SIX former council workers are fighting to get their jobs back after they were allegedly caught taking drinks "for the road" at the end of their work Christmas party.

The workers, including a husband and wife, are alleged to have helped themselves to about $1500 worth of wine, beer and UDL cans after a night of drinking and dancing with colleagues at the Gravity Discovery Centre, north of Perth.

Linky here

Reasonable or not? discuss

erm, its not even a question of being responsible or not - its straight up theft
and not even petty theft, thats $1.5k of tax payer money

.. and I didn't even get one drink for my money
jipped

And yet they still deny that they're not addicted to drinking..

umm - yeah!!! substantial difference between a 6 pack to see you home and 1.5K, which between 6 people is what...$250 each? Sack them - who wants people of that integrity around a work place!

A six pack is for the road, $1.5k is stealing.

$250 worth would buy you a fair bit of cheap goon, I guess they must've loaded up their backseats or something?

Would the council really have gotten that much back from the bottleshop?

Come to think of it, the council probably just wanted all the leftovers for themselves, and didn't want to admit it.

Not only is it fair enough they got sacked they are lucky the police didn't get involved.

yeah what bums.
even a six pack is pushing it imo

yeah what bums.
even a six pack is pushing it imo

agree

$1500? Is there even a doubt that it's unreasonable?

how f***en stupid is the thread starter asking if this is reasonable

1500 bucks is a c*** load of piss

i had 2 grands worth for my 21st and i think it was like 40 cartons in total and a s***load of wine and champers as well...

flat out thieves, f*** em off

You guys are getting worked up without all the facts! It could have been 3 bottles of moet and a 6 pack of UDL's. The article doesn't say so I call bulls***.

And secondly, what where they going to do with the left overs? They can't exactly keep them till next year. I call fair enuff and if it was 1500 worth of goon they deserve every drop getting 6 million litres home :)

last edited by Ross at 19:48:21 27/Jan/09

It could have been 3 bottles of moet and a 6 pack of UDL's.

Okay, and for the other $1300?

If my employees took $1500 worth of grog, I'd be getting cops involved. Even taking a 6 pack is still dodgy. Depends on what drinks Ross, but some things can definitely be kept for a year or more.

fire their asses.

you can walk out with your open drink, +1 if you are trashed.

Show me where you buy fifty buck moet's from and i'll take 6 million units please

I guess I should say real moet too as in drinkable, you seem pretty stupid

last edited by Ross at 20:32:19 27/Jan/09

If you can't carry all of it at once without a bag, you're not taking something "for the road".

$250? Okay, two cans is maybe okay, one for on the go and one for the road, but $250 worth each? What did they take, a bottle of Dom and a bottle of Blue label?

Yeah, that's taking it a bit too far.

And yet they still deny that they're not addicted to drinking..

Someone translate this for me. They deny they are addicted - or they don't deny they are addicted?

They deny they're not addicted is a double negative.

Show me where you buy fifty buck moet's from and i'll take 6 million units please

I guess I should say real moet too as in drinkable, you seem pretty stupid

f*** you idiot. Moet & Chandon, besides being pretty average, is only about $70 to buy retail. If you're purchasing in quantities of the size that they obviously were, you could easily get it for $50-$60 a bottle. When I worked in cocktail bars, we used to get it for about $45/bottle and we weren't even selling that much of it.

Yes unfortunately Ross you are incorrect.

I worked in a bottleshop for two years. Moet n Chandon retails for around 65-75$ a bottle.

In fact the only champagne that would resemble what you are thinking is perhaps Cristal Champagne

HAHAHA PLUNK

And secondly, what where they going to do with the left overs? They can't exactly keep them till next year. I call fair enuff...

Perhaps you should actually read the article?

When shire staff returned the following day to collect drinks for a refund at the local bottle shop...

My f***ing ass they were. You show me a bottle shop that accepts returns and i'll show you a qgl poster who isn't a f***wit

$1,500 worth of drinks, yeah they deserved to get a sack.

They'd probably need multiple sacks to get away with all the phat lewt

i wonder about the validity of the statement that says the party cost ratepayers approximately $9k ... surely even councils have to create thier own funds (with social clubs & the like) for work parties. 'tis news.com.au though so it's prolly totally misreported & taken out of context.

Mr Fraser told The Australian yesterday that "roadies" did not mean "take everything".

their funding comes from government, its irrelevant if they had a cake stand to raise cash for their booze up or not
even if it was one of those '$5/wk social club contributions'

its still tax payer money, they're still thieves

My f***ing ass they were. You show me a bottle shop that accepts returns and i'll show you a qgl poster who isn't a f***wit

I think you'll find that there's a significant difference between some random alcoholic trying to get a refund for a stubby and a council doing a deal with a bottle shop where they spend thousands of dollars and have an agreement that allows them to return what isn't used.

I cant speak for other Councils but Logan has the Social club (~$6 a week or something) to pay for their piss up for the Admin staff.

The Works crew have a similar situation where the money goes to booze for the Christmas break up. A BBQ for the work crew is usually provided at 'rate payers' expense. Rates for council, not Tax, there's a slight difference. Tax money is budgeted to specific projects and it's very stictly controlled.

I really doubt it was 9k of rate payers money.

Also, like any other workplace, Council has to offer insentives to retain staff. This sometimes includes Lunches and on the rare ocasion even drinks.
How often does your workplace have Friday arvo drinks on the company? I would say more often the the Council does.
It's in their best interest to keep staff happy so they have a productive workforce. Certain residents make me think we should give council workers a 6 pack a day at least.

their funding comes from government, its irrelevant if they had a cake stand to raise cash for their booze up or not
even if it was one of those '$5/wk social club contributions'

its still tax payer money, they're still thieves

Huh? How is staff personally putting in $5 a week got anything do do with rate payers money?

last edited by Scooter at 13:00:17 28/Jan/09

yeh scooter same as when i was in telecom... we had hugely funded piss-ups... but it was all staff contributions to our social club so none of it was ratepayers or taxpayers money. when your section has over 100 staff it's pretty easy to collect the big bucks for parties.

although if someone had cleared out ~$1500 worth of leftovers from a party... (asif! leftovers at a telecom party!@#! ;) they'd have to pay the money for it back into the social club.

$2 coronas on the top of roma st

yep

Huh? How is staff personally putting in $5 a week got anything do do with rate payers money?

nah fair enough if its all their own cash - but its highly unlikely
even at HP and more recently telstra, the $5 social club is just used to pad the bottom line - not to pay for anything substantial (usually matched dollar for dollar)

just like you should tell cops every time you get pulled over, my taxes pay their wages :]

Tequilla,

just like you should tell cops every time you get pulled over, my taxes pay their wages :]

Well, you just failed the personality test didn't you??? Its called do the right thing and dont get booked!

Well, you just failed the personality test didn't you??? Its called do the right thing and dont get booked!

That's ok, you just failed the sarcasm check, so I guess you're about even :)

off topic but i think i paid 44 euros for a bottle for moet for NYE

You got ripped off idiot

not as idiot as your face! hah!

My f***ing ass they were. You show me a bottle shop that accepts returns and i'll show you a qgl poster who isn't a f***wit

entire pallets and containers are counted, sealed and returned at the end of every festival i work at. Taking a few drinks for us is usually fine - as they are given out to the bands for free. A carton is considered a gift if given by someone in authority, never would i take, or allow any of my crew to take anything as outragous as $1500 worth of grog, i know people who have been in trouble for much less.

At the end of the day that would be taking $1500 out of someones pocket.

when i was the bar manager at cha cha char, kilroy (the owner) used to have parties at wanganui gardens for australia day. after playing bar back (gopher) all day for 10 separate bars, and having set most of them up myself i knew where everything was. when it came time to pack up, the manager of wanganui told me that anything that wasn't there, he didn't have to count the next day.
five people in a commodore and we barely made it out the driveway. my personal share:
24x asahi
12x tiger
3x1125ml smirnoff red
2x1125ml johnny red
1x1125ml slate
2x700ml gordons
24x500ml fiji water
24x original mother (back in the day - the good s***)
about 20 bottles of various red wines, and as you can imagine at a party held by kilroy and booze supplied for free from a few of our major suppliers, the wine wasn't s***.

and there were four other people in the car.