A bar manager is challenging his dismissal from a Dublin hotel after its management decided he was "defrauding customers" by adding 10% to the bills of smaller tables that it would not normally ask to pay a service charge.
Ryan Boodhun's position is that the accusations were "unfounded and untrue" and that the process that led to his sacking from the Schoolhouse Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, "flies in the face of natural justice".
He has brought a statutory complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Schoolhouse Hotel Ltd, which is denied by the business.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) heard that Mr Boodhun was suspended in June 2023 after an allegation was made against him, and later sacked after a company investigation and disciplinary process concluded that he had committed gross misconduct.
The WRC was told that the hotel's policy was to add a service charge of 10% 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.
A former general manager at the hotel, Geoffrey Cronin, told the WRC that other workers told him that Mr Boodhun was putting tips on customers' bills without their knowledge.
He said the allegation was first made to him in June 2023, after 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% service charge would get "taken out, placed into a jar, and distributed" to kitchen staff and those working front-of-house. The 10% had to be added on the till prior to 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, had "concerns about implementing service charges" in regard to "what was tolerable for the customer".
"We would have been aware that any abuse of the service charge could have had major implications for the business," she said.
She denied giving Mr Cronin a "direction" in regard to how the matter should be handled.
Mr O'Connor submitted there was a "mandatory" service charge for tables of eight or more but that the policy was "silent on groups of less than eight".
When the adjudicator asked for clarification, the hotel's owner said: "For a table of eight, we would apply the service charge. If they object, we would not apply it. There's an expectation that a table of eight would pay that amount".
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" prior to 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%'".
"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 it would "probably tarnish the image" of any business.
Mr Bailey also asked Mr Boodhun to explain a video which had been "brought up" at the end of the company disciplinary process.
"It was a video of me playing a prank on one of the staff… he had his lunch, a snack – a banana. I played a prank on him by putting the banana in my pants, and took it back out," he said.
He added that nobody saw him do it, but he posted a video in a "private WhatsApp group" involving staff and former staff of the hotel.
The tribunal was told that the investigator, Mr Stokes, had called it "a vile video which warranted summary dismissal on its own".
The company's position was that it could have led to a further investigation against Mr Boodhun if the first process resulted in a sanction short of dismissal.
Mr O'Connor, for the complainant, submitted that the dismissal of his client was based on the "unfounded and untrue accusation that customers were being defrauded".
He said the decision to dismiss Mr Boodhun took place "before any meeting" - which he said was confirmed by the letter from Ms O'Flaherty to Mr Cronin on June 13.
He added that the wording of the email "smacks of unfair procedure and flies in the face of natural justice".
Mr Bailey, for the employer, said Mr Boodhun was "dismissed for gross misconduct following a thorough process" throughout which his rights were fully respected.
The statutory complaint was "without merit", he said.
The tribunal was told Mr Boodhun had found new work within three months of his dismissal, but was at an ongoing loss of earnings of €15,000 a year.
Adjudicator Orla Jones gave a fortnight for further submissions on Mr Boodhun's efforts to mitigate loss of earnings and closed the hearing.
