sexual discrimination? Wow.
I found the tribunal document. Here's a timeline:
14 October 2019: Kani begins working for HMRC in Croydon
20 October 2019: During a training session about taking phonecalls, the other new person she's paired with on a group exercise (Mr Alam) says "pronunciation and accent" can be things that make people hard to understand on the phone.
12 December 2019: Kani told someone on her team (Mrs Tselika-Scott) that Mr Alam has been making fun of her accent; Mrs Tselika-Scott shared that Mr Alam had been discussing Nigerians and when she'd said she was also Nigerian, he said "it's good you don't look like one then". Kani's manager was off sick, so she then attempted to tell a rambling version of these events to a different manager (Mrs Young) without actually naming anyone, and accused the manager of then telling Mr Alam - the manager had no idea of who Mr Alam was, because they'd hired 80-odd people in one go two months earlier, and she hadn't been told his name or a description.
13 December 2019: Kani claims Mr Alam waited for her by the lifts, stuck his foot in the door to stop the doors closing and took photos or video of her. Mr Alam was actually on the phone to Thames Water and waved goodbye at Kani.
18 December 2019: Kani met with another manager (Mrs James) to discuss what happened. Kani claims this manager asked her why she was wearing a headscarf, said "my daughter wears a headscarf" in a nasty judging tone, and then called Kani beautiful and curvy. The manager also met with Mrs Tselika-Scott, who said she hadn't been offended by the joke about her not looking like a Nigerian, but if that lift thing happened then that sounds like Mr Alam might be bullying Kani. Then the manager met with Mr Alam, who disputed everything and provided his phone logs to prove that he'd been on the phone to Thames Water. He also insisted he'd merely said that because of background noise, Kani's pronunciation had been a bit harder to understand, but he'd not said anything about accents and he had enjoyed working with her.
19 December 2019: Mrs James arranges a meeting between Kani and Mr Alam. Kani explain how his comments about her pronunciation and accent had made her feel. Mr Alam disputed that he said accent, but was mortified that he'd made Kani feel bad (he had no idea). Kani accepted the apology.
23 December 2019: Kani claims she heard an unnamed colleague telling Mr Alam that something was "evil" and that "holy water was needed for the evil" while looking at her, so obviously Mr Alam was telling people she was evil. The first time this claim is made is during oral evidence at tribunal stage.
January 2020: Kani's actual manager comes back to work from sick leave. Kani raises a complaint with him about Mr Alam; she claims he tells her to drop it. It seems more likely that she explained to him about the meeting she'd had and that he took it to mean the situation had been resolved.
March 2020: Kani was due to start an apprenticeship scheme, but as covid was beginning to disrupt everything there were issues around paperwork. When she followed up with someone in another office (Mr Stevenson), he raised his voice and told her to wait, as he was busy.
April 2020: Kani attempted to raise a discrimination complaint against Mr Stevenson. She did complain about him to her boss, but didn't say it was a discrimination claim, and alleges her boss shut down her attempts to file a formal grievance. The boss explained that the apprenticeship scheme had been cancelled due to the impact of COVID, so he was telling her not to worry about the apprenticeship paperwork.
July 2020: Staff were entitled to extra expenses while working from home. Kani fucked up the paperwork so a finance person asked to see proof of receipts and questioned her manager. Her manager explained that Kani was in the right. Kani emailed her boss claiming she was getting scrutinised for being black and foreign
“As mentioned before since I started with HMRC the welcoming for me has been very warm, I had a difficult experience being accused, shouted at, discriminated against…) mostly because of my foreign accent and origin. So I realised probably the organisation has some trust issues regardless of my level of commitmenet or engagement in my work for HMRC. I am feeling I have been under investigation and scrutiny from day one since I Started so I am ok with this investigation and the outcome
Her manager does not respond to that part of her email, which she later cites as evidence that he's racist.
August 2020: During a telephone call, Kani claims Mrs James referred to her headscarf as "that thing on top of your head". Then it's her birthday. She raises that she doesn't want her birthday celebrated after she's wished happy birthday. Her manager now no longer keeps a birthday list or wishes anyone happy birthday unless they specifically tell him that they will be comfortable with that. Kani then claimed she was being denied training opportunities because she was black, although did not specifically make that allegation to anyone. Her manager explained she was trying to sign up for training that wasn't relevant to her job, which is why it was getting declined. She then joined the wrong Teams call for some training she was supposed to be doing, gatecrashing a completely unrelated training session for complex debt management cases. Kani tried asking a question about something she was working on (unrelated) and got put on hold. She followed up with some MS Teams messages:
Hi I was talking to you/ asking you a question and was unexpectedly put on hold..not sure what happened? Anyway, that is fine, sorry for disturbing you I thogu you were here to help everyone without distinctions… it won’t happen again. Have a nice Weekend.
Mr Arunachalam replied at 12:56 as follows: “Kani, I am sorry, I was signed on Two Chats Catch Up & MSD/Work Flow. I had come out of one. IF you need to ask anything Please give a call.”
September 2020: Becoming paranoid about the training she sees some more technical co-workers going on, she sends the following email to her manager.
Good afternoon Dennis,
Sorry but I am a little confused as Wendy is not in at the moment and don't know who else to turn to.. For the past month I have been taken off all trainings; all my colleagues have been attending trainings on VAT, PAYE; CT; BAU, SEISS or JRS except me. Over many weeks now , I have been emailing and calling Stephen, Theresa and James to find out why I am not on any CQVID-19 schemes, or training list but I got no straight answer. All my colleagues have been attending various trainings; even the ones who came back from Leave are getting invites but me. I then had to approach Chris for help as per bellow communication, Miranda explanation was like I wasn't really a priority right now. Subsequently I was then added to a VAT training and the invite was sent to me while I was off line Wednesday to attend a training on Thursday a day where I was unfortunately on sick leave so I couldn't attend. And my colleagues got a new invite for training today session scheduled for tomorrow except me, the only training I was invited to attend 2 weeks ago was the one on IT up skills. On Friday last week 1 tried to attend a BAU restart training Kuna was hosting and because it was only him and me on the chat room no one else joined I asked him a question on PAYE and while I was talking to him, asking him my question, he just put the phone down on my. I then sent him a message on Team asking him what happened, he just told me he had 2 chatrooms opened so he had to close one , I assume he was referring to the training call we were both in which wasn't a chat..)
The manager contacted other managers to provide assurances to Kani about what her job was, and also that she was getting all the training needed for her job.
October 2020: Kani somehow manages to pass probation. During the team meeting on MS Teams, they would share virtual certificates for employees who had done something impressive or had something to celebrate. MS Teams crashed during this meeting. Kani alleges that her manager had faked a software glitch to deny her the virtual certificate (along with all other virtual certificates due to be presented, which were purely virtual and not worth anything). She had some more formal meetings about the idea she was being made a victim of racism; the decision maker suspected this was more to do with how Kani
perceived various situations and not because she was a victim of racism, and maybe her medication were making it crazy, but recommended she should pursue a formal grievance. Kani met with a union rep, she claims this union rep asked her if she was Nigerian and when she said she wasn't he said "good, Nigerian nationals aren't trustworthy". He asked if a new union rep could shadow the case to learn what they do with grievances, which made Kani freak out and accuse the union of being in cahoots with her racist bosses
I found it very strange she got in touch with you right at the time I got in touch with you. I am doubtful this will remain confidential as it should be. Ted, not sure anymore I made the right move getting PCS involved knowing the remification with HMRC, I should have joined a complete external Union maybe.
The union rep assures her that nobody's "got in touch with him", this is standard practice for new union reps, but that he'd not let the newbie shadow this case and guaranteed it was fully confidential. Kani subsequently filed multiple complaints about this union rep to the union, but they're not part of the tribunal so further details are not provided.
That's just the first year. It's very obviously a case of one of those very stupid but also crazy African ladies who go around confabulating. I imagine at this point they're happy to settle with her because they've probably had literal years of trying to get her to answer straightforward questions only to be met with brand new accusations and rambling stories.
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