A GARAGE apprentice was sacked after he accused a colleague of poking holes in his sandwiches and “smashing his crisps”.
Brooklyn Forrester-Hayes claimed the co-worker had been “tampering with his lunch” as part of a prank.
The fuming 21-year-old began making threats towards the employee – telling him he would mess up his toolbox and damage his bike.
Forrester-Hayes was sacked from his role at the Scania truck depot after bosses saw the “abusive” messages he had been sending.
He took the firm to an employment tribunal – claiming he was unfairly dismissed and that there was a “culture of “banter” at Scania.
But the tribunal ruled the company was entitled to conclude his behaviour had been out of line.
Forrester-Hayes started working as an apprentice technician at the Scania Swindon depot in February 2020 when he was 16 years old, the Bristol Employment Tribunal heard.
The five apprentices would take part in a campaign of “pranking” that included interfering with each others’ tools or toolboxes.
Forrester-Hayes was handed a final written warning in 2021 after he angrily reacted to one of his tools getting wrapped in electrical tape by a colleague, the hearing was told.
He then “grabbed him by the collar and held on to him” before a supervisor intervened.
Shortly after starting his shift in July 2023, he went to the tea room for a drink and found that his “lunch bag had been tampered with”.
He found his “crisps smashed, chocolate bars crushed and someone had opened his sandwich box and poked finger-sized holes through the sandwiches”.
They had also opened tea bags and sprinkled tea leaves all over his lunch bag, the panel was told.
Forrester-Hayes said he was “upset, dismayed and angry, and now had no food until he got home”.
As a result of the so-called prank, he threw the contents of his lunch box in the bin and then went to report the incident.
Forrester-Hayes assumed the culprit was an apprentice on the early shift and told a colleague: “I am going to f*** him up for it.
“If I see his f****** toolbox open tomorrow – I’m going to f*** everything up in there.”
Forrester-Hayes then sent messages to everyone on the early shift, asking them if they knew who was responsible.
In a Snapchat message to an apprentice he suspected, he said: “If i find out it was u… ur toolbox is f*****.
“If it was u ur paying for my lunch if u dont ill cut ur tyre valves off… simple.”
In an exchange of messages with another colleague, he said the culprit had “f***** up all my food for tonight”.
The colleague replied: “Yeah that’s a bit much I would only do the crisps at worst… not everything.”
Forrester-Hayes told the tribunal his ADHD has the effect of him “saying something impulsively”.
He said at the time he was so impulsive he did not “stop to think about the consequences of the messages”.
The following day, a foreman asked all of the apprentices if they knew what had happened to the lunch.
Nobody owned up, but some mentioned the “abusive messages” the apprentice had been sending.
Forrester-Hayes was then suspended and later sacked following further investigation.
He claimed he had been unfairly dismissed because the investigation had been inadequate and that managers did not take his ADHD into account when making their decision.
But the tribunal ruled that his bosses were entitled to conclude his behaviour was unacceptable and that “dismissal was necessary to protect employees”.
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