Mercadona worker fired for weighing an already-cleaned squid

Unfair dismissal at Mercadona for weighing an already-cleaned squid

Can you fire someone for weighing a squid after removing its ink and innards? Mercadona tried, and a court has ruled that dismissal unfair. The company's stated reason: the employee allegedly weighed the product already cleaned, charging for fewer kilos than the raw piece contained. The company called it theft; the court, an unfair dismissal. In between, compensation of 15.000 euros and a labour dispute that goes far beyond seafood.

The facts: a scale, a squid and a disciplinary dismissal

The mechanics are easy to describe and hard to judge. In a supermarket fish counter, the customer buys a whole piece and the fishmonger cleans it afterwards, as a service. If it is cleaned before going on the scale, the loss — head, guts, ink — is no longer charged. That, according to the company's account, is what the worker did: ringing himself up a cleaned squid at the price of an uncleaned squid. A few grams. One euro. A disciplinary dismissal.

From there, the case explodes in two opposite directions. For some, it is deliberate and sustained fraud: once a thief, always a thief. For others, it is the perfect excuse to sack someone without paying what is due. The court has sided with the latter: unfair dismissal.

Why is fish weighed before it is cleaned?

Here it is worth getting into the technical detail, because that is where it is decided whether there was cheating or simple ignorance. At the fish market and the wholesaler, fish is paid for whole and uncleaned, with the pen still in, and that is how it reaches the counter. The commercial logic is that the whole piece is sold, not just the usable part: nobody peels an orange on the tree because what would arrive home would be a ball of rotten pulp. Cleaning is an added service given free to the customer, not a discount on the kilo.

Those who argue otherwise — that cleaning it first reduces the price and benefits the buyer — end up colliding with the practice of almost any fishmonger. The discussion is further entangled by a detail that appears in the exchange: at source, some fishermen put in extra fish to make it weigh more. If the system is already rigged from the boat, indignation over a few hundred grams on the supermarket scale sounds, to say the least, selective.

The 2012 reform and dismissals 'just in case they stick'

The case fits a pattern that has been known for more than a decade. Since the 2012 labour reform changed salarios de tramitación (wages during dismissal proceedings), it costs the company almost nothing to try its luck with a disciplinary dismissal: if it sticks, it saves the compensation; if it does not, the cost is often the same as if it had negotiated the exit. Dismissals for far-fetched reasons stopped being exceptional and became a routine piece of admin work.

{vienedelejos}

The suspicion in this case is not that the worker was beyond reproach, but that the procedure was chosen by calculation. The detail that reinforces that reading is the compensation itself that was awarded: if the disciplinary dismissal had been clean, there would be nothing to pay.

15.000 euros and the myth of the expensive dismissal

One of the most repeated mantras in Spain is that firing someone is extremely expensive. The figure in this case points to the opposite: 15.000 euros is, according to one of the participants in the debate, an amount Mercadona pays “for nothing”. The argument that labour rigidity hinders hiring runs into this reality: when dismissal is cheap for the person doing the dismissing, worker protection is left as a dead letter.

{la_trotona}

The debate then drifts into broader territory: how much a dismissal should really cost, whether compensation should be replaced by an Austrian-style severance account — an individual account the worker takes with them — and who pays for the years worked. Some argue that an employer has no obligation to maintain a job; others, that if they hire, they assume the full cost. There is no consensus on this, not by a long shot.

Snitching, medals and the price of a good image

Beyond the squid, the case reveals how discipline is experienced from the inside. Accounts suggest that a warning from a colleague — the cashier, for example — is enough to trigger the mechanism. And that the one who breaks the group's code tends to be the one pointed at, not always the one who does the worst. Against that, the obvious is argued: if there had been no irregularity, there would be no snitch.

In parallel, harsher experiences circulate about internal pressure: 50-euro-a-month promotions and career ladders that require uncomfortable decisions. They are testimonies, not rulings, but they feed the perception that the problem is not a squid.

What is really being decided

The court's ruling does not resolve the real dilemma: making clear how far a company's control can reach over tiny gestures without that turning into selective harassment. A squid weighed at the wrong moment has served to reopen the debate on the entire labour model. Cheap for the company. Expensive, as can be seen, for staff confidence.

In the end, the lesson is the usual one: a declared unfair dismissal does not fix the daily life of someone who has already left. It only puts a price on the error. And the price, once again, was set by the judge, not the scale.