A manager of a Lidl supermarket who had worked for them for almost 10 years has won nearly £19K for unfair dismissal.
Arkadiusz Grzyb was accused of abusing the supermarket chain's 'waste not' policy to nab things from the bakery.
Working as a deputy store manager of a Lidl in Ireland, Grzyb twice bought stale leftovers from the bakery for the discount price of 20c each in October 2020.
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At full price the baked goods would have set him back €7.20 but they had gone stale and were due to be thrown away, leading him to think it would be fine if he bought them rather than bin them.
That did not turn out to be the case as he was investigated, subject to a disciplinary hearing and then fired in March 2021.
He hadn't even known he'd been accused of theft from Lidl until he saw the investigation report on himself a month before he was sacked.
An appeal against his sacking was launched but that too was rejected, leaving Grzyb to take the matter to Ireland's Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
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He complained to them that buying a couple of stale items from the supermarket bakery at a knock down price was nowhere near the 'gross misconduct' he had been accused of.
Part of the case against Grzyb had noted that he'd closed the supermarket bakery 25 minutes early.
However, the Lidl manager pointed out this had been a common practice at other stores he'd worked at and he'd done it to let his staff finish a little earlier.
He successfully argued that Lidl hadn't lost any money since they were about to throw the food away and he had in fact made them a bit of cash by buying what was about to be worthless stock.
According to the Irish Examiner, in her findings on the case Davnet O'Driscoll of the WRC judged that the person who made the decision to fire Grzyb had not given any regard to his 'reasonable excuse'.
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She found there had been no consideration of his almost 10 years of working for Lidl, nor the incredibly low cost of the baked goods.
She also found the decision maker on Grzyb's sacking hadn't considered other punishments available and gone straight for the option of firing him.
The ultimate verdict was that Grzyb had been unfairly dismissed, but he had also 'undoubtedly contributed to his dismissal'.
Grzyb, who had spent 10 weeks out of work, was awarded €23,461 (£20,371) which was later reduced to €17,596 (£15,278) for his part in the dismissal.
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He was also paid four weeks notice €3,615 (£3,138) that he'd been entitled to, bringing his total compensation to €21,211 ((£18,415).
That's a lot of dough to fork over for a couple of stale bits of bread.
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: Lidl