Nando's cleaner loses £20k tribunal claim after he saw burger dropped on the floor

A former Nando’s employee who demanded a £20,000 settlement after seeing a colleague drop a burger on the floor and serve it to a customer has lost his tribunal claim.

Martin Kumi worked as a night cleaner at Nando’s restaurant in London’s Soho over nine shifts between 18 August 2021 and 31 August 2021.

He used his phone to secretly record conversations between his work colleagues with plans to use the “evidence” to claim a financial settlement, the tribunal heard.

After seeing the burger dropped on the floor, he raised the incident in a staff WhatsApp chat and said he did not want food to be prepared for him before he arrived at work.

Nando’s investigated and issued the staff member responsible with a written warning.

Days later Kumi sent a manager a lengthy complaint and sought £20,000 in compensation from Nando’s to “draw a line in the sand” under several issues.

The tribunal heard managers had received complaints about Kumi’s poor work performance and that he had stayed late after a shift and made a female colleague feel “uncomfortable and vulnerable”. She later made a formal sexual harassment complaint against him.

Kumi was invited to meet with the regional managing director to discuss his grievance complaint but did not attend.

In cross examination, Kumi confirmed the purpose of the demand was to make Nando’s “pay him off” rather than spend money on legal fees.

The hearing was told he had brought other tribunal claims against former employers where he had only worked for brief periods of time.

The judge said he had “engineered his claim from the start” in what was a “blatant abuse of the tribunal process”.

Kumi admitted he had recorded the whole of his last nine-hour night shift at the restaurant, which the judge ruled was “completely unnecessary” unless he was gathering evidence for a complaint.

The tribunal heard he also made a sexual harassment claim after a colleague referred to him as “love”, “darling” and “dear”. The colleague later said he was joking and referred to everyone in this way.

Kumi also tried to claim that the greeting “goodnight, ladies and gentlemen” was “sexual” in nature because it was said to him and another male cleaner.

His complaint of sexual harassment was dismissed. The judge also rejected his whistleblowing claim over the dropped burger and said it was being used to obtain a pay-off, rather than for public interest reasons.

In his ruling, judge Klimov said Kumi was “candid” in his evidence and admitted that he may have asked for “too much” money.

“It was a blatant abuse of the tribunal process,” Klimov wrote.

Nando's declined to comment.