LNERs binned sausage rolls served to rail passengers

[Halwynd]

A train worker who was sacked after first class passengers were served sausage rolls from a bin has said he was going "over and beyond for the customer".

Peter Duffy, who worked for London North Eastern Railway (LNER), was accused of preparing sausage rolls he had "retrieved from a bin", which were then served to passengers by a colleague.

Another member of train crew reported hearing laughter from the kitchen before the food was served and made a complaint after noticing sausage rolls that were in the bin had disappeared......

LNER worker sacked for serving binned sausage rolls to passengers

LNER worker Peter Duffy's claims for unfair dismissal are dismissed by a tribunal.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Scotrail344Lad]

Well that's just odd

 

[D6130]

A train worker who was sacked after first class passengers were served sausage rolls from a bin has said he was going "over and beyond for the customer".

Peter Duffy, who worked for London North Eastern Railway (LNER), was accused of preparing sausage rolls he had "retrieved from a bin", which were then served to passengers by a colleague.

Another member of train crew reported hearing laughter from the kitchen before the food was served and made a complaint after noticing sausage rolls that were in the bin had disappeared......

LNER worker sacked for serving binned sausage rolls to passengers

LNER worker Peter Duffy's claims for unfair dismissal are dismissed by a tribunal.

www.bbc.co.uk

We don't serve any old rubbish on our trains!

 

[Megafuss]

I genuinely laughed out loud at the claim of unfair dismissal. What a society we have become

 

[MagisterLudi]

"Transient global amnesia"...surprised the union rep could keep a straight face.

 

[Spartacus]

"I have just gone too far for the customer in my mind." as an excuse might have been just about accepted had it not been for the laughing....

 

[marks87]

It took me a second to parse that title. I was wondering why LNER would bin sausage rolls already served to passengers.

 

[contrex]

"I have just gone too far for the customer in my mind." as an excuse might have been just about accepted had it not been for the laughing....

I once saw a cartoon, in the New Yorker I think, of two grinning restaurant waiters clearly in the kitchen area, peering through the door windows into the dining area, and one is saying to the other, 'He's eating it!'.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Jan 2026 ==

I was wondering why LNER would bin sausage rolls already served to passengers.

I'm not even going there!

 

[Halwynd]

It took me a second to parse that title. I was wondering why LNER would bin sausage rolls already served to passengers.

Quite right, apologies, I have now amended slightly.

 

[trainophile]

Do we know why they were in a bin in the first place?

 

[AlterEgo]

A very popular member of train crew to have had someone rat on him like this, no doubt. Won't have been the first time he crossed the line, I bet.

 

[Dr Hoo]

At least we have an idea of what “the over and beyond for the customer” actually means now (sometimes, at least)

 

[30907]

Do we know why they were in a bin in the first place?

Over date? Too long unrefrigerated? Hygiene regs are strict (and have been for decades - I recall a catering manager at a large new department store being dismissed for similar over 40 years).

 

[MagisterLudi]

A very popular member of train crew to have had someone rat on him like this, no doubt. Won't have been the first time he crossed the line, I bet.

Characteristic of an industry where a proportion of the employees consider themselves untouchable.

 

[ainsworth74]

I genuinely laughed out loud at the claim of unfair dismissal. What a society we have become

In fairness you can claim almost anything, but as this individual has found out doesn't mean that you'll be proven right in that claim!

 

[trainophile]

Over date? Too long unrefrigerated? Hygiene regs are strict (and have been for decades - I recall a catering manager at a large new department store being dismissed for similar over 40 years).

How much food is wasted due to arbitrary use-by dates? My dinner tonight will be two sausage rolls that were use by yesterday. I expect I'll survive.

 

[JordR]

This seems to be the case: https://assets.publishing.service.g...astern_Railway_Limited_2502343-23_Reasons.pdf

(The link is to a 21-page employment tribunal judgment, Duffy v London North Eastern Railway Limited, dismissing claims for disability discrimination and unfair dismissal.)

The respondent employed the claimant from 2018 until it dismissed him without notice in July 2023, giving the reason as gross isconduct. In October 2023 the claimant presented a claim to the Tribunal...

...Although the claimant’s evidence before us was that he has no recollection of the incident, and that has been the claimant’s position since the second disciplinary interview, we do not consider that his memory of events has been affected in the way that he claims. We say that based on the answers the claimant gave the first time he was interviewed, which strongly suggest the claimant did have some recollection of the incident in question...

...the claimant received an order for sausage rolls; there were no cooked sausage rolls immediately available; there were uncooked sausage rolls in the fridge but they would have required cooking, which would have taken more time; the claimant
knew there were sausage rolls in the bin that were cooked because he had very recently put them in there himself; after being told a customer wanted sausage rolls he took those out of the bin, plated them up and re-heated them on and then gave them to Ms Walker to deliver to customers...

Conclusion on disability discrimination claim
The respondent dismissed the claimant because of the claimant’s actions in taking sausage rolls out of the bin and plating and heating them up to be served to customers. Those actions were not something that arose in consequence of the claimant’s disability. In the circumstances the claim of disability discrimination under section 15 of the act is not well founded and that claim fails.

 

[Darandio]

How much food is wasted due to arbitrary use-by dates? My dinner tonight will be two sausage rolls that were use by yesterday. I expect I'll survive.

Probably loads. Not sure the of relevance here though? You just can't serve that in a catering setting.

 

[Watershed]

How much food is wasted due to arbitrary use-by dates? My dinner tonight will be two sausage rolls that were use by yesterday. I expect I'll survive.

You probably will, but you're taking a calculated risk and you have noone but yourself to blame if it goes wrong.

By contrast, the passengers served the binned sausage rolls had no idea of that and therefore couldn't assess the risk. The caterer opened LNER up to liability in the event something went wrong.

I'd be interested to see whether LNER took any steps to try and identify the passengers and get in touch to put it right.

 

[ainsworth74]

How much food is wasted due to arbitrary use-by dates? My dinner tonight will be two sausage rolls that were use by yesterday. I expect I'll survive.

Sure and the odds of you being ill are remote in the extreme. My experiences are similar with using stuff a day or two beyond use by dates (the sniff test works wonders ). But the odds are not zero that the food has gone off and consuming it could cause illness and organisations producing food for consumption by the public can't just ignore them.

Plus it's worth noting a use-by date will be based on some actual testing of the product in question to help determine how long, in the correct storage conditions, it will be safe to eat. So it's not just an arbitrary date.

 

[jfollows]

How much food is wasted due to arbitrary use-by dates? My dinner tonight will be two sausage rolls that were use by yesterday. I expect I'll survive.

Irrelevant.
I do it all the time also, my choice. Buying discounted “yellow label” products at my local supermarket and choosing not to eat them until later than their sell-by date or whatever.
I should be sacked if I did so as an employee of a catering establishment of some sort.

 

[trainophile]

If the sausage rolls were on or past their use-by date surely they shouldn't have been loaded on the train anyway. So would that make it someone else's fault?

 

[TUC]

If the sausage rolls were on or past their use-by date surely they shouldn't have been loaded on the train anyway. So would that make it someone else's fault?

Not in terms of deciding to get them out of the bin!

 

[yorkie]

If the sausage rolls were on or past their use-by date surely they shouldn't have been loaded on the train anyway.

I'm not sure where you've got that from; is this a guess?

So would that make it someone else's fault?

Without more information, it's difficult to judge exactly what happened / should have happened, but if you are suggesting that you can take something out of a bin and serve it to customers, on the basis that you think that someone else should not have put it in a bin, that doesn't quite seem right to me! Is that what you are saying, or have I misunderstood?

 

[hexagon789]

If the sausage rolls were on or past their use-by date surely they shouldn't have been loaded on the train anyway. So would that make it someone else's fault?

They weren't past their OOC date, they were binned due to having been heated previously for a subsequently cancelled order according to a report on another forum.

Even so, it is not unheard of for out of code stock to be delivered to supermarkets in which case it goes to waste, but may sit in a designated area before being processed.

Similar may happen on a train, in which case someone notices and thus bins it on the train.

Regardless, you don't fetch anything out of a commercial kitchen waste bin, just like you don't fetch anything out of the waste area - you do not know why it's there and you cannot make assumptions it will be okay, because it may well not be on one occasion...

 

[Iskra]

Sure and the odds of you being ill are remote in the extreme. My experiences are similar with using stuff a day or two beyond use by dates (the sniff test works wonders ). But the odds are not zero that the food has gone off and consuming it could cause illness and organisations producing food for consumption by the public can't just ignore them.

Plus it's worth noting a use-by date will be based on some actual testing of the product in question to help determine how long, in the correct storage conditions, it will be safe to eat. So it's not just an arbitrary date.

Use by dates are based on correct storage though, so by having them at room temperature (or higher if they had been previously heated) in a bin is increasing the risk, especially if they were in there for a while in a warm kitchen.

A bizarre incident though.

 

[jfollows]

Strange indeed.
But in the food service industry you don’t have the choice to ignore the rules.
At home, I do, and I’m sure many of us do. I’ve never had food poisoning at home because of it. I cut off mouldy corners of cheese or use slightly out of date food or whatever.
I have had food poisoning from a commercial outlet once, the breakfast on the Belfast-Liverpool ferry as it happens.

 

[Welly]

Makes a change from curled up BR sandwiches of 1970s - 80s fame.

 

[Iskra]

How long before Sausage Rolls disappear from LNER menus due to the PR fallout from this?

 

[norbitonflyer]

I have had food poisoning from a commercial outlet once, the breakfast on the Belfast-Liverpool ferry as it happens.

Are you sure that was food poisoning? I know from experience that it is possible to have a severe stomach upset on an Irish Sea ferry without having eaten anything at all.

(Rosslare/Fishguard, as it happens)