THE ‘SEE YOU JIMMY’ NINNY
Vodafone boss poses with Irn Bru and ginger wig ... as his firm axes 300 jobs in Glasgow
HIS stunt would have been in very dubious taste at the best of times.
Wearing a bright ginger wig and tartan hat, and brandishing a bottle of Irn Bru, Vodafone boss Antonio Shabbir boasts he has ‘exciting news to share’.
His social media post, about a chance for employees to win a trip to Edinburgh, was never likely to amuse the 620 staff at the phone firm’s Scottish office.
But sharing it on Wednesday, hours before they were due to discover details of massive job losses, provoked fury.
They accused Mr Shabbir, Vodafone’s Berkshire-based head of customer operations, of ‘casual xenophobia’ for wearing the joke tam o’shanter hat, known as a See You Jimmy, and being ‘utterly insensitive’ to their plight.
Yesterday Mr Shabbir had been scheduled to travel to Glasgow to talk to workers about plans to axe more than 300 jobs but sent his female deputy instead.
Staff – who have been told to choose between redundancy or moving hundreds of miles to offices in Manchester, London or Berkshire – had vented their anger at his ‘Audience with Antonio’ post on the firm’s internal Facebook Workplace page, which has now been deleted.
One employee said: ‘Here we are in Scotland sitting at our desks waiting to hear news of our pending redundancies and this pops up. What’s the news? “We’ve binned 350-plus jobs?” ’
A second commented: ‘ A bit distasteful when our office in Scotland is being taken down south and we find out who’s going first tomorrow.’
A third wrote that Mr Shabbir had personally informed Glasgow staff about the threat of redundancies in January, adding: ‘I wonder if he will make a guest appearance and apologise?’
Another Vodafone employee told the Daily Record: ‘In work, everyone is so nervous. There’s a real anxiety about the place. People’s livelihoods are at stake. To then see this photo is horrible.’
Local MP Paul Sweeney said: ‘This looks insensitive at best and utterly callous at worst.
‘[Staff] deserve better than a boss who thinks this is an appropriate moment for crass humour and dressing up. These potential job losses are no joke.’ Mr Shabbir, 45, has been in his job for two and a half years.
He previously worked in senior roles for EE and T-Mobile.
A Vodafone spokesman said of the post: ‘This was an internal event. No offence was meant and we apologise unreservedly.
‘Our teams are currently spread out in smaller offices across the UK. We are moving some people into larger centres of excellence across our consumer, digital and technology operations. This will impact 312 employees currently based in our Glasgow office.’