A former JD Wetherspoon pub manager has emerged victorious in an employment tribunal after being fired for granting a 50% food discount to a coworker. Peter Castagna-Davies, who had been a shift leader at the Pontlottyn pub in Abertillery and boasted 22 years of spotless service, was let go from his position.
Mr Castagna-Davies had rung up two orders of halloumi fries, two servings of chicken breast bites, and two cans of Monster energy drink for kitchen staff member Noah Gardiner, applying the half-off discount typically given to shift workers. But, an internal probe determined that he had violated company policy by allowing Mr Gardiner to purchase “excessive products” at the discounted rate and take the food home.
An internal probe determined that the manager had violated company policy by allowing Mr Gardiner to purchase “excessive products” at the discounted rate and take the food home.
The Cardiff employment tribunal was informed that Mr Castagna-Davies was unaware that just two minutes prior to approving the items, Mr Gardiner had used a different manager’s till key to ring up another free meal for himself — chicken breast bites and a can of Monster Punch.
Chris Jenkins, the disciplinary chairman for Wetherspoon, made the decision to terminate Mr Castagna-Davies, stating: “Shortly before you processed Noah’s 50% on-shift discount he had processed through the till his own staff feeding meal, some two hours after his break when he had consumed it, which you had no knowledge of him doing so or even going on his break,” reported Wales Online.
“I find this both worrying and surprising that, as the duty manager with so few staff to manage on the shift in question, you had no knowledge or control over what was going on.”
Two months prior to the unfortunate discount incident – which occurred at 8.04pm on January 31, 2024 — the chain had internally distributed rules stating that only one food item and one soft drink were available for free to employees during a shift.
Employees who wanted additional items could buy them at half price, and if they wished to take food home, the discount would be just 20%.
Sarah Newton, the manager of Pontlottyn, had sent a message to the pub’s employee group chat saying the company was “cracking down” because staff at other pubs had been taking multiple 50% orders home.
She cautioned that there had been instances where misuse of the discount had led to disciplinary investigations.
During the tribunal, Wetherspoon’s witnesses stated there had been: “A crackdown on the 50% discount because staff had been caught taking food home to feed their whole family.”
They alleged that the business had incurred “significant” costs, prompting it to adopt a “corporate zero-tolerance attitude towards abuse of the staff discount.”
Wetherspoon uses a system called IntelliQ to identify potential staff fraud. A week after Mr Castagna-Davies approved the discount, the system raised an alert about the transaction.
Ms Newton told him “mistakes happen” but that he should be careful because the company “really were cracking down on it.”
Mr Castagna-Davies responded that he was disappointed in himself for the mistake.
An investigating manager, Keri Blanchard, interviewed Mr Gardiner, who said he had cooked the food himself. Asked if he had eaten his initial free meal on-site, he replied: “I should’ve yeah, I don’t take food home any more.”
But he then admitted he had taken home the items put through by Mr Castagna-Davies. Asked if he had requested a 50% discount, Mr Gardiner said: “I just asked for someone to put it through.”
When Mr Castagna-Davies was interviewed he said he could not remember the transaction but that he may have mistakenly “pressed the wrong button” in applying a discount of 50% rather than 20%.
He denied being aware Mr Gardiner planned to take the food home.
Mr Jenkins fired him immediately. While he recognized Mr Castagna-Davies’ spotless disciplinary record spanning 22 years, he noted that Wetherspoon had been “vigorous” in communicating its zero-tolerance approach.
He also believed Mr Castagna-Davies had known the food would be taken home as it was not “normal for staff at the pub to eat that much food during their breaks”.
During an appeal, Mr Castagna-Davies presented testimony from four witnesses to contend that Mr Gardiner “had ordered the food in a deceptive way.”
However, Wetherspoon area manager Dannie Stephens maintained the termination, informing him he had “failed to lead, manage and organize your shift sufficiently to prevent the breach.”
At the tribunal, Judge Rachel Harfield observed “the staff discount system is one built on trust” and that repeated abuse would prove expensive to Wetherspoon. Nevertheless, she determined it was unreasonable for Ms Stephens to conclude this constituted a case of “gross incompetence or gross negligence, as opposed to being simple negligence that falls within the misconduct category of the respondent’s policy.”
The judge further stated: “There is no evidence that Dannie Stephens gave any thought to that at all. She seems simply to have operated on the basis that the claimant should have managed the shift better, that if he had done so the breach would not have happened, therefore the claimant should be held responsible for the breach, and it was possible under the policy to dismiss for a single act.
“There was no weighing of the actual seriousness of the claimant’s actions in their actual context. Dannie Stephens seemed to have viewed the claimant as diligent in other areas. It was one incident on one shift that he could have managed better. He was an employee with long service and a clear disciplinary record. The decision to uphold the dismissal at appeal stage was not within the reasonable range. In my judgement that rendered the whole dismissal unfair.”
A compensation package has yet to be determined.
Judge Harfield urged both parties to seek a settlement before a remedy hearing occurs.
WalesOnline contacted Wetherspoon to ask if it will be reassessing its approach to disciplinary procedures following the judge’s conclusions.
