He said he heard the woman telling the man to “leave me alone, stop touching me” when he decided to intervene.
“She’s in the corner and he’s like pulling on her bag or her arm,” he said.
“So I just sort of go over and say, ‘excuse me sir, you need to stop’. And he just fully changes all his aggression towards me.”
Hohaia said the man came right up to his face in a threatening manner before attempting to headbutt him, leading to a physical struggle.
“I just automatically started firing back at him,” he said. “It all happened very fast.”
The man tried to tackle Hohaia when he decided to apply a “jiu jitsu technique” to try to restrain the man.
Despite his fellow employees arriving on the scene and telling them to stop fighting, Hohaia said he felt unsafe to disengage out of fear for himself, his colleagues and the woman involved.
“He was quite strong and it was to sort of chill him out a bit, to take control of the situation without having to punch him anymore.”
Hohaia said he then “pushed him out the door” and told him to get out, followed him outside and recorded him on his phone, before returning to the store and getting back to work.
He was fired on October 13.
Commission: Aldi had ‘valid reason’ to sack Hohaia
In her published decision on the unfair dismissal claim, Rogers said Hohaia had ignored Aldi’s strict Customer Service Guideline on how to handle incidents with violent or aggressive customers.
The policy, which was displayed on a poster in the staff room, stated: “DO NOT stand in their way, argue with them, take photos or put yourself in danger”.
The commission was told Hohaia had been repeatedly trained on the rules, and he also accepted that he saw the poster regularly during cross-examination.
“It is clear from the CCTV footage submitted that Mr Hohaia engaged in conduct of this nature during the incident and Mr Hohaia does not dispute that his actions were accurately captured by CCTV,” Rogers said in her decision.
“The failure to comply with Aldi’s policies and procedures led to the situation escalating to a point where Mr Hohaia became the aggressor.”
Tamati Hohaia was fired last year by Aldi over a physical confrontation during a shift, with his unfair dismissal claim also getting thrown out by the Fair Work Commission. Photos / @maorieinstein, Getty Images
Rogers said Hohaia’s actions constituted “serious misconduct” and found that Aldi had a “valid reason” for his dismissal.
Hohaia told the Herald he disputes that he breached Aldi’s policies because the man wasn’t a customer but an “intruder” who entered through the exit.
“Aldi’s policy is based off customer interactions, aggressive customers or shoplifters or people refusing bag checks. So that’s the policy they keep referencing that I had breached. But he was an intruder, he was none of the above.”
During the cross-examination of Aldi’s evidence, Hohaia said he asked a company representative if employees were trained on how to deal with violent people that aren’t customers, to which the reply was “no”.
Hohaia said he had a clean employment record for four years, including being promoted several times.
He had “stepped down to store assistant” and reduced his contracted hours to focus on his social media.
‘Off limits to strongarm a woman’
Aside from acting in self-defence, Hohaia said he also intervened to protect the woman who was in “distress”.
“I’ve got five daughters and a wife. I grew up with my mother and my sister.
“I see it as off limits to in any way try and strongarm a woman.”
Hohaia said a friend of the woman reached out to him to thank him for helping out, explaining that the woman had come into the store to get away from the man.
He said he would “100% do it again” and doesn’t feel guilty, but he does feel sympathy for the man.
“I didn’t want to hurt him … that was never my intention.”
Since the commission’s decision, Hohaia has published multiple videos on social media about the whole situation that has garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
He has now made peace with the decision and is instead using the ordeal to “make more content on it”, with his offer for an NDA declined.
“I won’t bite my tongue too much,” he said. “It’s a pretty crazy story that I can talk about and content that people like and it’s content that does well.”
He has received almost universal support on his videos.
Under his Māori Einstein handle, Hohaia posts about food, cooking and his life, with his videos gaining millions of views across TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
Aldi and South Australia Police declined to comment when contacted by the Herald.