An employee of coffee shop The Bulldog in the center was summarily dismissed in June this year. The subdistrict court judge ruled this last week.
A security guard sounded the alarm at the end of May because of the employee’s suspicious behavior. When viewing the camera images, management came to the conclusion that the employee did not register sales on May 28 and May 30, skimmed bags of weed and hash and put money from the cash drawer in his trouser or shirt pocket.
The employee, who had worked at the coffee shop since August 2015 and earned 1,846.32 gross per month as a bar employee, was fired on June 20. He received a letter from his employer including this text:
Letter The Bulldog
“It is certain to us that you have been guilty of an irregular and unauthorized way of selling weed/hash and of using the cash register without being able to provide a valid explanation for this. Especially considering the sensitivity of the work and the money that this involves, failure to provide a valid reason for your deviant behavior is unacceptable and your statement is also unbelievable. It is also important that you have been working with us for several years and are therefore very familiar with the orderly manner of sales and cash register use. You are therefore guilty of serious neglect of the obligations incumbent on you under the employment contract.”
The employee did not agree with the immediate dismissal and went to court. He requested compensation of almost 12,000 euros, because there would have been no ‘urgent reason for immediate dismissal’.
He did acknowledge that he did not immediately make sales, but that could have been due to being busy or because he forgot to do it because he was busy with his phone. In quiet moments he would still have done it. He would have put the bags of weed or hash together at the request of customers and the money he took from the cash register would have been given as a tip.
“The coffee shop risks closure if the police and tax authorities discover during a raid that the cash register and/or stock is incorrect”
The subdistrict court judge found his defense ‘not plausible and even unbelievable’. In the verdict states that activating the sale takes a few seconds and activating it afterwards takes ‘obviously more time’. “In addition, recording sales at the cash register at the time of sale is an important part of the sales process. This is especially true now that The Bulldog risks closing the coffee shop if the police and tax authorities discover during a raid that the cash register and/ or stock is incorrect.”
Separate cup
Combining the bags of weed and hash also happened at times when there were no customers around and he has ‘in no way made it plausible’ that the money he put in his pocket was given as a tip. According to the coffee shop, tips are kept in a separate cup and then distributed among staff. “Insofar as the applicant states that this policy is not followed in practice, he should in any case have substantiated this with, for example, statements from other employees,” the subdistrict court judge said.
The subdistrict court judge concluded that the summary dismissal ‘is the result of actions by the applicant that must be regarded as seriously culpable’. Compensation was therefore not necessary. The dismissed employee must pay his former employer almost 800 euros in legal costs.
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