Bawdy e-mails common among chefs, claims Sangster

Award-winning chef Bruce Sangster, who is claiming unfair dismissal after being sacked by Lehman Brothers investment bank for sending allegedly pornographic e-mails, told a tribunal this week that passing on and viewing sexually explicit images on the computer was "common in the chefs' world."

Sangster, 49, of Haslingfield, Cambridge, was dismissed in January after nine years as

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	Sangster: "broadminded"

executive chef at Lehman's European headquarters in London. > At an employment tribunal in London yesterday, Sangster said that he had not seen the company's "zero tolerance" policy on the use of computers before action was taken. Giving evidence, Sangster, who was named National Chef of the Year by the Craft Guild of Chefs two years before losing his job, told the tribunal that "catering people are a lot more broadminded" than other people. "In my experience of 34 years as a chef I have seen a lot of this sort of thing get handed around. In the chefs' world, that's what happens," he said. In a written statement previously seen by the tribunal, Sangster said: "My competition work has brought me into contact with many top chefs and they usually share a taste for crude humour. "On occasion one or other of my friends from outside the company would e-mail me jokes or amusing pictures. I would describe these as bawdy chefs' humour and, although they were often crude and sexual in nature, I would not describe them as pornographic because they were clearly designed to amuse, rather than to arouse." Sangster said he did not realise he was doing anything wrong by sending the e-mails on the company computer. "I had been there for nine years and never seen the company policy. When I joined there was no such thing as an induction for me." He said the only training he ever received on the computer was a half-day word-processing course and that nothing was said to him about the use of the computer. Strippers The tribunal had previously heard that Lehman Brothers had hired strippers to entertain kitchen staff at its London headquarters on Sangster's first day there as a chef. Sangster said that no-one had suggested that this was out of keeping with the standards set by the company, but he said that he was "surprised… that this was going on in the building." In his defence, Sangster said one of the e-mails he had seen on his computer that were of the type that the company had complained of had been shown on the Graham Norton TV show. He admits forwarding an e-mail entitled Mission Impossible to three fellow chefs who worked outside of Lehman Brothers from a computer that was also used by several other members of the dining team. Sangster said before he was disciplined his superior had seen a similar e-mail he had received and laughed about it. "He didn't tell me that such material was forbidden or that it might get me into trouble… but I don't think that he knew either that there was a policy on the matter," he said. Sangster, who had an unblemished employment record with the company until the incident involving Mission Impossible, was told to attend a disciplinary hearing on 2 January, when he said that he was given the company's technology policy for the first time. Common sense Sean Jones, representing Lehman Brothers, told the tribunal that even if the chef had not seen the company's technology policy he should have used his common sense. "Any reasonable person would have concluded that this would be unacceptable in a working environment. He had read the company handbook about misuse of company software and he must have understood that forwarding obscene material to others was a misuse of the company's computer network system," he said. Jones added: "We would rather he was still working for us but if we have to choose between losing a very valuable employee and that sort of behaviour in our organisation we have a very clear choice and we maintain that we chose the right one. He has caused his own dismissal." "The suggestion that lower standards of behaviour should be expected of chefs is unsustainable," said Jones, who added that the fact that Sangster had seen strippers at an event organised by his immediate boss, Paul Gardener did not mean that the company condoned such behaviour. The tribunal panel reserved judgment and a decision is expected to be announced in December. *Source: Press Association*