Her Manager Publicly Berated Her Over the ‘Horrid Orange’ Trainers She Needed for a Knee Condition — Then a Tribunal Awarded Her £12,138

Photo credit: AI-generated image created using ChatGPT. Illustrative only.

Most workplaces have rules. Some are written down, and some are just whatever mood the manager is in that week. The trouble starts when a “rule” suddenly appears in public, with customers watching, and it lands on the back of an employee who’s already dealing with pain and trying to get through a shift.

That’s the core of what happened to Samantha Jackson, a long-serving New Look sales assistant who said she was publicly berated by her manager over her Nike trainers—trainers she said she needed because of a knee condition. The details, pulled from the source material, ended with an employment tribunal awarding her £12,138.40 for unfair dismissal.

It’s a story about shoes on the surface. Underneath, it’s about dignity, leadership, and the kind of petty power move that poisons a workplace faster than people want to admit.

A pair of trainers became a public dressing-down

The tribunal heard Ms Jackson worked at the Crystal Peaks store in Sheffield from September 2003 until April 2019. After a fall at college in January 2018, she suffered hyperflexion in her knee and said she needed supportive trainers to ease pain from standing all day on the shop floor.

In August 2018, an incident took place on the shop floor involving her line manager, Kirsty Sherburn. Ms Jackson later described being criticised for taking too long with a customer at the till and, in the same exchange, being rebuked about her footwear—reportedly referred to as “horrid orange things”—and told not to wear them again.

Ms Jackson’s complaint wasn’t only about what was said. It was also about where and how it was said: in public, around customers, in a heated tone that made her feel “like a naughty child,” as she put it in her grievance.

The “more fashionable” comment didn’t land the way management thought it would

One detail that sticks is the reported suggestion that if she “needed” trainers, they should be Converse or Vans—brands described as more fashionable. Ms Jackson said those didn’t provide the cushioning she’d been recommended to wear, and that New Look had no rigid footwear policy anyway, with staff generally wearing their own shoes.

That’s the part that makes a lot of working people sigh, because they’ve seen versions of it. The job is standing, walking, lifting, and smiling through it, but somebody decides the bigger issue is whether your shoes look “right.” A manager can be obsessed with the aesthetic and completely miss the human being dealing with a physical limitation.

Even if appearance is part of the role, a decent leader handles it calmly and privately, and with some common sense. There’s a world of difference between “Hey, we need you looking presentable—can we figure out a shoe that works for your knee and the dress code?” and “Don’t wear those horrid orange things again.”

What the manager said happened, and what the tribunal accepted

Mrs Sherburn, according to the tribunal account, told the grievance investigation she had concerns about the length of time Ms Jackson spent dealing with a customer transaction, saying it was around 45 minutes and a queue built up. She said she asked if Ms Jackson needed refresher training because Ms Jackson mentioned the till screen “kept flickering.”

On the trainers, Mrs Sherburn’s account was different. She said the conversation wasn’t heated and that she noticed the trainers were “really mucky,” telling Ms Jackson she couldn’t wear them because they were too dirty. She also said she wasn’t bothered about branded shoes, but felt the shoes were too scruffy for the shop floor and would have been acceptable for delivery instead.

The tribunal, though, found there was no reason for the manager to criticise Ms Jackson’s footwear on that day. Employment Judge Jonathan Brain stated the training shoes were not dirty, and there was no evidence of a history of Ms Jackson turning up in dirty footwear or inappropriate clothing.

How one ugly moment can unravel trust

The judge found the manager “unreasonably upbraided” Ms Jackson in a “fit of pique or temper,” tied to displeasure over the disruption caused by the long transaction at the till. That matters, because it frames the footwear criticism less like a real dress-code issue and more like a convenient pressure release—an extra jab, delivered when a manager is already annoyed.

A lot of men in management learn this lesson late, if they learn it at all: your bad day is not a license to unload on someone with less power. It’s not “leadership” to correct people publicly, and it’s not strength to humiliate somebody because you’re stressed. That’s just lack of discipline wearing a name badge.

And once you’ve embarrassed someone at work, especially in front of customers, you don’t just bruise feelings. You crack trust. People stop believing you’re safe, fair, or even stable, and they start planning their exits.

The grievance process and sick leave that followed

After the incident, the tribunal heard Ms Jackson went on sick leave with work-related stress and did not return to work. She filed a grievance in November 2018, describing both the till criticism and the footwear comments, along with the fact that the exchange wasn’t handled away from the shop floor.

Her grievance was dismissed in January 2019, and she was invited to a mediation meeting. The tribunal found that mediation was not conducted reasonably, saying there was “no real attempt to mediate.” That’s another point that will sound familiar to anyone who’s watched workplace processes become box-ticking exercises: technically a meeting happened, but functionally nothing was repaired.

If a company wants to keep people, especially long-serving staff, it has to treat grievances like actual problems to solve, not nuisances to push aside. Once someone is out on stress leave, you’re already in a fragile place. Mishandling the next steps can turn a bad day into a broken employment relationship.

Resignation, sick pay errors, and the finding of unfair dismissal

In April 2019, Ms Jackson resigned. In her resignation letter she complained about not being paid the full sick pay owed to her. The tribunal found New Look’s calculations were wrong, and that issue sat alongside the “till and trainers incident” and the grievance handling as reasons contributing to her resignation.

The legal label here was constructive unfair dismissal: the tribunal ruled that failures by New Look amounted to a breach of trust and confidence. Judge Brain concluded there was no reasonable and proper cause for the manager’s discussion to take place in a public area, and no reasonable and proper cause to rebuke Ms Jackson about her footwear—especially publicly.

Ms Jackson was awarded £12,138.40 in compensation for unfair dismissal. In plain terms, the tribunal believed the employer’s conduct helped push an employee out the door, and that the way she was treated crossed a line.

What decent leadership looks like in small moments

This wasn’t a complicated problem to handle well. If a manager genuinely believed footwear was too dirty or not appropriate, the answer is a private conversation, a clear standard applied consistently, and a willingness to accommodate a legitimate physical condition. If the till situation created a queue, the answer is troubleshooting the till, offering support, and coaching without making it personal.

Men who lead—whether at a store, a site, or an office—get tested in moments like these. Not during the big speeches, but during the irritating, ordinary pressure of a busy shift. Patience, restraint, and fairness are not personality traits you either have or don’t have; they’re habits you either practice or neglect.

And if you’re the employee on the receiving end, it’s worth remembering this: you’re not “difficult” for needing basic respect. Work can be hard without it becoming demeaning.

The uncomfortable part is how easily this could’ve been avoided. A manager chose public scolding over private problem-solving, and a company failed to fix what broke afterward. In the end, a pair of trainers wasn’t the real issue—character and judgment were, and the tribunal treated it that way.