Pilates manager’s battle to get her job back after a massive misunderstanding about a promotion led to a regrettable email to bosses
Poppy Hailston, manager of a Strong Pilates studio in Springfield, Queensland, lost her job after an email she intended as a request to transition into a new "head coach" position was treated by her employer as a resignation. She took an unfair dismissal claim to Australia's Fair Work Commission, arguing she never meant to quit, but the tribunal sided with the business, DMC Strong, finding her email was an unambiguous resignation with no reasonable basis for her to believe the new role had been offered.
Hailston, who had worked at the studio since September 2024, sent an email on 29 January 2026 saying she would be "stepping down" as studio manager from 28 February, while proposing a part-time head coach role and asking for help funding a Pilates certification. Days later the company told her the head coach role would not go ahead and that her resignation had been accepted. Deputy President Judith Wright ruled that although Hailston later expressed a wish to stay on, she never formally withdrew her resignation through HR, and had voluntarily relinquished her studio manager position without any pressure from the company.
- Manager's promotion request email was ruled a resignation, not a transition plan
- Fair Work Commission rejected her unfair dismissal claim against DMC Strong
- She never formally withdrew her resignation via HR despite being urged to
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Poppy Hailston managed a Strong Pilates studio in Springfield, Queensland, until a dispute over an email led to the end of her employment. She had proposed moving into a new part-time "head coach" role while stepping back from her manager duties, but her employer, DMC Strong, read the email as her resigning outright. When the head coach role fell through, the company treated her as having quit rather than kept her on in any capacity.
Hailston disputed this and brought an unfair dismissal claim before Australia's Fair Work Commission, the national body that hears workplace disputes and decides whether dismissals were fair. The case turned on how her original email should be interpreted, and whether she had done enough afterwards to make clear she wanted to stay.
The outcome matters beyond one studio, as it touches on how ambiguous resignation emails and informal promotion talks can be treated in law, and what steps an employee needs to take to withdraw a resignation once an employer has acted on it.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates for Ms Hailston would argue that resignation is a serious, often irreversible act, and employers have a duty to seek clarification when an employee's intentions are genuinely ambiguous rather than seizing on inconvenient wording. Her email explicitly proposed a new role and funding for further training, which is not the language of someone who wished to sever ties with the business; a reasonable employer, they would say, should recognise that an employee planning her exit would not typically be negotiating her next position within the same company. Given the power imbalance in employment relationships and the real-world consequences of job loss, tribunals and employers alike should err on the side of confirming intent before treating a mixed message as a binding resignation.
The case against
Advocates for DMC Strong would argue that clear, written communication in the workplace matters, and Ms Hailston's email unambiguously stated she was "stepping down" with a specific date, which the company was entitled to act on at face value. Businesses need certainty to plan staffing, and it would be unworkable to require employers to second-guess plainly worded resignations on the chance an employee might privately mean something else. They would also point to the tribunal's finding that she never formally withdrew her resignation through proper HR channels, suggesting the onus was on her to correct the record promptly rather than expect the company to infer her true wishes after the fact.