Human Rights Review Tribunal rejects man’s discrimination claim after woman he dated cancelled his job interview

The job interview was terminated before it began when the interviewer realised she'd briefly dated the applicant eight years earlier. Photo / 123rf

A man has claimed he was discriminated against when applying for a job, after he turned up for the interview and found he’d briefly dated the interviewer.

The woman, whom Pierre Ngog dated almost eight years prior, terminated the interview, claiming she felt unsafe around Ngog because he’d allegedly sent her a series of abusive messages after their two dates.

Ngog later turned to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, claiming he was discriminated against because of his relationship with the woman and also because of his race.

According to a recently released ruling from the tribunal, Ngog had applied for a job at the tourism company and was shortlisted for an in-person interview.

When he arrived for the interview, one of the female interviewers recognised him from several years earlier as someone she had briefly dated.

According to the ruling, Ngog had sent her abusive and hurtful text messages following two dates in 2017.

She had blocked him and never crossed paths with him again until she saw him at the interview.

The ruling said Ngog didn’t dispute that angry text messages were exchanged, but recalled the woman’s responses were also “angry”.

After the interview was terminated, Ngog sent an email to the woman asking for an explanation.

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present myself for an interview this morning. Would you be able to explain to me if the humiliation you put me through today, the anger, the bitterness was warranted? In front of your own customers? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU TO DESERVE THIS,” Ngog’s email read.

The Human Rights Review Tribunal considered Pierre Ngog's claim. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

The woman, whose name has been suppressed, raised the issue with her manager, who decided that the company would not respond to his email.

The woman’s evidence to the tribunal was that she had only ever known Ngog’s first name and was unaware that he was the same person when arranging the interview.

She said she only recognised Ngog soon after meeting him in the company’s reception area, after which she felt unsafe in his presence and informed him she was terminating the interview.

Ngog, who is originally from Cameroon, told NZME that he was surprised to see the woman when he arrived for the interview.

“The moment she realised she knew me from eight years ago, she flipped,” he alleged.

“It had nothing to do with my behaviour, I believe she was embarrassed, and that’s why she acted the way she did.”

Ngog claimed that the company had used his follow-up email to discriminate against him, claiming he was violent because he had used capital letters.

“I was shaken,” he said.

“This is a workplace; she should have acted in a professional way, not just humiliated me in a public reception.”

However, at a hearing held earlier this year, the tribunal struck out Ngog’s claim that he was discriminated against when the interview was cancelled due to his former relationship.

But it did agree to hear his allegation that he’d been racially discriminated against.

Ngog’s claim to the tribunal stated that he didn’t consider the woman’s actions in terminating the interview to be racist, but rather the company discriminated against him because of his race by taking her concerns at face value without making any effort to respond to his email to hear his version of events before deciding not to employ him.

Lawyers on behalf of the company said that Ngog did not present any evidence to prove that he was treated less favourably because of his race.

A company manager told the tribunal that the decision not to employ Ngog was made following the email he sent.

Her evidence was that she met with the woman whom Ngog had dated to discuss his email, and she was told about their history and the reasons she felt unsafe around him.

The manager said that race had nothing to do with why the company didn’t respond to Ngog’s email.

She said she was concerned about the impact a response would have on the woman and the risk of her personal information, namely her dating history, being more widely disseminated within the company.

After the hearing, the tribunal also struck out Ngog’s claim that he was racially discriminated against.

“Instead, we find it is more likely than not that [the manager’s] decision was instead made because of her concerns for [the woman’s] safety and wellbeing at work, based on what [she] had told her regarding her dating history with the plaintiff and the content of the plaintiff’s email,” the tribunal found.

The tribunal said that the company manager was reasonable to focus on her employee’s wellbeing, “particularly given the emotional and demanding nature of the language the plaintiff used in his email.”

Ngog told NZME he was considering appealing the tribunal’s ruling to the High Court.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.