Host sacked in light-bulb row

by John Harrington

A pub manager has been sacked ­ and given one week to leave his pub ­ for ordering light bulbs without consent.

John Traynor, of the Way Out Inn at Canterbury in Kent, was employed as a "service agent", managing the pub and getting paid through commission.

Staff at the pub's owners, Kent-based Inn2gether Pub Management, visited him on Friday 7 January and told him he must leave the pub ­ where he also lives ­ because the venue is being sold.

Inn2gether sent him a fax saying the company did not have to give Traynor four weeks notice, as it is compelled to do in the contract.

The fax also said that he would not be offered employment at another Inn2gether pub, because Inn2gether claimed that Traynor had an "obvious disregard for company procedure", amounting to "gross misconduct".

Traynor said this was because he had ordered light bulbs for the bar without permission.

The fax said Traynor, who has been at the pub for six months, should be made to leave the pub immediately but was allowed to stay an extra week "as a gesture of goodwill".

The host labelled the charge of gross misconduct "absolute garbage".

Inn2gether declined to speak to the Morning Advertiser, but a spokesman for the company told the Kentish Gazette that Traynor carried out unauthorised maintenance and committed other breaches of contract.

"He did things without letting us know. We expect our managers to be more proactive in talking to us," said an Inn2gether spokesman.

"Seven days [to leave the pub] is a gesture of goodwill. We could have made him leave straight away.

"It was not viable and we had to pull the plug to safeguard the other pubs in the group."