With regards to the 11 months service thing am I right in thinking that it is after 12 that full employment rights kick in? The company hand book states that following 3 months service an employee cannot be dismissed for anything but gross misconduct without first recieving a final written warning. Also, who is it best to address a grievance too? The handbook states that they should be raised with human resources but I have no idea of who works in that department. Thank you very much for the advice. J Edit: Another issue is the sexist hiring policy, almost all waiting staff are femal and the manager openly admits that this is deliberate. Also upon recieving a CV the first question he will always ask is "was she fit?". Would it be worth mentioning this in the grievance? I don't want to muddy the waters anymore and I understand that this would be harder to substanciate.

Hey There I work in a restaurant and have done for 11 months now, I have never had any problems nor any warnings over my conduct. I am always on time and constantly meet both my sales and customer feedback targets. Over the last few days I have had a problem with the way my manager deals with problems. Not the decisions they make but the way they discuss personal things told to them in confidence with other members of staff. The straw that broke the camels back so to speak was the fact that recently I have been suffering from a urinary tract infection, as a result I have been using the toilet more reguarly than usual. Yesterday whilst I was on the toilet my manager spoke to another member of staff and said that he thought I was "overplaying" the problem and "just being awkward". Upon my return from the toilet he then said this to me in front of another staff member. Now the problem is not whatever his judgement is (wrong though it may be), what I object to is the embarrasment him telling people about this has caused. It is not the first time he has done this and he often discusses employees personal lives without their knowledge. So today I spoke to my supervisor (lower position but the only person I could speak to without going over the manager head), all I did was explain what had happened and asked whether my supervisor could help me approach my manager and explain why I felt it was a problem. Unfortunately my manager overheard this conversation and imediately pulled me to one side and told me off for speaking to my supervisor. He then imedately made me sit down and write out a written statement of what I thought the problem was. He then sat down with me and told me that as a result of my "relucance to follow the same rules as everyone else" he was going to launch disciplinary action against me. He also stated that my work quality has gone down recently (absolutely not true) and that there have been problems with me for a while (this is the first I have heard of them). I feel that he is only doing this to put up a smokescreen and divert attention away from the real problem. I am now stuck with what to do next. The restaurant is part of a chain with set rules and proceedings and the manager has completely ignored the disciplinary guidlelines and also staff feedback guidelines. I feel as though my only option is to begin the grievance process which I never actually wanted to do. All I ever wanted was to be able to have an informal chat about it but the whole issue has been blown way out of proportion. Any advice on the best way to navigate the next few days? Sorry for the long post, J