A bar owner has defended his decision to confront a customer, who was using an extension lead to charge their devices.
The man went into Oscars Café Bar in Dublin on Tuesday and proceeded to charge a laptop, phone and tablet for several hours.
A tweet explained that the customer came in and "sat for four a half hours", while having three devices into their own extension lead.
"Ireland 2022 summed up in 1 image", it said - followed by the hashtag 'cheeky'.
See it all now. Customee sits for 4.5 hours and plugs 3 devices into his own plug board. Ireland 2022 summed up in 1 image#whatenergycrisis #cheeky pic.twitter.com/7pOB3PGcwo
— Oscars Cafe Bar (@Oscarscafebar) September 20, 2022
Owner Ronan Flood told Lunchtime Live he plugged the lead out when the customer went to the toilet.
"Rather than avoid a confrontation, I plugged the extension out at the wall - thinking that the guest would take the hint.
"I headed off to one of the other bars, and I came back... and the same guest was still sitting there with the devices plugged in.
"In fairness, he had got a second drink - but it was like 'Ah here, 4.5 hours this is a bit much'".
He said he then confronted the man: "I went down to the customer and just said to him that 'This is excessive use of our electricity, you're kind of taking the proverbial with the plug board'.
"I just asked him to put the plug board away".
The customer asked if he was not welcome in the bar, to which Mr Flood said: "You're welcome to be in the bar, but not if you're excessively using our electricity.
"He walked out the door - we both had a mutually respectful conversation, and he went on his way.
"It did grate on me later on in the day... and then it just exploded on social media".
He said the reaction seems to be evenly split as to what happened.
"We'd see nobody stuck - anyone that comes in and needs to charge up a phone, we're under no illusions here, we know it's not a colossal cost to charge devices.
"But everything has to be done in moderation, and it wasn't in this case".
