Foxtons staff made a sickening poster of a homosexual employee calling him a ‘gay whore’, as more former workers tell MailOnline of the abuse they suffered from colleagues while at the London estate agent.
This newspaper has seen the vile flyer that pimped out the male worker with a phone number typed on tabs underneath. Some of those are visibly torn off.
It is understood it was printed off at work and placed in the office. MailOnline understands two staff members were sacked over the poster, while another worker who was suspended is believed to still be employed by the firm.
In 2022 Foxtons boasted of turning all of its 57 branches into ‘safe spaces’ for LGBTQ+ people seeking shelter from intimidation or abuse, which were signposted by a rainbow ‘F’ sticker’ on a store’s window.
Two former Foxtons employees have told MailOnline how they were subjected to and witnessed sexual harassment and racist abuse and described working at the firm as like being in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street‘.
The below allegations are made across a two year period from 2021 to 2023.
We have heard how two male colleagues made a sordid ‘playful bet’ on which one would ‘get’ a 19-year-old girl first when she started working at one branch.
A female colleague, who wished to remain anonymous, told us how she befriended the new starter after overhearing the sleazy wager and said they were both ‘randomly touched’ in the staff kitchen by one of the older men.
A view of the window of a Foxtons estate agents on the high Street in West Hampstead, London — January 15 2021
Former Foxtons employees say working at Foxtons is like being in The Wolf of Wall Street. Pictured: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), starring Leonardo DiCaprio
‘It would first be jabs to the side of our waists and then he would resort to trying to lift us over his shoulder,’ she said.
‘I adopted the method of dropping down into a low squat so as to become dead weight so he’d stop but my younger colleague who was as light as a child, she wouldn’t be able to escape.’
Things turned more uncomfortable when he started FaceTiming them both late at night from his home where he would sit on his bed or sofa and ask them what they were doing.
The former female employees told how they would be pestered by male colleagues on work nights out and at the firm’s Christmas parties where they had to ‘dodge’ drunken hands.
One young woman, who did not want to be named and we are calling Sophie, said she was drawn in to working at Foxtons by the pay, benefits, and being told she would get to drive around in the ‘flashy’ fleet of green Minis.
At first it was ‘really exciting’ but she said the gruelling 12-hour shifts without a lunch break and ‘brutal’ daily targets ended up taking its toll and making her feel like she was in boot camp.
But It was interactions with her manager that would escalate to unwanted sexual advances. To begin with he would show off his dating apps to female colleagues and ask her ‘what do you think of this girl?’.
Then at a team building night out he approached her from behind with a pint of beer in his hand and blurted: ‘Do you want to come to the car park and suck my d***?’
Sophie was aged 24 at the time and was chatting with another female colleague when he made the crude request that left her frozen.
‘I thought, did I hear him correctly? I was thinking to myself in that moment if that is what I think he just said, if this wasn’t a work function, and if I was out with my friends and a stranger approached me and said that, he’d be wearing his drink.
Foxtons is widely known for its iconic fleet of Mini Coopers which employees drive around the capital for bookings
Foxtons estate agent sign is seen outside a branch in west London — July 29, 2016
‘When I composed myself I didn’t know what to do, so I literally ignored what he said, I didn’t even acknowledge it, and I turned my back to him and carried on talking to her.
‘He walked off, and so for the rest of the evening it was obviously quite uncomfortable. I just kept my distance from him. I played my game of bowling. I didn’t drink anything. I didn’t eat anything.’
At the end of the evening she got in to her car to drive home when her boss approached her again where he leaned into the passenger window and asked her if ‘she wanted to see his house’ and that she could ‘sleep on the sofa’.
She turned down his offer and drove home.
Sophie believes it is this rejection that led to him making her life difficult at work and ultimately hounding her out of her job with him calling her into the kitchen the next morning for a ‘pointless’ chat.
She said: ‘I just thought at this point, this is where you should just own it. And if you did think it was banter, and I obviously didn’t take it as banter, that was your opportunity to apologise and maybe address it. But he didn’t.’
He would call her in for meetings on a weekly basis telling her she seemed ‘funny’ or that ‘something was wrong’, and complained to the director that he was ‘losing sleep’ over her behaviour.
Sophie said he made her go on valuations with him and said: ‘I would say I would meet him there so I could go in my own car but he would insist, and he would do this in front of everyone in the office, that I go in his car to save time.
‘I went once in his car because I had no choice and I literally wanted to die. He made my skin crawl.’
She did not make any allegations of anything ever happening inside the car.
‘I remember saying to other people, and like my friends and stuff, and my sister,’ she said. ‘He’s gunning for me every single day and every day. It’s something new.’
Sophie added: ‘I think my silence made him extremely nervous because he was probably wondering why I hadn’t said anything and because of this, he started going to my director and telling him I had an attitude.’
Sophie said she did not tell human resources about what happened out of embarrassment and fear she wouldn’t believed.
Two former Foxtons employees have told MailOnline how they were subjected to and witnessed sexual harassment and racist abuse while working at the estate agent (Pictured here is Foxtons’ Blackheath branch)
A Foxtons estate agent sign advertising a house for sale in West Hampstead, London — May 23, 2014
She spoke of another particular ‘scary’ sales manager who came up to her carrying a bin while she was talking to colleagues and told her to ‘put that in my I don’t give a s*** bucket’ and to get on with her call outs.
Months later she said she left Foxtons and has now quit the industry completely.
Sophie described working at the estate agent as like being in a cult.
‘They entice you with competitions where you can win like £1,000, £2,000, £3,000. There are winter and summer trips and they take you to all these things that you maybe couldn’t afford to do yourself.
‘And I think that’s how they keep a lot of the younger people there. It’s very hard to then walk away from it.’
She added: ‘A lot of people will turn a blind eye to things they know are going on because they think. Oh, I just I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to be a part of it, because I’ve got what I’ve got, and I’m comfortable.’
Another ex employee, who we are calling Naomi, joined the estate agent after the coronavirus pandemic and had to endure repeated racial slurs from her male boss.
She and a male colleague were the only ethnic staff members and said her manager would refer to them as ‘chapati heads’.
On work nights out Naomi said her female boss would ask her if she knew of any drug dealers and asked ‘can you get us some coke [cocaine]?’.
She says she witnessed her boss putting her toddler to bed before snorting lines of cocaine on the coffee table before they headed to a Foxtons Christmas do.
Naomi also said her female manager favoured the male workers and would treat them to trips out for breakfast.
‘At this point it was coming up to a year of me being at Foxtons and my mental health was in tatters,’ she said.
‘I was working 12-hour days, five days a week and had to swallow so much discrimination.’
Naomi said she and a young female worker were both ‘inappropriately’ touched by an older male colleague, but it was her who was reprimanded when she lashed out and called him a paedophile.
They were both hauled in for separate meetings with directors ‘and questioned as though we were the problems’.
She said: ‘I took this opportunity to explain exactly what had been happening.
‘However he took no measures to change anything and even when I explained why I had called [the male colleague] a paedo and how he’d been touching us – he said ‘Well, let’s draw a line under this. Because this will just create an uncomfortable atmosphere in the office and with your team’ to which I replied, ‘So it doesn’t matter that I’m feeling uncomfortable?’.’
Naomi handed in her notice soon after this meeting.
‘For years after I kept feeling embarrassed and annoyed that they all could carry on living life untouched but I’d have these memories forever,’ she said.
A spokesperson for Foxtons said: ‘We have investigated and taken robust action where these incidents have been reported.
‘We take these allegations very seriously and urge those affected by them, or similar incidents, to use our whistleblowing processes so further action can be taken, as many of these are yet to be reported or identified.
‘We have made progress improving our culture in recent years, introducing mandatory annual respect and inclusion training, strengthened EDI policies, and enhanced whistleblowing and speak up processes, but there is more to do and further initiatives are underway.’
