Cleaner sacked for eating leftover sandwich she found

A cleaner has been given the sack after it was discovered she wolfed down a leftover tuna and cucumber sandwich.

A cleaner was sacked after eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room.

Gabriela Rodriguez, 39, helped herself to the Tesco tuna and cucumber sanga from a platter.

But the single mum was fired from her $25-an-hour job with contractor Total Clean for taking “client property... without authority or reasonable excuse”.

Ms Rodriguez told the Daily Mail the way she was fired was “horrible”.

“A week went by without anyone saying anything, and then about 15 minutes before the end of my shift when I was at the Devonshires building, a Total Clean manager and the company’s Human Resources manager came in and told me I was being suspended without pay and had to hand in my pass and leave immediately,” she said.

“They told me it was because I had taken a sandwich without permission and I couldn’t believe it.

“I went back home and I spent the rest of the day in a state of total shock. I felt so upset and offended.”

Cleaner and single mum Gabriela Rodriguez was sacked after eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room. Picture: Supplied

Union members have protested the sacking. Picture: United Voices of the World/Facebook

Her colleagues have demonstrated outside the central London HQ of solicitors Devonshires — where top lawyers earn about $3.2 million a year.

A union brought 300 tuna sandwiches and 100 cans of tuna to protest the decision to fire Ms Rodriguez.

The union stated that Ms Rodriguez, an Ecuadorean single mother, should not have been fired for eating the Tesco tuna sandwich that was “due to be chucked in the bin”.

Elia Petros, of the UVW union helping her unfair dismissal claim, said: “Cleaners are routinely dismissed on trivial and, we argue, discriminatory, grounds like this.”

Total Clean insisted it had complied with employment law.

As first reported on the Roll on Friday, a legal news website, Devonshires said it had not asked for Ms Rodriguez to be fired.

A spokesman said: “Devonshires did not make a formal complaint against Gabriela or ask for any action to be taken against her.

“Total Clean carried out their own investigation and the decision to dismiss Gabriela was taken without any input or influence from Devonshires whatsoever.

“This is a private matter between Total Clean and Gabriela.

“But we have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object, as we never have done, to Gabriela attending and working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position.”

According to the Daily Mail, Total Clean boss Graham Peterson wrote a letter to Ms Rodriguez after a disciplinary hearing on November 23.

The letter stated: “At the hearing your explanation was that you found a sandwich in the kitchen near the end of your shift and took it without a second thought.

“You stated that previously the client had left food in the kitchen and offered it out, so you thought it was fine.

“I considered your explanation to be unsatisfactory because you confirmed that no one had offered you the food in the kitchen but decided to take it anyway.

“I have decided that your conduct has resulted in a fundamental breach of your contractual terms which irrevocably destroys the trust and confidence necessary to continue the employment relationship.”

- with The Sun