A woman who ‘pulled a sickie’ to watch England’s semi-final win at Wembley was sacked after her boss saw her celebrating on TV.
Nina Farooqi, 37, dodged work in Yorkshire after her friend won last-minute tickets to the historic match against Denmark in a work raffle.
She said she thought that she was unlikely to be granted the day off to attend, due to work being short-staffed, and so decided to call in sick and catch the Wednesday lunchtime train from Leeds to London Kings Cross, before heading to Wembley.
But the face of the digital content producer, from Ilkley, near Bradford, was beamed around the world when a TV camera zoomed in on her and her friend celebrating England’s equalising goal.
Farooqi, who was sitting behind the goal, even appeared on TV presenter Stacey Dooley’s Instagram story, something she excitedly shared with friends. However, when catching the 6am train back up north the next morning, Farooqi said her boss phoned her to tell her not to bother coming in.
The 37-year-old, whose LinkedIn page suggests she works a variety of freelance jobs, says she lost her office job, which appears to be as a Digital Content Co-ordinator at Leeds decking and and cladding firm Composite prime.
Farooqi told The Daily Telegraph: ‘They said they’d seen I’d been at the game, and I was honest about why I did it. But I didn’t get any sympathy at all and they said that’s it. That’s their call and the consequence of what I did.
‘There is a bit of regret, no one wants to get fired, but then also I would have hated the regret of missing out. I’d do it all over again.’
Farooqi said her office job funded her football life, which sees her freelance as a photographer and video producer in the men’s club game and across the Women’s Super League.
She had initially thought it would be unlikely she would be spotted in a crowd of over 60,000.
But when the avid football fan checked her phone at half-time, she realised her game was up. She said: ‘We were all over the news, my face was on every television screen across the world.’
The digital content producer revealed that even friends in Australia and the US got in touch to say they had spotted her.
She added: ‘It’s mixed emotions: we’re through to the final, I’m still on that high, but I’ve also lost my job.’
Explaining her decision to skip work, she said there was ‘no way’ she’d turn the opportunity down after her friend won the tickets in a work raffle.