Many of us have felt the urge to end a frustrating call with a colleague or persistent caller.
But for one senior sales employee at Sky, doing so cost her job.
An employment tribunal heard that Lorraine Hunter, whose role involved handling customer complaints, repeatedly asked callers to hold on for “just a second” before disconnecting the line.
Ms Hunter, who had worked at Sky for more than three decades, later blamed technical issues — apparently unaware that the calls had been recorded.
She brought an unfair dismissal claim to an employment tribunal, but her case failed after it was revealed that “hanging up on a customer” was identified in the company’s rulebook as possible gross misconduct.
Lorraine Hunter handled around five calls a day, the tribunal heard. Pictured: a stock image of a woman working in a call centre.
Ms Hunter pursued an unfair dismissal claim at an employment tribunal in Edinburgh, but Employment Judge Michelle Sutherland found Sky had acted reasonably in dismissing her.
Ms Hunter had been employed by Sky Subscriber Services Limited as a Customer Priority Specialist since 1995.
She would deal with high-profile or high-value customers, resolving issues and addressing changes to their contracts.
Ms Hunter only took around five calls a day, it was heard.
Sky’s Customer Contact Guiding Principles, state ‘providing the best customer service in the country is at the heart of everything we do’.
It goes on to say ‘if you are talking to a customer and the call is disconnected for any reason, as long as you’ve got a contact number to return the call, you should always call the customer back as soon as possible, apologise for the disconnect and carry on with the inquiry’.
Examples of behaviour that may constitute gross misconduct include: ‘hanging up on a customer and not calling the customer back.’
However in November 2024 an investigation was launched into Ms Hunter after an incident led managers to believe she might be doing just that.
Agents’ phone calls were recorded and stored so they could be listened to in full for the investigation.
Seven phone calls were identified in the records which appeared to be prematurely disconnected by Ms Hunter.
Disconnecting a call requires a ‘two-step physical action’ and is unlikely to be done accidentally.
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The first of these calls, from July 25 2024, lasted just 13 seconds before she hung up, and while Ms Hunter could not be heard on the recording, the background noise from the office could.
She claimed the reason she did not immediately call back was that she must have dialled the wrong number – but she ended up successfully calling back a whole two hours later.
The second call was internal – from another agent – to transfer a high priority customer to Ms Hunter.
When the other agent asked Ms Hunter to ‘wait a moment’ she said ‘okay, thank you’ – before hanging up.
The third call was from a customer explaining their signal from Sky was intermittent.
Ms Hunter claimed she could not hear the customer but hung up just two seconds after saying ‘hello’.
The fourth call did register that there were technical issues before Ms Hunter hung up, but she did not call the customer back once these had been resolved, as was proper. A fifth call involved an ‘irate’ customer who wanted to attempt to cancel his contract with Sky.
Ms Hunter asked him to ‘bear with me a second’ before placing him on mute for a minute – and then disconnecting the call entirely.
She claimed she had not done so and that the only reason she had not called back was that she did not have his number. The customer called back to complain that he had been hung up on.
The sixth call identified was from September 2024, when Ms Hunter called a customer to put through their order.
She told them that it was ‘new for her’ and asked them to ‘give me a second, just a second’, but she then hung up just six minutes into the call, though she did call this customer back.
She ended the seventh call three minutes before her shift was due to end and sent a WhatsApp to colleagues stating ‘call dropped if he calls back in please apologise’.
Ms Hunter was subsequently invited to a conduct meeting on May 28 2025 where these calls were played for her.
On June 2 she was summarily dismissed, being told: ‘you have breached our policies by disconnecting customers and failing to call customers back which represents a significant risk moving forward.’
She appealed, claiming she had not hung up and that there must have been technical issues, but she was reminded that information about technical issues are stored in the calls’ records and the decision was upheld.
Ms Hunter then took her claim of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh but Employment Judge Michelle Sutherland said it was entirely reasonable to dismiss her.
The judge concluded: ‘[Sky] had a reasonable belief that [Ms Hunter] had deliberately and prematurely disconnected customer calls (i.e. hung up on customers).
‘[Sky] had carried out a reasonable investigation and formed that belief on reasonable grounds.
‘[Sky] acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating that as a sufficient reason to dismiss [Ms Hunter] notwithstanding her long service without prior warning.
‘[Ms Hunter’s] dismissal was fair and her complaint of unfair dismissal is accordingly dismissed.’
