A hospitality worker said he was repeatedly asked invasive questions about his sexuality and country of origin by his manager amid a \u201ctoxic\u201d working environment at the five-star Marker Hotel in Dublin.<\/p>\n
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) heard the worker, Erick Roa, began \u201ccovertly\u201d recording members of management at the landmark Docklands hotel in 2024 \u201cso that I\u2019d have evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he quit his \u20ac13.90-an-hour job as a reservations agent in February 2025 because he believed his employer would not address his complaints about the alleged behaviour of his manager.<\/p>\n
A barrister acting for the NH Hotel Group, trading as Anantara the Marker Dublin Hotel, says it is \u201cdemonstrably untrue\u201d that Mr Roa was discriminated against and bullied for his sexual orientation.<\/p>\n
Mr Roa, who represented himself at a hearing on Wednesday, told the WRC he was a dual citizen of Costa Rica and Guatemala living in Ireland under a visa linked to his partner, and identified as gay.<\/p>\n
He said that when he went for a job interview in March 2024 the manager, Matt Sherlock, who oversaw reservations, \u201casked me how I got my visa\u201d. \u201cHe asked if I got it for going to school \u2013 I said I got it for my partner. He asked if my partner was female or male,\u201d the Mr Roa said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know where to go, because you don\u2019t ask these things. I answered: \u2018He is a male,\u2019\u201d Mr Roa said.<\/p>\n
When he started work, a supervisor in the reservations office was \u201cmaking fun of my accent and making fun of my English\u201d, he said. He said he spoke to a training manager in the company\u2019s HR office about this in his third week on the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, since I complained, the environment of that office wasn\u2019t friendly, wasn\u2019t good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Roa said due to staffing pressure he wasn\u2019t finishing work as scheduled at 5.30pm and that Mr Sherlock was \u201cgetting upset\u201d when he tried to leave on time.<\/p>\n
On one occasion in mid-June 2024, Mr Roa said he told Mr Sherlock he had to leave as his partner was waiting for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs your partner she, or he?\u201d came Mr Sherlock\u2019s reply, the complainant said. He said this was \u201creally inappropriate, because that was definitely none of his business\u201d.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard Mr Roa\u2019s initial three-month probation period was extended, but that he passed probation at the end of July 2024.<\/p>\n
He gave evidence that he was due to celebrate his birthday around the end of that month and that Mr Sherlock asked about his plans in the context of arranging for time off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said I\u2019d go somewhere with my partner,\u201d Mr Roa said. He said Mr Sherlock again asked \u201cwhether my partner was a he or a she\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Roa said when he learned a new HR manager was in place at the hotel and he went again to the HR office on 30 August 2024 because Mr Sherlock was asking \u201creally invasive\u201d questions about why he left Guatemala and came to Ireland.<\/p>\n
He said he told the new HR manager, Grace Moore \u201cthat [Mr Sherlock] was asking about my partner, whether my partner \u2018was a he or a she\u2019\u201d and he did not feel comfortable answering the questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said she was going to get back to me and she never did,\u201d Mr Roa said. He said Ms Moore later said that he \u201cnever went to her office\u201d. The hotel\u2019s legal team said Ms Moore had \u201cno record\u201d of the 30 August conversation, but that it was conceded that Mr Roa made an \u201coral complaint\u201d that day.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard that Mr Roa started making what counsel for the respondent Dan Fennelly BL termed \u201ccovert recordings\u201d in the workplace.<\/p>\n
Mr Roa said he \u201cdid record\u201d that meeting and could \u201csend the evidence I have so we can see that she\u2019s lying\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Roa invoked a formal grievance on 11 September 2024. Mr Fennelly said Ms Moore investigated the grievance and \u201cdidn\u2019t uphold a single one of the complaints\u201d made by Mr Roa.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard that Mr Roa did not appeal the findings at that point. Later, in January 2025, he approached the hotel\u2019s general manager, Ludo De Jong, complaining that Mr Sherlock had been \u201caggressive\u201d towards him.<\/p>\n
After further correspondence, Mr De Jong transferred Mr Roa to another office, the tribunal was told.<\/p>\n
The complainant invoked the company grievance process a second time, complaining about \u201cinsults and verbal attacks\u201d from Mr Sherlock, but resigned in February 2025, before the grievance outcome came rejecting the complaint.<\/p>\n
Adjudicator Penelope McGrath has adjourned the matter and said she would look for a resumed hearing date in March, when Mr Fennelly could continue to cross-examine the complainant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hospitality worker said he was repeatedly asked invasive questions about his sexuality and country of origin by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,91461,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-286253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-marker-hotel","13":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115900676014604191","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}