Over the last few months, Pixie has had difficulties with her work. She has often been late to work and distracted easily by non-essential jobs. She has had alternate periods of high and low productivity. She has had difficulty recalling and following instructions. Noah became dissatisfied with her performance and so presented her with a performance improvement plan ("PIP") on 1 June 2022, which stated that she has been "causing too many problems in the workplace". It also explained that she needed to work on her "timeliness", "attitude", "attention to detail", and "failing to follow workplace instructions".

At the time, Noah told Pixie that she had two weeks to meet these objectives [until the 14th of June], or they would escalate matters. Noah explained that if she did not improve, the concerns would be treated as serious misconduct for failure to follow reasonable and lawful management instructions. Pixie replied that she has an anxiety disorder which means that she can have difficulty remembering things, and Noah just told her to write things down in a list. When she stated that two weeks was not long enough for her to improve, Noah told her that she had worked for him for over one year and that she should know how to do her job.

Unfortunately, one week into the PIP [7th June], Pixie was given a written warning for being late to work, which caused problems on the salon floor. A week later, on 14th June, Pixie is told that she is fired and told to leave immediately by Noah when she has an argument with Jason (the hair stylist) over what work is to be done. Before leaving the premises, she told Noah in no uncertain terms that she was not given any support or training to deal with the performance issues and her anxiety increased due to the PIP.

On 1st September, N&O received a letter from Matthew, who is an employment lawyer in Auckland, which raised the following:

A personal grievance by Pixie for an unjustified dismissal for poor performance.

N&O comes to you

N&O wants to know whether the personal grievance raised would be successful, and they ask what further information you require.