JQH wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:01 pm
Tessa K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:12 am
Someone just posted this elsewhere. Jesus f.cking Christ.
A man who forced himself on a young woman as she walked home alone late at night has walked free after complaining he would lose his job if he went to jail.
Takeaway worker Javed Miah, 23, ambushed the terrified victim in the street before pulling her to the floor and molesting her. Miah only fled when the unnamed woman managed to used the SOS function on her mobile phone to call 999, letting out a loud beeping noise.
The defendant faced jail after admitting sexual assault but was sent on a sex offender rehabilitation programme after pleading he was a ''the sole earner'' in his family.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... r32Qa5De3E
When I was working, if I'd committed a sexual assault I'd've been sacked whether or not I went to jail. And quite right too.
You are of course absolutely right, however, it's really not the same working for a takeaway. The takeaway pays cash in hand, under the counter so no employment rights. However, this means very low wage and therefore a major headache for the takeaway owner in getting decent staff. I've seen the actual figures for a couple of these places (having worked in a couple) and the profit margins are so tight that no, minimum wage isn't possible at the majority of these places.*
Yes, if he gets any jail time he'd lose his job. If he caught a bad cold and couldn't turn up one day, he's probably lose his job.
Because of the nature of these places, the low wages, unsociable hours and the mega-tight margins no owner can afford any worker to be off short notice for any shift - they almost certainly won't be able to replace them. I've done days when I've had to call every driver we've had in 2 years to try to get someone to work a Saturday night for example. It's almost always a skeleton crew and a small staff so one missing worker might mean 100 fewer deliveries or nobody to handle the frier or the counter. Most of the longer term staff in these places have higher wages cos they're multiskilled. Starting wage for my old job was £35 a night (7 hours, on your feet all the time) but I worked up to £50 in about 6 months cos I learned how to do just about everything. He still sacked me twice for getting ill
Kept having to give me a raise to get me back! I ended up earning about £80 a night which is near enough chef's wages. He even begged me to work Christmas eve one year after I'd left, he was that desperate (we parted on bad terms so I told him to stick it
)
So any normal job would absolutely sack the guy. Not a takeaway though - I'd be surprised if he's allowed to do deliveries (he'll probably be put to work in the kitchen) - there's a certain amount of turning a blind eye necessary in that kind of grey-area, not strictly 100 % legal business.**
I expect the man himself is a driver. He's probably an immigrant (not a judgement, simply a fact that you don't see 2nd generation working in takeaways, unless you're talking Chinese rather than pizza/lebanese/kebab/etc, the Chinese ones would work their grans to death in my experience***) and I expect his English isn't amazing since Michael Gove cut funding for ESOL courses in 2010. He probably does have an entire family depending on his single, very low wage, because, sadly, his wife won't have access to English lessons either. They could both be refugees or asylum seekers and have no other money coming in at all, his wife may be actually barred from working. He may be barred from working and have no other choice but cash in hand.
He certainly has horrible attitudes towards women if he feels that what he did was at all appropriate but I agree with a re-education approach in this case because, given his name, he's almost certainly come from a country with no equal rights tradition and hasn't had much of a chance to learn. He could have been in this country for 10 years and had no opportunity to learn the English language, never mind British culture and law.
I am neither condoning nor defending this, I'm just injecting some real world facts into the debate and trying to allow for some mitigating factors
It's easy to be high-minded when you know what's right in the country you were born in. Not so easy to know when you've been taught from birth that women are property, speak little of this new country's language and haven't been advised of cultural norms because you've said no more than "pizza is here" to an English speaker in your life. Many, also, come here with the idea that white women are w**res and welcome any advance from a man. Cultural and hideous, but not an attitude that can't be sorted out by good education.
He could, of course, have learned perfect English or been here since birth or be 2nd gen and be a waster, a criminal and a c**t, but there's not really enough info here to make that judgement. He's definitely a chancer and a weirdo, I feel sorry for his wife and kid. Sadly, through teaching ESOL I've met quite a few people like him, and one did attempt to sexually assault me, but the majority come round very quickly when they have highly educated women teaching them
In conclusion then, takeaways are hard to staff so any good worker is taken despite criminal history. Men from some parts of the world are badly educated vis a vis women's rights but the vast majority are easy to correct, and in the first instance re-education is a better choice than prison.
* As an aside, I actually think this is good. It's the type of job an enterprising teen can walk in, no experience, no CV, no nothing and get a trial and therefore get something on his/her CV.
** Stuff always done to top legal standards: Food prep and cleaning. Not ever done to legal standards: Hiring and firing, minimum wage, pension etc. With drivers you take a photo of their license and registration to hold onto it just in case and ask if they're insured for business driving. We can't check paperwork for that so we have to take their word for it. One time we lost our best driver because he was a mad speeding coke addict (these are the exact people you need for food deliveries), he got caught speeding one too many times and lost his license. Dumbass. Lovely bloke, criminal to the core
n= 3
