Wetherspoons pub manager fired over 50% food discount

A FORMER manager at a JD Wetherspoon pub has won an employment tribunal after the chain sacked him for allowing a colleague a 50% food discount.

- CONOR GOGARTY

Peter Castagna-Davies was dismissed from his role as a shift leader at the Pontlottyn pub in Abertillery despite 22 years of unblemished service.

Mr Castagna-Davies had put the items - two portions of halloumi fries, two portions of chicken breast bites, and two cans of Monster energy drink - through the till for kitchen worker Noah Gardiner and applied a half-off discount for shift staff.

An internal investigation found he had breached policy by allowing Mr Gardiner to buy “excessive products” at the 50% rate and to take the food home.

The Cardiff employment tribunal heard Mr Castagna-Davies had not been aware that two minutes before he approved the items, Mr Gardiner had used a different manager's till key to process free meal for himself - chicken breast bites and a can of Monster Punch.

Wetherspoon's disciplinary chairman, Chris Jenkins, decided to fire Mr Castagna-Davies, telling him: “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.

“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.”