A teenage waitress has been awarded more than £13,000 after being screamed and sworn at by her bosses for dropping a plate of apple crumble.

Daniesha Charles was just 15 and earning £7 an hour at the Royal Thurso Hotel in the Scottish Highlands when she was subjected to what an employment tribunal described as a ‘tirade of abuse’.

The now 18-year-old was left in floods of tears after the hotel’s chef and general manager, Andy Woodcock, allegedly got in her face, shouting and swearing at her.

An employment tribunal in Edinburgh ruled she had been discriminated against because of her age, sex, race and disability, awarding her £13,048 in compensation.

Ms Charles, who is Black British Caribbean and has severe dyslexia, was the youngest and only Black female member of staff in a predominantly white British workforce.

She worked at the hotel between May and June 2024 while studying at college, where she was taking a full-time course over three days a week.

The tribunal heard that her shifts caused her to miss a significant amount of her course, prompting her to tell her bosses in June that she wanted to reduce her hours.

But it was not the first time she had faced hostility at work.

The hearing was told the chef had shown contempt towards Ms Charles because of her race and gender ‘from the outset’, repeatedly referring to her as ‘that’ and ‘it’ and frequently shouting and swearing at her.

The tribunal heard that Ms Charles kept quiet about the behaviour because she did not want to jeopardise her job.

On one occasion in May 2024, she misspelt ‘porridge’ on a breakfast order slip before handing it to the chef.

When he saw the mistake, he shouted: ‘That’s not how you f***ing spell porridge.’

The tribunal said the incident left the teenager feeling humiliated and embarrassed, particularly because her spelling difficulty had been highlighted in front of her colleagues.

Things came to a head on June 26, when Ms Charles was carrying a dessert to a table and the kitchen swing door knocked the plate from her hand.

She returned to the kitchen to explain what had happened and intended to ask for a replacement portion of crumble.

But the chef cut her off, shouting: ‘Of course you did.’

Mr Woodcock then joined in, with Ms Charles telling the tribunal that both men ‘were in my face shouting and swearing at me’.

The abuse left her in tears, and she shouted at the pair to stop treating her that way. The men told her to ‘get out’.

She left the hotel and never returned.

Her mother later complained about the treatment, but an email from Mr Woodcock on June 30 said the hotel would end her employment.

He wrote that if the hotel had known about Ms Charles’s anxiety and depression before she started, ‘we would not have put her into this style of environment’.

He added: ‘The only option is for the Hotel to finish her employment at this current time.’

Employment Judge Joseph d’Inverno ruled that the conduct had violated Ms Charles’s dignity and created an ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading and humiliating and offensive environment’.

He said it was reasonable for her to have perceived the behaviour in that way.

However, the tribunal found they had not treated older white British male members of staff in the same way.

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