Too early, too often: Woman fired for arriving before her shift

 

TURNING up late for work is a familiar reason for getting sacked, but one woman in Spain found herself dismissed for the opposite behaviour.

Her employer let her go not because she arrived behind schedule, but because she consistently showed up far too early.

The woman, employed by a delivery firm in Alicante, made a habit of arriving between 6.45am and 7am despite her contract clearly stating that her shift only started at 7.30am.

Her eagerness to begin work ahead of everyone else reportedly made her manager uncomfortable, especially since she had been officially cautioned about it as early as 2023.

When she continued disregarding those warnings, the company eventually dismissed her this year, citing “serious misconduct”.

According to the employer, turning up early served no practical purpose, as she had no duties assigned before her shift officially began. In their view, she wasn’t contributing anything during that extra time and was instead disrupting workplace expectations.

Unhappy with the decision, the woman took the matter to the social court in Alicante, only to find the ruling go against her. The court decided that repeatedly ignoring management’s instructions amounted to behaviour that harmed the trust and rapport required in an employment relationship.

The judgment noted that her insistence on clocking in before working hours, even after being told not to, undermined the company’s confidence in her.

The court categorised her actions as serious misconduct, placing them alongside offences such as disloyalty, breach of trust, and insubordination. With that, her dismissal was deemed justified. — Focus Malaysia