Worker made to wear 'I'm Simple' badge

A woman whose manager forced her to wear a badge proclaiming "I'm Simple" has been awarded more than £5,000 in compensation.

Theresa Bailey, 43, who was the only woman on her sales team, endured a barrage of sexist remarks and toilet humour from male colleagues. The mother-of-three snapped when her line manager, David Nye, made her wear the badge when she complained about problems with the computer system.

Mrs Bailey, a telesales regional account manager, said she was left "embarrassed and humiliated". An employment tribunal in Ashford, Kent, heard that Mrs Bailey worked for Selectabase, a direct marketing firm based in Deal, between July and September last year.

She regularly complained to senior managers about her colleagues' "laddish" behaviour, saying they leered at female passers-by and joked that women were unable to park cars. Mr Nye would break wind in her direction and when she complained about the state of the communal lavatories, he emailed a colleague: "That's why we don't employ women."

In an email to a director, Steve Selwood, in October 2007, Mrs Bailey wrote: "The number of times the person at my side would lift up his bottom off the chair and fart and think it's funny is unreal."

The final straw for Mrs Bailey came when she complained that she had not been shown how to log calls on her computer system. Instead of helping her, she said, Mr Nye found it funny and then gave her the "I'm Simple" badge.