She handed back her uniform and asked for her final pay that night - but was she ever really fired
A waitress heard "go home" during a dinner-service dispute and thought she had been fired. The Fair Work Commission saw it differently.
In a decision handed down on July 21, 2026, the Commission found that a part-time waitress at hospitality business Tam Jai Aust Co Outlets had not been dismissed, and dismissed her general protections application.
The worker had been employed since January 13, 2025. On February 25, 2026, at about 5:30pm during dinner service, she flagged a missing ingredient in a dish prepared by the operations manager. A confrontation followed. She said he was "testing" her and behaved in an intimidating way, and that he twice asked whether she still wanted to work there.
She said she kept a professional attitude and told him, in effect, that as the most senior person present he could send her home if he no longer wanted her there. It was not in dispute that he replied with words to the effect of, "Go home now."
She read that as a firing. She argued the phrase was a known euphemism for dismissal and said she had once seen the store manager tell another employee to "go home" before that person was dropped from the roster.
Then she acted quickly. She returned her uniform. At 6:02pm she blocked the manager and left the company WhatsApp group. At 6:04pm she asked the store manager for payment in lieu of notice and accrued annual leave. That night she sent an...
MOSCOW, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Russia’s embassy in Germany said on Tuesday that German allegations that Russia was responsible for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle airport last month were an...