Rushden Lakes dancing car park attendants 'got the sack'

The dancing car park attendants had been entertaining shoppers with their moves as they queued to park and videos of the staff had been shared on Facebook.

One of the men who was working as a car park attendant at Rushden Lakes through an agency said he and three others had been sacked.

The ex-car park attendant said: "It's just upsetting for us all as it ended up being four of us out of the nine staff that were dancing. Obviously this boosted morale for us and the customers.

"It’s hard to spend 10 hours on your feet then a four-hour round trip on top of this and this was Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

"They weren't keen on the dancing until there were a couple of videos and reviews and that's when someone from Rushden Lakes said they loved it."

However, the agency staff were later removed from the job. The man said: "Unfortunately we were pulled off the job, with it being an agency very minimal feedback is required but we were told to stop all dancing on our last shift there.

"No-one knew why or what was wrong. Then a member of security told us he loved the dancing but the others didn’t and they’ve called a stop to it. He was clearly sent out to push their message forward and didn’t even agree himself.

"We then got home and were told we wouldn’t be returning and all four of us dancing spoke to each other to discover it was only us removed."

He said bosses claimed they were not sacked for dancing but for having a break in Costa Coffee - which he said had been authorised.

The former car park attendant said there had been lots of positive feedback from the public and other staff at the shopping centre.

He is disappointed to have been removed from the job so close to Christmas. He said: "The lads like myself only had that one job to rely on and being pulled off only two weeks before Christmas is a massive financial blow."

The Northants Telegraph contacted Rushden Lakes about the situation and a spokesman said: "This was picked up this morning (Monday, December 23) and I can confirm we are looking into this matter."

On Saturday, one customer took to Facebook and asked: "I heard this morning that the car park attendant who was dancing down the lakes got the sack because someone complained!! Really??"

In the comments, lots of customers expressed their sadness if this was the case, with one person adding: "He put a smile on so many faces while they were queuing to park. Bring him back I say."