Bar manager accused of ‘defrauding' patrons with service charges wins €8,000 for unfair dismissal

Irish Times

6 hours ago

A bar manager who denied accusations that he was 'defrauding' the patrons of a Dublin hotel by tacking on a 10 per cent service charge to tables that weren't meant to pay it has won €8,000 for unfair dismissal.
Devendrasingh 'Ryan' Boodhun told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) last year the accusation made against him by the management of the Schoolhouse Hotel on Northumberland Road, Dublin 4, was 'unfounded and untrue'.
An adjudicator has found Mr Boodhun's dismissal on 4 July 2023 was 'procedurally unfair', but that the business 'acted reasonably' when it ended his employment.
The WRC heard in December last year that the hotel's policy was to add a service charge of 10 per cent to bills given to tables with eight patrons or more, but that this would be taken off a bill if the party objected to it.
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A former general manager at the hotel, Geoffrey Cronin, gave evidence that other staff reported to him that Mr Boodhun was putting tips on customers' bills without their knowledge. He said it first came up in June 2023 when he was asked to rectify a bill error at the end of a shift and discovered that the wrong table had been closed off.
'What was paid by the guest was more than the bill was,' he said. 'That's when we started going back to look for more,' he added.
He said the practice was that the 10 per cent service charge would get 'taken out, placed into a jar, and distributed' to kitchen staff and those working front-of-house. The 10 per cent had to be added on the till before printing the bill, he added.
Mr Boodhun's representative, Ken O'Connor, put it to Mr Cronin that when he had looked for advice on the matter from the hotel's owner, Karen O'Flaherty, she had advised him to have an 'informal' conversation with the complainant.
Mr Cronin accepted that Ms O'Flaherty told him in an email: 'The main issue is the perception that we are stealing from the customer and that the team feel they too can follow this procedure if the manager can do it. What message does he think this sends?'
Continuing to quote from the email, Mr O'Connor said Ms O'Flaherty then gave a 'fairly damning instruction' to Mr Cronin to the effect that whether Mr Boodhun's response was to deny knowledge of the rule, deny doing it at all or say it only happened occasionally, that 'any reply is unacceptable'.
Mr O'Connor said there was 'an analysis that he's basically defrauding customers' in the email.
'The other team members had come to me saying Ryan had instructed them to apply service charges to tables. Other accusations came to me against Ryan ... I acted upon it,' Mr Cronin said.
Ms O'Flaherty said she and her husband, the owners of the hotel, would have been aware that any abuse of the service charge 'could have had major implications for the business'. She denied giving Mr Cronin a 'direction' in regard to how the matter should be handled.
Human resources consultant Sean Stokes gave evidence of his role in an investigation process which concluded that Mr Boodhun was 'fully aware he was implementing the service charge wrong'.
The company's position was that Mr Boodhun was 'fraudulently taking money from customers, causing us to lose faith in him as a manager'.
Having been dismissed on a finding of gross misconduct, Mr Boodhun was offered an appeal to Ms O'Flaherty, who upheld the decision to dismiss, the tribunal heard.
Mr Boodhun told the tribunal he was simply told that he was facing 'serious allegations' before being suspended on 22 June 2023 and spent a weekend 'in the dark' before any mention of the service charge claim was made.
Addressing what he said to the company during the investigation process, he said: 'My point was, it's basically, for eight-and-under tables, if a party of four comes in ... they've had a good decent service, starters, mains, desserts, they can say: 'Is a service charge included in that? No? Add 10 per cent''
'This happens everywhere in the hospitality business,' he said. He said the investigator, Mr Stokes, replied that this 'doesn't usually happen' and that it was more usual for customers to offer to 'round it up'. 'I argued that wasn't the case,' Mr Boodhun said.
Cross-examining Mr Boodhun, the company's representative before the WRC, Graham Bailey, asked how he thought the 'inappropriate' taking of tips outside of a company's policy could 'potentially impact on a brand's reputation'.
Mr Boodhun agreed it would 'probably tarnish the image' of any business.
In her decision, adjudicator Orla Jones noted that 'additional matters' were raised for the first time with the worker during the disciplinary meeting and that there was 'significant cross contamination' between those responsible in the company for the different stages of the investigation.
She concluded Mr Boodhun's dismissal was 'procedurally unfair' and awarded him €8,000 as redress under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.