Valet kept key card to guest parking lot; claimed ignorance it was against policy

An Ontario hotel valet who repeatedly parked his car in a guest parking lot deserved dismissal, despite the fact that he cooperated in the investigation into the misconduct, an arbitrator has ruled.

The worker, 56, was a valet at the Fairmont Royal York, a luxury hotel in Toronto. His job duties involved parking guests’ vehicles in a reserved parking lot. The spaces were in a parking area adjacent to the building that the hotel leased and to which valets gained access with a card issued by the parking lot’s owner. The hotel paid the owner a flat fee for use of the lot and charged guests $53 for overnight parking.

In March 2016, the hotel’s ethics hotline received an anonymous call saying that a valet was parking his car in the guest parking area without paying. The hotel investigated but it couldn’t find any proof. However, one month later, an anonymous email to several managers claimed that the person making the accusations was actually the one doing it. A photo of the worker in his car in the parking lot was attached.

Management met with the worker and told him about the accusations. He immediately admitted that he had been parking his car in the lot since he started working as a valet two years previously but he said senior valets had been doing the same thing.

The hotel investigated further and found that nine valets had been using the access cards to park their cars in the guest lot. Although access cards were supposed to be turned in, it was common practice for valets to keep them, which led to cards going missing. In January, valets had been told to turn in any access cards, but the worker had kept his and continued to use it.

The hotel terminated the worker’s employment for breaching the trust it needed to employ him as a valet. The union grieved the termination.

The worker denied knowing about the procedures prohibiting personal vehicles in the lot and the union said they weren’t clearly communicated. The worker said he was never told he could or couldn’t do it, but he “followed the lead of the senior valets.” In addition, he was surprised by the termination because he thought it would be treated differently because he admitted to parking in the guest lot and named others who did it.

The arbitrator noted that the fact that the worker cooperated with the investigation worked in his favour, but it was difficult to believe how he could “sustain a belief that valets were authorized to park for free.” Since there were complaints to the ethics line, at least some valets were aware that it wasn’t allowed, the arbitrator said.

The arbitrator also found that the fact that the worker didn’t turn in his card when instructed to in January 2016 and continued to use it, was confirmation that his conduct wasn’t an “honest mistake or even bad judgment.”

“The [worker] made a conscious choice to disregard two specific directions of management in order to continue benefitting from the proxy card that gave him access to the free and very convenient parking,” said the arbitrator, adding that the hotel potentially lost $53 in revenue for each overnight period the worker parked his car for free.

The arbitrator also found that the worker never admitted that he did anything wrong and his position was that he shouldn’t be faulted for doing what others were doing. The worker’s “lack of acknowledgment of misconduct remains problematic and significant,” the arbitrator said.

The arbitrator determined that the worker knew what he was doing and did it for an extended period of time. This made it difficult for the hotel to trust him going forward, said the arbitrator in upholding the termination.