A night fill manager at Coles who allegedly took drugs in a store has failed to win back her job after claiming she resigned while not being in a proper state of mind to make a calm, considered or voluntary decision.
On Tuesday, the Fair Work Commission ruled that a Coles team member who had worked at the Traralgon store in Victoria since 2005 was not sacked by the supermarket or forced to resign because of Colesā conduct.
The case shows employees must have been dismissed by their employer, prove that their employerās actions left them with no choice to resign, or that the resignation was made āin the heat of the momentā to file a valid application to the countryās fair work umpire.
The woman was rostered on to work as the night fill manager at the Traralgon store from 6pm on November 4, 2025, to 3am on November 6, 2025.
Coles store manager Conrad Taylor said CCTV footage showed the woman went to the team member disabled toilets at 6.50pm on November 5 and that no other team member did so until 9.06pm, when they discovered a crack pipe and two bags of methamphetamine.
This team member told Taylor he handed the crack pipe and drugs to the woman and went with her to put the items on the desk in the store managerās office, later reporting the finding.
Later, at 9.50pm, the woman walked into the store managerās office and āleft with something in her handā, according to Taylorās account of the CCTV footage, which he said showed her again using the team member disabled toilets, for three or four minutes each time, at 9.58pm, 10.09pm, 2.41am and 3.21am.
Separately, a Coles fraud team investigation found the woman took four pre-packaged sandwiches from the stock room to the tea room, that she was not holding the items when she left the tea room and had not paid for them, and that the packets were found in the tea room bin the next day.
While the woman argued she was subject to āprolonged workplace pressureā including multiple probation periods which āappeared continuous and unresolvedā, which caused her distress, she later clarified that she was referring to disciplinary meetings which occurred more than a year before her resignation.
On December 3, 2025, the woman attended a meeting where Taylor read out the allegations to her and gave her an opportunity to respond to them.
The allegations included that she had removed a crack pipe and two meth bags (which had been confiscated) from the store managerās office without authorisation or approval, had consumed four items without making payment for them and without approval, and that she had consumed illicit drugs in the workplace.
She responded to the first and second allegations, but when asked why she did not report the discovery of the crack pipe and meth bags, said: āI canāt do thisā, left and did not return.
Commissioner Mark Perica said walking out was an āunderstandable emotional reaction to being accused of the consumption of meth and theft,ā but that it didnāt show she was incapable of reaching a rational decision, or that she had decided to resign in the heat of the moment.
A resignation is not legally valid if it is given in the āheat of the momentā or in circumstances where the employee was in a state of emotional stress or confusion where they could not reasonably be understood to be conveying a real intention to resign.
Perica said that Coles did not do anything that could be seen as coercing or forcing the woman to resign.
ā[She] was given an opportunity to present her responses to the serious criminal allegations which were made against her,ā he said. āAllegations of illicit drug use and stealing might suggest her job was in jeopardy, but nothing that Coles did during that meeting coerced or forced [her] to resign.ā
Perica said that even if the woman was in a state of emotional distress because of the allegations, āany heat deriving from the conduct of Coles was room temperature by the time she spent two hours with her union representativeā before they produced the written resignation.
The woman said she was told by a Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association representative that resignation was the only option, but did not provide evidence on this.
SDA Victorian secretary Michael Donovan said the SDA always sought to act in the best interests of its members.
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Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age covering workplace and economics. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberraās Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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