Another Dubliner forced to suffer from excessive coinage

Yes

His employer when he walked off with all those coins.

"Haha what a sucker. That'll save me a trip to the bank and hours counting that ****."

I wouldn't have accepted that personally. This kid sounds like a doormat.

Or better still, took their business elsewhere. This was cnutist behaviour by the owner.

Could you imagine what could happen here if the coins for this young fella's wages in the bucket was his gross pay? That would seem very wrong wouldn't it? The employer in this instance might need to have verifiable proof of a payslip being issued if the total amount of money in the bucket was actually the young fella's net pay once his taxes have been paid into the system for that working period. If he didn't have that proof on him to show it to Revenue; he would be in deep trouble from them straight away. The punishment for doing it to his other employees would possibly be huge fines & penalties applied to his business which would land him in huge trouble.

Also if the young fella, in this case, knew how to apply for tax credits from the Revenue at some stage in his working life here; the absolute proof needed for that task would the total amount of earnings in work being recorded from his payslips. Now imagine if one or two weeks of his working life while applying for those credits; they're would be no payslips recorded for his time while working at that restaurant. He may get rejected in his application for the tax credit which would mean that he would be on less money than he should be normally on as usual after he pays his rent, university fees, food and other bills & expenses if he lived in rented accomodation during his time in university. That would be a very tough & unfair environment on him.

The employer would be known as the shrewd little git who would cause all of this trouble in the first place in carrying out this little stunt. Could the employer know that he could get away with doing it? I actually couldn't tell you as we not know the full answer to that yet. Although; the owner of this restaurant may have to provide a full explanation to the Revenue if he was known to have been cheating on paying tax behind the backs of his other employees.

Incorrect. You need to fully understand the legal meaning of legal tender. Otherwise you risk making an absolute fool of yourself.

The restaurant owed a debt in the legal sense to the employee - so the employee could have and should have refused the coins in settlement of that debt.

In a normal restaurant / retail transaction it is a "transaction" and not a debt which in the legal meaning can only occur if you have registered your details with the restaurant and they agree that that you can pay at a later date for the goods/services.

Basically there is no obligation whatsoever for any retail or service business where you do not have an account with to accept cash, coins, cheques, card etc. It is entirely up to the business to decide what payment forms to accept.

I do not know where people get this fixation where there is a cash transactions there has to be a fiddle. There is absolutely no advantage to an employer in doing as you suggested. If he did not pay tax and PRSI etc in relation to the wages he could not include it in his business expenses