Google security guard who denied ‘sleeping’ on job fails to overturn sacking

A security guard at Google’s European headquarters who denied that he was caught “sleeping” on the job and instead said he “just had his eyes closed for a long duration of time” has failed in a statutory challenge to his sacking.

Donatus Okafor told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) he “was not sleeping” when his supervisor arrived, and that he had only missed a phone call because the volume on his device was turned down.

Defending the claim, a manager for Synergy Security Solutions, Mr Okafor’s employer, said it would have been “disastrous for all concerned” if there had been a fire or a break-in at the Google offices at Barrow Street, Dubin 4, on the night in question, April 4th last year.

“It could have been disastrous for all concerned, and specifically if the client had arrived and found the security guard asleep, the relationship between the company and the client would have been destroyed,” the firm’s general manager, Shahz Saeed, told a hearing in March.

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Mr Okafor, who represented himself, said the company failed to take account of his personal circumstances when it happened, less than two months after the death of his father.

Mr Okafor said he was working “long and varied” shifts in an effort to save up money to return to his birthplace in Nigeria for his father’s funeral later that month, and was “stressed and depressed”.

To “get by during this time”, he said he “started to self-medicate with anti-depressant medication” given to him by his wife, he said.

Mr Okafor said he took the medication at work on the night in question, then felt “dizzy”, sat down at his desk and closed his eyes.

In his evidence, he denied that he was “sleeping” and told the WRC he “just had his eyes closed for a long duration of time”.

Mr Saeed, Synergy’s general manager, said the company’s control room rang Mr Okafor five times without answer and that a supervisor went to the site “out of concern for the complainant’s health and safety”.

The company’s position was that the supervisor found Mr Okafor “asleep while on duty” and reported the matter.

Investigation and disciplinary meetings follows, leading to a finding of gross misconduct against Mr Okafor and the termination of his employment on June 16th 2022, the tribunal heard.

In his decision, adjudicating officer Paul McKeown wrote that there was “no significant, or at least convincing, argument” put forward by Mr Okafor that there had been any defects in Synergy’s disciplinary process in his case, and noted he did not appeal.

While Mr Okafor had referred to “long and varied” working hours, there was “no perceptible relationship” between shift times and the incident he was sacked for, Mr McKeown wrote, noting further that the complainant never looked to change his shift times or raised any medical issue with his employer.

Mr Okafor had tried to “diminish” the seriousness of being “at his desk with his eyes closed”, but Synergy was “reasonably entitled” to consider this misconduct justifying dismissal, Mr McKeown wrote.

He ruled Mr Okafor’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Synergy Security Solutions to be “not well founded”.