A waitress loses her job for incorrectly recording her departure time in the work schedule

The Superior Court of Justice of Castile and León has supported a hospitality company and declared the dismissal fair of a waitress who systematically falsified her work schedule records. The ruling STSJ CL 731/2026 overturns the first instance court’s decision and sets a clear precedent on the consequences of manipulating work time control.

What exactly happened

The worker had been employed since August 2017 at a bar in Zamora, with the category of waitress and a salary of €1,373 per month. According to the establishment’s security cameras, on at least 7 work days between November and December 2024, she recorded a departure time in the register that did not match reality: the bar was already empty several minutes before the time she had recorded.

Additionally, there was another incident. On November 19, 2024, a customer approached asking for sauce and the waitress told him to serve it himself, giving him instructions to enter the establishment’s kitchen.

The company dismissed her on January 18, 2025 for very serious offenses of fraud, breach of trust, and disobedience. The hospitality sector is especially vulnerable to this type of situation due to irregular shifts and nighttime closures.

The court said unfair, the TSJ said fair

The case had two opposing resolutions. Social Court number 1 of Zamora declared the dismissal unfair, ordering the company to reinstate the worker or compensate her with €11,173. It considered that the sanction was excessive for the infraction.

However, the TSJ of Castile and León overturned that decision and declared the dismissal fair, applying article 54.2 of the Workers’ Statute for transgression of contractual good faith. For the higher court, it was not sanctioning a simple early departure, but the repeated falsification of time control documents.

The TSJ’s arguments

The court rejected the arguments of the first sentence, including the reference to the “social reality of Zamora” and the scarce pedestrian traffic in winter. It also dismissed that the company had consented to this way of recording the work schedule.

For the magistrates, repeatedly recording a work end time different from the real one, together with the kitchen episode, fits the very serious offense of fraud and disloyalty provided for both in the Workers’ Statute and the hospitality agreement. That it was “few minutes” did not reduce the severity: what was relevant was the systematic nature and deliberate character of the conduct.

The sentence leaves the worker without compensation or processing wages, although it can still be appealed to the Supreme Court for doctrine unification.

What companies can learn

Security cameras were decisive in proving the manipulation. Without this documentation, the company would have found it very difficult to demonstrate the facts before the court. It’s also important to apply the same consequences to all employees to avoid allegations of discriminatory treatment, and to have time-tracking systems that make entry irregularities difficult. If you don’t know where to start, our complete time tracking guide for SMEs covers the essential aspects.

And workers

Small manipulations of the record can have serious consequences. The TSJ did not distinguish between “much” or “little” falsified time — what was relevant was the pattern of conduct. If there’s an error or doubt with the time tracking, it’s best to communicate it to the company instead of “adjusting” the data manually.

Would a digital system have changed anything?

Yes. The underlying problem is that the worker manually recorded a time that was not real. With a digital time-tracking system like Cleverfy, which automatically records the exact time of clocking in and can validate location through geolocation, this type of fraud becomes practically impossible.

If the company had required clocking in from the bar itself (with geolocation activated), the waitress would have had two options: stay at the establishment until the real departure time and clock out correctly, or leave earlier and have the system record the departure from outside the workplace (or simply not clock out at all, which would have generated an alert). In any of the scenarios, the falsification as it occurred — manually recording an invented time days later — would not have been possible.

See how Cleverfy works and check how easy it is to comply with work schedule recording.

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Sources: STSJ Castile and León 731/2026 (CENDOJ), La Opinión de Zamora