the cafe came under fire for posting to social media a photo of a young girl and her family<\/a> after the child used her fingernails to etch words into a $4500 couch at the cafe.<\/p>\nJames publicly shared details of the incident, hoping to identify two adults who were caring for the children, arguing that they should have alerted staff to the damage before leaving. <\/p>\n
Instead, she was left dealing with threats to her business.<\/p>\n
Issues arose early into the employment<\/p>\n
According to the ERA decision, Huntly-Byrne was referred to work at the cafe through a friend in June 2024.<\/p>\n
James asked him about his general fitness to work and looked him up on Facebook, but accepted that she never conducted any CV or reference checks.<\/p>\n
He began his employment in the kitchen, with his duties including cooking and washing dishes.<\/p>\n
But three weeks later, James had become concerned that Huntly-Byrne was allegedly not working some of his rostered shifts and wearing a dirty uniform.<\/p>\n
Another employee shared her concerns with James, claiming some of Huntly-Byrne\u2019s work practices were putting the cafe at risk, including that customers overheard him yelling.<\/p>\n
James then held a meeting to address Huntly-Byrne\u2019s alleged lateness, cleanliness, and an argument between him and another staff member regarding cleaning.<\/p>\n
She then wrote the matters discussed at the meeting in a letter that also advised Huntly-Byrne of a final warning relating to his conduct. According to the decision, he received the letter but never read it.<\/p>\n
The message that ended it all<\/p>\n
The final straw was in November 2024, when another staff member had to leave work early and Huntly-Byrne was left to close the cafe alone.<\/p>\n
Some time after the cafe closed, James went in to cash up and noticed several tasks had not been completed.<\/p>\n
She took photos and posted them in the group Messenger chat for Hind Quarters staff.<\/p>\n
In the same chat thread, James asked who was responsible for closing the kitchen that day, to which Huntly-Byrne said he was, along with the colleague who left early.<\/p>\n
James wrote in the chat that the cafe could have burnt down and Huntly-Byrne could not do his job.<\/p>\n
She said she needed to be able to trust the team and \u201cthis is my business and not a bloody shitty arse game\u201d.<\/p>\n
Huntly-Byrne tried to explain in the chat that those responsibilities were shared between staff and were not all his fault.<\/p>\n
But the next day, when he texted James to see if he was rostered on, she said he was not.<\/p>\n
When he asked when she wanted him to work next, she said \u201cI don\u2019t. Sorry mate you blew it yesterday\u201d.<\/p>\n
James told the authority she drafted a \u201cserious misconduct dismissal letter\u201d, which covered his lateness, customer service expectations, dress and appearance, rules covering unsatisfactory conduct and serious misconduct, and termination without notice.<\/p>\n
She said she delivered it to his home but Huntly-Byrne said he never received it.<\/p>\n
In the decision, Higgins said James did carry out some form of investigation before raising the issues with Huntley-Byrne, in that she visited the cafe, took photographs and put these to the staff in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also accept that Mr Huntley-Byrne knew the standards of performance required to close the cafe as he had done so previously.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Higgins ultimately ruled Huntley-Byrne was unjustifiably dismissed, as there was no disciplinary meeting and no proper opportunity for Huntley-Byrne to state his case.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther, Dallison had shown that it could have followed a better process because it did so for the October 2024 meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as $15,000 for the unjustified dismissal, Dallison was ordered to pay Huntly-Byrne $8299.20 in compensation for lost wages and $500 to the Crown for failing to provide all wage and time records.<\/p>\n
James has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huntly-Byrne was said to have not set the alarm, left the sandwich press on, milk on the counter,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[78902,74,9526,17181,5837,1882,10748,2511,36191,54180,9881,2079,3049,211366,5606,296,219995,6096,13617,111,43,139,69,19719,1523,2738,2744,45788,237545,3240,63557,7364,61,8238,237544,12767,4741],"class_list":["post-469662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-78902","tag-after","tag-another","tag-bar","tag-battle","tag-cafe","tag-came","tag-child","tag-couch","tag-eatery","tag-facing","tag-fire","tag-firing","tag-hind","tag-images","tag-into","tag-leather","tag-message","tag-name","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ordered","tag-over","tag-owner","tag-pay","tag-posting","tag-quarters","tag-recently","tag-scratching","tag-text","tag-to","tag-under","tag-waverleys","tag-worker","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}