Worker Fired Over ‘Incredibly Inappropriate’ Joke Shocks Court with £24k Victory

Ever wonder if a joke could cost you more than just an awkward silence at the office coffee machine? Well, AA recovery driver Adrian Lloyd-Penny found out the hard way that cracking an “incredibly inappropriate” joke about dropping his colleagues “on their heads” led not just to a pink slip but a legal showdown—and a hefty £24,000 payout. Turns out, his autism, which affects how he processes stress and “meltdowns,” played a starring role in this employment tribunal drama. The kicker? The very colleagues he joked about weren’t even offended. Makes you think—when does an offhand comment cross the line, and how far should employers really go? Dive into the twists of humor, disability, and workplace boundaries in this jaw-dropping case. LEARN MORE.

A worker who was sacked for making an ‘incredibly inappropriate’ joke about two of his colleagues has been awarded a £24k payout by an employment tribunal.

AA recovery driver Adrian Lloyd-Penny had worked at their Enfield Depot in north London, but failed to pass his probation at the company after he made the joke.

The man in turn sued his former employer for disability discrimination, saying that because he had autism which made ‘meltdowns’ more likely and gave him difficulty processing information.

Lloyd-Penny said during a phone call that he’d like to drop his colleagues Lyndon Tyler and Dave Boddison ‘on their heads’, after a perceived error from the two of them.

In the call he said: “I hope to God I never meet the manager that I was dealing with or the dispatcher that gave me this job, cos I’ll drop them from a third storey bl**dy window, the pair of them on their heads.”

The man worked for the AA until he joked he’d like to drop two of his colleagues on their heads (Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

The employment tribunal heard that the worker apologised to them on the same shift, which took place on August 2023.

Tyler forwarded a transcript of the call to management and said Lloyd-Penny could be alright on one call and then be ‘argumentative and unreasonable’ on another.

However, he added that neither he nor Boddison were offended by the joke, saying: “Please note myself or my dispatcher take no offence, and he was clearly joking.”

He did say ‘someone who’s circumstances were different could’ve taken that call and been extremely upset my it’ and later on that month, Lloyd-Penny was called into a meeting, which is rarely ever a good sign at work.

In the meeting, his manager dismissed him, saying ‘no one should be coming into work at risk of being shouted and sworn at’ and that it was ‘incredibly inappropriate’ to make comments about harming colleagues, ‘even in jest’, while the driver said the two men had ‘flared up’ his autism.

The guys said they weren’t offended by the joke, but the driver ended up getting called into a meeting and sacked (Peter Fleming/Getty Images)

At the employment tribunal, Lloyd-Penny’s claims of discrimination were upheld, with them finding that the AA had other options they could have tried beyond sacking the bloke.

They accepted that ‘any responsible employer would wish to take action’ following such comments, but decided the AA could have tried other solutions.

As such, he’s been awarded a payout of just over £24k, though some of the other claims he made were dismissed.

Inappropriate jokes can get you in a lot of trouble, but in this case they found that the bloke losing his job over saying he’d drop ‘the pair of them on their heads’ was enough for a payout.

If you’re going to get sacked for something ‘inappropriate’, you’d rather it wasn’t a joke people said they weren’t offended by and instead be for something which really fit the bill.

That’s what happened to a crane operator in Dublin, after he got caught lobbing a bag of poo from the top of his crane, with him rather unwisely filming it.