‘Dehydrated’ Lidl worker sacked after 10 years for taking 17p bottle of water
A Lidl worker was sacked after he drank a 17p bottle of water because he felt ‘dehydrated’ while working at the checkout, a tribunal heard.
Julian Oxborough worked at the Wincanton store for more than 10 years, but was let go after taking the bottle of water in July 2024.
He had served a customer at the till who wanted to buy a bottle of water which had been taken from a multipack, and did not have a barcode.
The customer swapped the multipack bottle for one with a barcode and left the old bottle at the checkout.
The tribunal heard Julian drank from the bottle and topped up his own drink as he continued to serve customers.
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The next day a store manager found the bottle beside the checkout and thought it might have been consumed against store policy.
After a review of CCTV, Julian was invited to a meeting and told he was being suspended while an investigation took place over allegations of gross misconduct.
During the investigation Julian said he was getting dehydrated during his shift and he was worried about his health, and that he had not drunk from his own bottle as he had made his squash too strong.
Mr Oxborough said he had thought the multipack bottle was allowed to be written off as he had seen single bottles of water in the canteen with no receipts.
Asked if he paid for the water, Mr Oxborough said: ‘No, I think I may have forgot or can’t actually remember taking it.’
He also said that he was in a hurry at the end of the shift and forgot to get the water written off.
He told the investigation he had no intention of being dishonest, though he knew it was wrong afterwards.
The tribunal heard Julian thought his dismissal was ‘a huge overreaction’, but ultimately diagreed with him that it was unfair dismissal.
Area manager Karina Moon, who was the disciplinary officer, told the hearing that he had been inconsistent in his explanation of whether he had intended to purchase the water or get it written off, and he had not explained why he had not gone to get tap water instead of drinking the multi-pack bottle.
She said Julian had four days after the day of the incident to come forward, but he had not.
She concluded Julian had known the correct procedures and that there was no way to be assured that the behaviour would not be repeated, so there was no suitable alternative to dismissal.
She confirmed that the claimant was therefore being summarily dismissed for gross misconduct.
Julian told the tribunal that he had not intended to be dishonest, and he was tired and stressed, hot and thirsty, unwell, worried about getting Covid from his partner, and in a hurry to leave at the end of his shift because he had to catch a bus.
At a hearing in Southampton in October 2025, Employment Judge Yallop upheld Lidl’s decision and dismissed Mr Oxborough’s claims, including unfair dismissal.
A spokesperson for Lidl: ‘We would never take the decision to dismiss a long-serving colleague lightly, and the tribunal has upheld that our actions were fair and followed a thorough process.
‘As a retailer, maintaining a consistent zero-tolerance approach to the consumption of unpaid stock is essential to our operations and ensures that clear rules are followed by everyone across the business.’
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