An assistant shop manager has been awarded €13,500 in compensation at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) after it was found she was unreasonably sacked for gross misconduct for having attended a job interview at a nearby medical practice during her lunch break.
WRC adjudication officer John Harraghy said the decision by a company director to immediately dismiss the worker at a meeting exceeded what a reasonable employer would be expected to do in the circumstances.
He noted there was a long personal relationship between the directors of Genius Ltd, trading as clothes and shoe shop Genius on Clarendon Street in Dublin, and Roberta Girinelli.
Ms Girinelli had worked at the shop at various times over a 15-year period, most recently from January 2022 until her dismissal on July 4th, 2024. She was paid €29,900 annually, with a €2,000 bonus after the first year, and received a bus pass.
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She said she applied for another job in a nearby medical practice in May and received a call on June 27th asking her to attend an interview at 12.30pm the next day. There were four staff at the shop that day and she left to attend the interview at 12.25pm, returning at 12.55pm.
She was asked to work two trial days at the medical practice and had to seek permission to take a day of annual leave in order to be available for one of these as she was rostered to work. She said she explained the situation to one of the company’s directors, however, and was given permission without any issue being raised.
When Ms Girinelli returned from the two-day trial on July 4th, however, she told the hearing she was called into a meeting where the same director accused her of breaching a “loyalty” clause in her contract of employment. She argued this required her to do her best for the company when working, which she had always done, and there was nothing to prevent her seeking other jobs.
The one she had applied for, she said, was only for two days a week and she hoped to continue working at the shop for three days but she had not yet raised this with her employer, she said.
In the end, she was not, offered the medical practice role.
Farrel Kavanagh, another director of the company, said Ms Girinelli’s role with the family-owned company was one involving “trust and confidence” and that he believed she had been guilty of gross misconduct. He said the company had never previously been the subject of a complaint over 30 years of trading and the owners had “felt betrayed” by the breach of her obligations towards the company. He also said she had taken a lunch break after returning from the interview.
The company acknowledged, however, that the dismissal was not in line with best practice.
In his decision, Mr Harraghy said Ms Girinelli had not appealed the decision to dismiss but had not been informed of her right to do so.
Assessing her loss of income, the potential loss of future redundancy entitlements, which he put at €3,516, her failure to appeal and limited efforts to mitigate her loss, he ordered the company to pay her €13,500 in compensation.
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