Coles employee’s alleged drug scandal ends in legal loss

A Coles manager who was allegedly caught consuming drugs in the workplace has failed to establish that her resignation was forced.

Eighteen years after her first shift, a woman’s Coles career came to a dramatic end with allegations she used a crack pipe and methamphetamine in the disabled toilets and stole sandwiches.

She claimed that a handwritten resignation handed to her employers in the hours after a December 2025 disciplinary meeting was forced and in the “heat of the moment”, but Fair Work commissioner Mark Perica AM disagreed in a decision published late last month.

“Allegations of illicit drug use and stealing might suggest her job was in jeopardy but nothing that Coles did during that meeting coerced or forced [the staff member] to resign,” Perica said.

A store manager was contacted by another staff member between 7 and 8 November, and he had inquired whether an investigation would be conducted into the crack pipe and “two meth bags” he found in the employee disabled toilets at about 9pm a few days earlier.

CCTV footage allegedly depicted the woman using the disabled toilets at 6:50pm, and no one else entering before 9:06pm.

After the drugs were discovered, the CCTV then depicted the woman and her colleague taking the drugs into the store manager’s office. Within the hour, the woman was allegedly depicted walking back into the office and leaving with “something in her hand”.

On four occasions between 9:58pm and 3:21pm, the woman used the disabled toilets for about three to four minutes each time.

CCTV footage also allegedly captured the woman taking four pre-packaged sandwiches into the tearoom and leaving without them. The empty packages were discovered in the bin the next day.

The subsequent disciplinary meeting ended when the woman said she could “not do this” and walked out. A few hours later, her union representative handed the store manager the handwritten letter.

Perica said the woman had displayed a “calm, rational demeanour” in the meeting until she left, and that her walking out was “an understandable emotional reaction to being accused of the consumption of meth and theft rather than a display of an incapacity to reach a rational decision in the full context”.

Even had she been in a state of emotional stress, Perica said “any heat … was room temperature by the time she spent two hours with her union representative which produced the written resignation”.

He also determined Coles did not deny the woman choice and that she was given an opportunity to present her response. It had also not made any decision in relation to her employment at that stage.

“I therefore find nothing in the employer’s conduct either during or prior to the disciplinary meeting can be regarded as coercive or designed to force [the woman] to resign,” Perica said.

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