A pizza chef sacked after he was said to have made \u201ccreepy\u201d comments to girls as young as 12 and who used a customer database to send \u201cinappropriate\u201d texts to a 16-year-old customer has lost his unfair dismissal claim.<\/p>\n
Texts sent to the 16-year-old girl by Syed Saeed Akhtar included a remark about how he could \u201cwait another two years\u201d to be her boyfriend, the Workplace Relations Commission was told last year. <\/p>\n
The tribunal was hearing a challenge by Akhtar to his sacking from Jin And Li Food Ltd, operator of a Mizzoni Pizza shop, under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, a claim dismissed in a decision published on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Daniel Johnson, for the employer, said it came to the business\u2019s attention in September 2024 that Akhtar had been \u201cmaking inappropriate comments to young girls\u201d as young as 12 or 13. <\/p>\n
Akhtar had remarked they were \u201cvery beautiful\u201d and \u201clittle princesses\u201d \u2013 remarks described by the girls as \u201ccreepy\u201d, Johnson said. <\/p>\n
Akhtar also made \u201clewd gestures with his hands\u201d after the girls left the pizza shop \u201csuggesting they had a female figure\u201d, it was also submitted. <\/p>\n
The pizza shop\u2019s owner, Jin Hintao, gave Akhtar a verbal warning at that point, Johnson said. <\/p>\n
However, the following month, Johnson said, it was brought to the management\u2019s attention that Akhtar had used the company customer database to send \u201cinappropriate text messages\u201d to the 16-year-old daughter of a customer, the WRC noted. <\/p>\n
The child\u2019s mother gave evidence to the WRC late last year about how her daughter had been babysitting for a neighbour and she returned to tell her she had a \u201ccreepy\u201d text from Akhtar asking: \u201cWhat u have plan for weekend?\u201d<\/p>\n
The mother said she confronted Akhtar about it at the shop and saw the worker had a picture of her daughter on his phone.<\/p>\n
She said Akhtar told her: \u201cI don\u2019t do things like that. I\u2019m married and I\u2019ve two kids.\u201d . <\/p>\n
In reply, she said: \u201cI said I know you\u2019re married and you\u2019ve two kids. Everything gets around.\u201d <\/p>\n
Further to the text message, the witness said her daughter told her of other comments by Akhtar. <\/p>\n
These included how he could \u201cwait another two years to be [the girl\u2019s] boyfriend\u201d. <\/p>\n
Her daughter also told her Akhtar made a remark about showering at work and had told her to \u201cring him and that he will show her that he showers\u201d. <\/p>\n
When Akhtar cross-examined the girl\u2019s mother, he \u201cacknowledged that he had sent the message\u201d, but insisted he \u201cintended to send it to an adult woman\u201d \u2013 calling it a \u201ctotal mistake\u201d. <\/p>\n
The text messages between Akhtar and the girl were presented by the company at the WRC hearing and the claimant acknowledged sending these, adjudicator Lefre de Burgh noted. <\/p>\n
The complainant said: \u201cI tried everything. I accept I text her. I apologise.\u201d <\/p>\n
However, the claimant denied his employer\u2019s statement about the verbal warning the month before about his alleged behaviour when the younger teenage girl was in the shop. That \u201cnever happened\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n
Akhtar\u2019s employer, Hintao, was asked why he was \u201cworried about contact between his staff and young girls\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy shop is a small shop. [The area] is a small place. Everybody knows everybody,\u201d Hintao said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf word spread around about comments from my staff member, it would have a very serious impact on the reputation of my shop and on me personally.\u201d <\/p>\n
He told Akhtar in a letter dismissing him on October 25th, 2024, how texting the 16-year-old girl by itself was \u201cgross misconduct justifying dismissal without notice\u201d on its own. <\/p>\n
He said the inappropriate comments set out to him in writing by the girl\u2019s mother were \u201csexual in nature and totally inappropriate\u201d and amounted to gross misconduct. <\/p>\n
Rejecting Akhtar\u2019s complaint about his dismissal, De Burgh wrote in her decision that \u201csummary dismissal without notice was both procedurally and substantively fair\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pizza chef sacked after he was said to have made \u201ccreepy\u201d comments to girls as young as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-446649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}