Dyslexic employee 'felt suicidal' after discrimination at London Starbucks

Meseret Kumulchew
BBC
Hatty Collier9 February 2016

A dyslexic woman has described how she was driven to the brink of suicide after she was discriminated against while working as a supervisor at a London Starbucks.

Meseret Kumulchew has won a disability discrimination case against her employer after she was accused of falsifying documents after making mistakes due to difficulties with reading, writing and telling the time.

She was accused of falsifying after mistakenly entering the wrong information when recording routing temperature checks of fridges and water at the Starbucks branch in Clapham.

A tribunal found she was discriminated against when she was given less responsibility and told to retrain, which left her feeling suicidal.

Ms Kumulchew told the BBC: “I am not a fraud. The name fraud itself shouldn't exist for me.

"It's quite serious. I nearly ended my life. But I had to think of my kids. I know I'm not a fraud. I just made a mistake."

She took Starbucks to the tribunal alleging she had always made it known to her employer she was dyslexic and that she would need to be shown how to do tasks visually.

The judgement, made in December, found Starbucks had failed to make reasonable adjustments for Ms Kumulchew's disability and had discriminated against her because of the effects of her dyslexia.

The tribunal also found she had been victimised and that there was little or no knowledge or understanding of equality issues.

A separate hearing will be held at a later date to determine any compensation.

In a statement, Starbucks said: “We have been working with the British Dyslexia Association on improving the support we provide to our employees, and did so concerning Meseret Kumulchew in 2015.

“We recognise however that we need to do more, which is why we are investigating what additional support we can provide.

“We cannot comment further on this case as the matter has not concluded.”

Ms Kumulchew said she wanted someone to check her work for mistakes and to be given time to become familiar with tasks.

She added: "I'll struggle, but don't worry, help me and I'll get there in my own time.

"I'm not going to affect your business, because for every customer I'll roll out the red carpet.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in