Working from home, coffee breaks and a part-time job: when your working hours suddenly take place somewhere completely different

When the working day ends at eleven

A sales manager on a six-figure salary claims to be away on business all day. Site visits in Gera, Naumburg, Leuna. Sounds exhausting. In reality, he doesn’t leave his home in Dresden until around 10 am, does some personal shopping, enjoys a leisurely lunch at a butcher’s, and is back home just before 4 pm. Full steam ahead, so to speak.

Or: an employee tells her colleagues she’s popping down to the cellar – but spends ten minutes drinking coffee in the café opposite without clocking out. Or: a ticket inspector who’d rather visit his girlfriend and the hairdresser than check tickets.

These stories sound like TV satire. But they are real court cases. And they show that working time fraud is not a marginal phenomenon – it is a perennial issue in the employment courts, with the rise of working from home leading to even more cases. The courts have recognised the signs of the times. Employers should do the same.

What is working time fraud – and when does it risk dismissal?

In short: working time fraud is the deliberate misrepresentation of one’s own working hours. This can include a falsely clocked-in arrival time, an unrecorded break, a falsely claimed hour of remote working, or overtime that was never actually worked. There is no specific legal term for this. However, the decisive factor is not whether someone has committed a criminal offence – but whether there has been a serious breach of trust. And that is sufficient grounds for summary dismissal. It makes no difference whether the discrepancy is ten minutes or ten hours, whether it was the first time, or whether the damage is minor. What matters is: was it intentional? And: how did the employee behave afterwards?

A simple formula for everyday situations: intent + cover-up = high risk of dismissal.

Real-life cases – what the courts have ruled

Case 1: Ten minutes for a coffee – the end of an employment relationship (Hamm Regional Labour Court)

A cleaner left her workplace to have a quick coffee. Next door, in the café. Ten minutes. Without clocking out. She told her colleagues she was going down to the basement. When her employer confronted her about it, she denied it – until he announced he had photos as evidence. Only then did she admit it.

The Hamm Regional Labour Court upheld the summary dismissal. Not because of the ten-minute coffee break itself, but because she lied afterwards to cover it up. The court put it plainly: her behaviour after the incident destroyed trust so thoroughly that even a written warning would not have been enough to salvage the situation.

Lesson learnt: A ten-minute coffee break rarely costs you your job. A ten-minute coffee break plus a brazen lie: that’s more likely to do so.

Case 2: Talking on the phone was too tiring (Bremen-Bremerhaven Labour Court)

An employee at a citizens’ helpline is required to spend at least 60 per cent of their working hours on the phone. Sounds doable. In reality, however, over a period of months they only managed around 40 per cent – on some days as little as 30 to 35 per cent. They still collected their full wages.

The court showed him the red card: this constituted such a serious breach of duty that, exceptionally, a prior warning was not required. Anyone who neglects the main duty under their employment contract to such an extent over a period of months cannot seriously expect the employer to condone it.

Lesson learnt: Objective performance data – in this case, telephone call times – are worth their weight in gold. However, they must be analysed in consultation with the works council.

Case 3: Just half an hour – but the wrong one (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Regional Labour Court)

An administrative officer arrives at the office via the Ministry of the Interior through official channels. She clocks in at 10.05 am – and then subsequently requests that her arrival time be recorded as 7.00 am. Thirty extra minutes on the timesheet that she never actually worked.

Thirty minutes. Summary dismissal. Effective. The court stated: the employer must be able to trust anyone working outside the office. This is precisely why time manipulation hits particularly hard in this context.

Lesson: Precisely because it is almost impossible to monitor employees working from home or in the field, the courts have a zero-tolerance policy towards time manipulation – no matter how minor.

Case 4: The auditor’s double life (Bochum Labour Court)

This case deserves its own crime thriller: an employee works as an auditor for a third-party management firm — and also has an authorised secondary employment. So far, so unspectacular. The problem: on 25 working days, he dutifully records working hours with his employer – but is in fact at the client’s premises for his secondary employment. At least 44 hours of falsified working time.

The employer terminated his contract without notice. However, the Bochum Labour Court ruled that the dismissal was invalid – not on the grounds of innocence, but due to a procedural flaw. The works council had not been informed that the employee had a home-working/mobile working arrangement. This was information relevant to the assessment of the facts – and it was missing from the hearing.

Lesson learnt: You can have the strongest case in the world – if the works council hearing is flawed, the dismissal is still invalid. It’s not a luxury, but an absolute must: a comprehensive hearing.

Case 5: Hairdresser, girlfriend, summary dismissal – and the private investigation agency sends the bill (Cologne Regional Labour Court)

A ticket inspector comes under suspicion: information from a conversation with a security firm points to irregularities – gym, hairdresser, mosque, all during working hours. The employer commissions a private investigation agency. They deliver.

Dismissal: valid. And the best part from the employer’s point of view: the employee must bear the detective costs of around 21,600 euros themselves – because the employer acted on the basis of a concrete suspicion and the fraud was proven.

Lesson learnt: Anyone with a genuine initial suspicion is entitled to hire a private investigation agency – and can even reclaim the costs from the employee.

Warning: Hiring a private investigator without grounds for suspicion is off-limits (Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Labour Court)

But be careful: not every gut feeling justifies hiring a private investigator. In the case of a sales manager in Dresden, the employer did have a suspicion – but one that was not based on concrete facts. The court ruled that a mere interest in information is not sufficient. All the findings from the private investigator were therefore inadmissible – and the dismissal was overturned.Lesson learnt: Hire a private investigator – but only once there is genuine, verifiable evidence. Otherwise, the employer will have to foot the bill for the investigator themselves and will also lose the resulting legal case.