News

Man wins legal right to miss after-work drinks

28 November 2022 By Louis Thomas

A French court has ruled that it is illegal to fire employees for not being “fun” after a man was sacked for refusing to attend office drinks.

The man, known simply as “Mr. T”, was let go from Paris-based consultancy Cubik Partners in 2015 after four years of employment, as reported by Business Insider.

In the words of the court documents, the main reason was his refusal to follow the company culture of “excessive alcoholism encouraged by colleagues who made very large quantities of alcohol available” and “practices pushed by colleagues involving promiscuity, bullying and incitement to various excesses”. Mr. T was also supposedly difficult to work with.

But pity the fool who tried to take on Mr. T. While the Paris Court of Appeal rejected his demand for €461,406 in 2021, the court of cassation’s judgement, issued on 9 November, stated that Mr. T he was unfairly dismissed for demonstrating “freedom of expression”. Cubik Partners has been ordered to pay him €3,000 in damages.

The court also made it clear that it was more than just the odd glass of 5pm fizz that Mr. T was dodging, with inappropriate conduct, including the simulation of sexual acts, described as: “humiliating and intrusive”. db has reached out to Cubik Partners for comment.

The verdict of the trial marks a definitive shift away from the acceptance of a heavy-drinking culture in city jobs. This trend has also been seen in the UK. In 2019, Lloyd’s of London imposed a rule whereby anyone entering the Lime Street headquarters while under the influence of alcohol or drugs would be banned for life. The company’s bar was also turned into a coffee shop.