Ireland

Restaurant ordered to pay teenage employee €2,500 over sexual harassment

Waitress was told she was she could not wear leggings as her ‘ass’ looked ‘too nice’ in them

Waitress wears food at work in the restaurant

Stephen Bourke
Mon Oct 10 2022 - 13:20

A teenage waitress who walked off the job when her boss told her: “Your ass is too nice” has been awarded €2,500 in compensation for sexual harassment.

The girl told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) the man stood in the door and tried to hug her before she left.

He later said the teenager “should be grateful to have a job” and that if she left she was not to come back, the commission heard.

The restaurateur cannot be named as the WRC has made its decision in the matter anonymous to protect the identity of the complainant.

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The respondent told the tribunal he was a 20-year veteran of the hospitality trade who employs “many young girls”, some as young as 16, and has “never had a complaint made about him”.

He told the WRC in evidence that on the date in question, Friday, September 3rd, 2021, the waitress was “dressed inappropriately for work” and “looked like she was coming from the gym”.

He said he had spoken to her previously about the dress code and that on this occasion he told her she “couldn’t work like that” — after which she left.

In her evidence, the girl said she “always wore the right clothes to work”. She said she went to her employer to explain to him that she was wearing the wrong shoes because there was a hole in the pair she had planned to wear.

The restaurant boss “kept shaking his head saying ‘no’,” she said.

Then he lifted her jacket and told her that she wasn’t to wear leggings to work, she said.

He told her: “They make your ass too sexy,” she said.

She told the equality hearing she put away her bag and coat and went out to work on the floor of the restaurant but started to cry, retreated to the bathroom and had a panic attack.

When she came out, she told her employer he had made her feel uncomfortable, she said. Her submission to the tribunal added that her boss “told her to calm down and not to over-react”.

She replied that she was a minor and that he couldn’t say things like that to her, she said. She told the tribunal that when she went to leave, her employer stood in the doorway and tried to give her a hug.

He told her she “couldn’t go home” and she replied that she “couldn’t stay at work”, repeating that she was a minor, she added.

After leaving, she returned when her boss called her back “to see if he was going to realise he was wrong”, she said.

He made no such admission, she said, but did tell her she should be “grateful” to have a job and that if she left she “wasn’t to come back”.

“Good, I’m not coming back,” she replied.

She showed adjudicating officer Catherine Byrne a text message from a colleague who told her the restaurateur “thought it was okay”.

The colleague said she would tell the owner he could not make such remarks and asked her to come back to work, the adjudicator noted.

The adjudicator wrote in her decision that there was a dispute in evidence over what had been said, with the complainant alleging her boss had told her either “Your ass is too sexy”, or “Your ass is too nice”.

She found the complainant’s evidence to be credible and supported by the text message shown at hearing, adding that she was satisfied the respondent had made the remark.

“For any young girl in her first job, such a remark would be intimidating and humiliating,” she wrote.

She wrote that the complainant had raised an inference of discrimination in the form of sexual harassment that the respondent “did not rebut” and awarded €2,500 in compensation.

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