A Farmers employee who admitted abusing her staff discount privileges to buy $600 worth of goods doesn’t believe her misconduct was serious enough to warrant being fired. 

The woman, who worked at the store’s Botany branch, participated in an in-house staff training course called “Do the right thing – stores 2024”, which included reviewing provisions of the staff discount policy. 

But, despite successfully completing the course, she went on to break the staff discount policy just three months later and eventually lost her job as a result. 

Now, the woman has taken her case to the Employment Relations Authority claiming her dismissal was unfair. 

But, her bid for compensation was declined as the authority found she had committed a serious misconduct. 

The woman’s name was suppressed after her GP said health symptoms she was experiencing were consistent with situational depression and emotional distress resulting from the loss of her job and involvement in legal proceedings. 

According to a recently released decision, the woman had worked at the Botany store for more than 10 years when the company advertised a staff cardholder event for the weekend of April 19-21, which included 50% off on clothing items and nursery goods. 

During the discount period she used her staff discount card for three purchases, which came to $612.29. Cash was used for the first two transactions and three gift cards purchased by a friend were used for the third transaction. 

The authority was told while making those first two purchases the woman was accompanied by her daughter and her daughter’s partner, who had turned up unexpectedly to her work and wanted to buy her a gift. 

The purchases included socks, underwear and a crop top and were a gift from them to her, but the daughter’s partner gave the cash to the cashier. 

This broke the rules of its staff discount policy by using money provided by other people to purchase items in the store using her staff discount card. 

The woman then made the third purchase, a child’s car seat, after she finished work that day. She made that purchase with a friend and wanted the car seat as a gift for a member of her family. The retail price of the car seat was around $900 and after applying the staff discount the seat cost just under $450. She paid for it with three gift cards that she said she and the friend had purchased together. 

The company’s national loss prevention manager carried out an investigation and found two other occasions, on December 17, 2023 and January 26, 2024, where the woman had made purchases using her staff discount card and paid for them with gift cards purchased by her friend. 

The store’s manager concluded her actions had breached its staff discount policy and was serious misconduct. 

In its recently released ruling, ERA member Robin Arthur found the company had a policy that clearly stated using money provided in that way she had was “considered to be serious misconduct”. 

The company said there were typically between 30 and 40 disciplinary investigations carried out each year nationwide over alleged breaches of the staff discount policy. In most cases this evidence resulted in the dismissal of the accused employee. 

The small number where dismissal did not occur involved circumstances such as where a new employee misunderstood the policy and its operation or where, through some administrative oversight, an employee had not signed the policy acknowledgment, he said. 

“Neither such exception applied to (the woman), who had 10 years’ service, had signed the policy and had recently attended training to refresh her understanding of it,” Arthur ruled. 

Farmers declined to comment on the decision. 

Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.