An employee fired for opening a nail care center while on leave gives a manicure to the detective who was investigating her case

Judges José Montiel, María Isabel Serrano and Ethel Honrubia, of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Castilla La Mancha, have endorsed the admissibility of the dismissal of a worker from the dairy products manufacturing company Schreiber Foods España who is on sick leave. labor launched a nail care and training center. The sentence has been announced by labor lawyer Nicolás Martín.

The woman, employed in the company since 2003 and whose role was to ensure that the packaging, labeling and sealing was carried out correctly, had already been on sick leave for a month, declared by a doctor and due to muscle ailments, when she was dismissed for disciplinary reasons, and notified for this purpose, on December 19, 2022, specifically for violation of contractual good faith and improper use of his situation of temporary incapacity to carry out work-related tasks in another entity.

The company suspected that the worker was planning to start her own business, so it hired a detective who found out that there was a user account on Instagram with her name and phone number, one of whose posts announced that it would open its doors “next.” November 26, at 6 p.m. The investigator visited the premises one day and verified that it was a nail center and that the worker entered it at 12:20 and spent several hours inside it. He even had a conversation with her, which lasted approximately eight minutes, in which they talked about the price of an acrylic course that was going to be taught and the center’s hours and asked her for her contact information, to which the employee responded by giving her a professional card that included the name of the business, its email address and its mobile phone number.

 

The detective gets a manicure

 

The professional continued his thorough research by calling and making an appointment five days later to try the services offered firsthand and have a beauty session. The woman met him at 5 p.m. and gave him a manicure that she paid for as if she were just another client. She also confirmed that during the days in which she carried out the monitoring she was the only person present in the establishment.

Despite the evidence provided, the worker decided to ask the courts to challenge the dismissal, with which she did not agree. In the first instance, the Social Court No. 4 of Toledo rejected his claim, so he presented an appeal before the TSJ of Castilla La Mancha, arguing that the real motivation of the company to carry out this action responded to the various situations. of temporary disability that she had experienced throughout her employment relationship, such as, among others, that caused by her recent motherhood.

To reinforce her position, she also stated that she was not carrying out any activity incompatible with her medical leave, since her injury was located in the tailbone and in the beauty salon she was always sitting on a cushion, so it did not affect her condition in any way.

 

The decision of the Chamber

 

The TSJ magistrates, however, supported the first sentence and corrected the employee, reminding her that the reason for the leave was muscular and not bone pain, so the problem in the tailbone must have occurred at a time prior to the leave.

In their opinion, taking into account the above and that in her usual work the worker was in charge of the final control of the company’s production, if the requirements that this activity implies are put in relation to those related to the work that carried out in a nail training and aesthetics center, it is pertinent to understand and conclude that, according to the decision adopted by the Court, “either he would have simulated a muscle ailment to obtain a medical leave in order to open the academy that he had constituted, or at least would have carried out activities incompatible with the situation of temporary disability”, which is why they have finally dismissed the appeal.