Posted on 02/19/2024 12:37:24 PM PST by nickcarraway
Single mum Gabriela Rodriguez was sacked from her £13 an hour job with Total Clean after eating a tuna sandwich left over from an event at Devonshires solicitors in London
A single mum working as a cleaner at a top London law firm was sacked after eating a leftover tuna sandwich from the kitchen.
Gabriela Rodriguez swiped the £1.50 snack left on a platter in the offices for Devonshire solicitors. The impulsive decision led to the 39-year-old being accused of theft by the contracted company she worked for, ultimately terminating her employment which she relied on to support her 10-year-old daughter.
Total Clean, who posted profits of £1.6million last year, told Ms Rodriguez the theft had "irrevocably destroyed" their trust by eating the sandwich. The mum, a migrant worker on £13.08 an hour, tried to appeal the decision but to no avail.
Now union bosses have slammed Total Clean's decision, describing it as "beyond the realms of reasonableness and comprehension". Ms Rodriguez had had an "impeccable record" in her £13.08 per hour job after working there for two years, UVW Union for migrant workers said, and had genuinely believed she was allowed to eat the food which had been left over from a corporate event.
In an appeal letter fighting for her job, the union wrote there were "various full trays of leftover sandwiches that had been laid out for staff to eat" when she took the food. "Gabriela understood she was also allowed to eat this food."
"It is so incredibly far beyond the realms of reasonableness and comprehension to dismiss an employee for eating a leftover tuna and cucumber sandwich. We now understand that the privilege of eating leftover sandwiches perhaps does not extend to the outsourced migrant workforce in the building."
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
Plenty of “Migrants” to take her place.
Maids, janitors, the repair plumber that moves around your house, cops checking your home, if an employer ever catches them making decisions of what they consider situational pilfering, or of taking little things that “no one will notice or miss” then at the very least fire them.
That’s the plan!
Now she gets to go on The Dole.
I suspect she will find new employment instead. If she wanted to be on the dole she would have been already.
Will she be replaced by a £8/hr cleaner?
Maybe she did ask, but the wrong person gave her permission?
How much do they bill per hour? How much did they pay this woman per hour?
Let her have the sandwich!
Abbott’s flying them all the way to London now!
I’m hungry.
Her job likely includes throwing away food left in the office. Few normal people would grudge her discreetly eating food otherwise going into the trash.
There is a risk to the company if they officially encourage this, since someone might get sick from leftover tuna, for example.
Yes, yet we are told to not sweat the petty things.
Agree with you.
In the early 1990s, a night-time cleaner at my company was fired for eating leftover birthday cake.
If the employees had left for the day and the sandwich was not put in the refrigerator, it was reasonable to assume it was trash to be disposed of as the cleaning person saw fit.
Trays of food left over from a lunch are intended to be eaten by whoever is willing to take the risk of leftover food. Pathetic in my opinion. I run teams of 100s of engineers. Some of them will eat a pizza that has been out for 6+ hours.
If it was to be discarded, who would have known that she ate it?
Nobody.
Which tells me she snagged something off the tray that was still in use.
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