Gang, something's come up in across the pond that needs our immediate attention. I'll get right to it: at issue is whether or not "high powered financial adviser" Amanda Daughters should be allowed to have her job back at Aqua Financial Solutions, the firm she founded and was fired from by the chairman a couple years back. She's currently appealing the decision but ahead of hearing what an employment tribunal has to say, why not give Daughters a trial by jury of her peers? Here's the rub: On January 22, 2010, Daughters left the office to sit down with a couple clients at an off-site meeting place (a bar). Naturally, she got there a few (4) hours early to have a bunch (12*) of drinks. So far, so good. When the clients arrived, one ordered a "spritzer," which was not to Daughters' liking, which would explain why she proceeded to "berate" the woman to the point of tears. Then Daughters had a few more drinks. At this point, things apparently got "hazy" for AD who, while she can't recall much, remembers thinking that making the client cry was "not unduly serious," as the woman accepted her apology. Then Daughters had a few more drinks. Around this time, she "dragged the other client outside to have a cigarette, even though he was a non-smoker" and called him a cunt (which despite her obviously having meant as a joke was received as "shocking and offensive"). Forty** drinks later, Daughters took herself home and despite being more or less black out drunk, had this weird feeling she'd done something she'd be embarrassed about the next day and called up hr chairwoman to let her know she'd "fucked up again and offended a client." Having been there before, Daughters also sent an email to the client the following morning to say "I hope you can forgive me." Unfortunately, the client and the chairwoman couldn't, which resulted in Daughters's firing for "gross misconduct." And while Big D realizes maybe she should have done a few things differently, she's not in agreement a few drinks, a few tears, and a few "you're a cunt"s are necessarily grounds for dismissal. So! Does this lady deserve her job back? On the one hand, perhaps downing 75 drinks prior to and over the course of a client meeting is not the most professional way of conducting business. Okay. That's fair. On the other, she clearly possesses the type of self-awareness any employer would pay good money to have on staff, as evidenced by the "fucked again" call. Please weigh in now. Businesswoman sacked after complaining client drank spritzers [Telegraph] *Guessing. *Ball park.

One thing that most people probably agree on is that having their instant messages, e-mails, and phone calls end up court would be cause for at least a little embarrassment. Everyone's thrown in an emoticon they aren't proud of, some of us have used company time to chat with significant others about undergarments, and the vast majority of workers have spent a not insignificant amount of the workday talking shit about their superiors. Of course, the humiliation gets ratcheted up a notch in the case of people who 'haha' (and in extreme circumstances "hahahah') their own jokes* which, just for example, involve habitual Libor manipulation. Tan Chi Min knows what we're talking about: “Nice Libor,” Tan said in an April 2, 2008, instant message with traders including Neil Danziger, who also was fired by RBS, and David Pieri. “Our six-month fixing moved the entire fixing, hahahah.” And while having such an exchange become public would be tremendously awkward for most, you know what's really 'hahaha' about this whole thing is that 1) Tan was the one who wanted people to read the above, which was submitted as part of a 231-page affidavit earlier this month and 2) He's trying to use it as evidence that he didn't deserve to be fired. The conversations among traders at RBS and firms including Deutsche Bank AG illustrate how the risk of abuse was embedded in the process for setting Libor, the benchmark for more than $300 trillion of securities worldwide......Tan, the bank’s former Singapore-based head of delta trading for Asia, [is] suing Britain’s third-biggest lender by assets for wrongful dismissal after being fired last year for allegedly trying to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Tan, who 'allegedly' tried to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, also included this conversations as part of his defense: “What’s the call on Libor,” Jezri Mohideen, then the bank’s head of yen products in Singapore, asked Danziger in an Aug. 21, 2007, chat. “Where would you like it, Libor that is,” Danziger asked, according to a transcript included in Tan’s filings. “Mixed feelings, but mostly I’d like it all lower so the world starts to make a little sense,” another trader responded. “The whole HF world will be kissing you instead of calling me if Libor move lower,” Tan said, referring to hedge funds. “OK, I will move the curve down 1 basis point, maybe more if I can,” Danziger replied. And this: In another conversation on March 27, 2008, Tan called for RBS to raise its Libor submission, saying an earlier lower figure the bank submitted may have cost his team 200,000 pounds. “We need to bump it way up high, highest among all if possible,” Tan said. Tan also asked for a high submission in an Aug. 20, 2007, instant message to Scott Nygaard, global head of RBS’s treasury markets in London. “We want high fix in 3s,” Tan said in the message. “Neil is the one setting the yen Libor in London now and for this week and next.” Also this: “It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money or lose if opposite,” Tan said on an Aug. 19, 2007, conversation with traders at other banks, including Deutsche Bank’s Mark Wong. “It’s a cartel now in London.” And this philosophical one, for good measure: “This whole process would make banks pull out of Libor fixing,” Tan said in a May 16, 2011, chat with money markets trader Andrew Smoler. “Question is what is illegal? If making money if bank fix it to suits its own books are illegal... then no point fixing it right? Cuz there will be days when we will def make money fixing it.” The defense rests. RBS Instant Messages Show Libor Rates Skewed for Traders [Bloomberg] *Although actually people who do this probably don't even have the good sense to be ashamed of themselves.

So that's not great.