Welcome to the 2025 workplace, where sighing could count as discrimination
One of Britain's biggest banks has ordered staff still cheekily working from home to turn up or face a cut in their pay. Actually, it's a slice of their HSBC bonuses that will be affected, so it's hard for the rest of us suckers to sympathise.
Besides, they only need to get dressed and turn up three days a week, which is still a huge skive. Or it would be, were it not for the fact that staff who have gone WFH -feral will be shocked to learn how office life has changed while they were shopping online and taking long naps with the cat.
For a start, sighing in frustration at a colleague is the latest human right to be infringed in the parallel universe that is the world of employment tribunals. Oh yes.
Those of you still baffled by the recent mahoosive payout to the NHS worker who, among other incidents, took umbrage at being compared to Darth Vader after colleagues filled in a larky online Star Wars personality test on her behalf, better take a deep breath. And asphyxiate yourselves – because if you are caught making 'exaggerated exhales' you too could be found guilty of discrimination. Nothing is as it once was. Eye-rolling has gone the way of the fax machine. Huffing (including but not limited to) puffing? Beyond the pale.
As for all the other once perfectly standard interactions between stressed, busy humans, all I can say is get yourself lawyered up before you even think of tutting over an unwashed coffee cup.
And, in case it passed you by, calling a man 'bald' is comparable to commenting on the size of a woman's breasts and amounts to sexual harassment, according to a West Yorkshire employment tribunal in 2022.
The ruling came in a case between electrician Tony Finn and his manufacturing firm employers. Speaking after the hearing, Mr Finn said he hoped the judgment would stop other men being 'verbally assaulted and intimidated because they are bald'.
This new ruling about sighing came in the case of Robert Watson, a software engineer with ADHD who successfully sued a tech company after complaining about his manager's 'sighing and exaggerated exhales'.
He's now in line for compensation from Roke Manor Research, inventors of the Hawk-Eye ball tracking system – who, ironically, never saw that one coming.
What a difference a decade makes. Back in 2014, the University of Warwick was forced to reinstate a professor after his nine-month suspension for 'inappropriate sighing' in job interviews, and for giving off negative vibes and making ironic comments. Frankly, I think he sounds great.
Either way, a tribunal cleared him of the charges; I do hope he greeted the news with an exaggerated exhale.
Here in 2025, it's now a behavioural minefield. No thanks needed all you HSBC employees, just something to ponder before you try and cram your feet into proper shoes and struggle into work three whole days a week.
The cat doesn't care if you sigh, or call it bald. What price freedom?
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