HOSTESS WINS SEX BIAS CASE AFTER ‘KARDASHIAN SLUR’
A CASINO hostess at The Ritz has won a sex discrimination case after her boss called her ‘ a china doll’ and mocked her for having a bottom ‘like Kim Kardashian’s’.
Roger Marris, chief executive at the Ritz Club, was accused of making‘ offensive, belittling and misogynistic’ remarks about Ruth Taylor-Hamieh.
An employment tribunal in London heard how he would refer to the privately educated hostess as a ‘ china doll’ and tell staff she was only ‘good to look at’.
Ms Taylor-Hamieh sued the casino – owned by the billionaire Barclay brothers – after she was turned down for another job and then made redundant when she t old managers she was pregnant. The tribunal heard she began working as a customer relations hostess in 2016, socialising with gamblers to ensure ‘they have a good time’.
Mr Marris, a former British Army officer who had been chief executive since 2011, was described as ‘a micromanager’ involved in overseeing everything down to t he ‘ movement of a salt cellar’. Ms Taylor-Hamieh, a former pupil of the £36,000a- year St George’s School in Ascot, and the London School of Fashion, told the hearing that Mr Marris had a ‘bullying’ management style.
On New Year’s Eve in 2018, the hostess told her bosses she was pregnant.
At t he club’s party, she ‘overheard Mr Marris saying words to the effect of, “Oh my God, look at her a***, do you t hink she’s done something to it. It looks like Kim Kardashian’s” ’.
In February last year, she was warned that due to falling business at the casino, her job was at risk. She was made redundant the following month. Several days later, Mr Marris wrote her a ‘threatening and intimidating’ letter.
The tribunal found the casino had dismissed Ms TaylorHamieh unfairly, had discriminated against her for being a woman and pregnant, and had victimised her. Compensation will be determined later.