General News Support pours in for fired E. Greenbush Walmart employee who redeemed $5.10 of cans

Aldrick · Nov 20, 2015

A Times Union story about a Walmart employee fired from his job for redeeming $5.10 worth of empty cans and bottles he found discarded in the parking lot sparked widespread outrage and is gaining traction nationally via social media.

Dounya Hamdam of Chicago read the story from a link on Instagram and started a GoFundMe crowd-funding site with a goal of $20,000 for the fired employee.

Tom Lomascolo, a landscaper in Mooresville, N.C., read the story on Facebook and said he intended to send the man a check for $510.

Local readers wrote and called the Times Union to express their anger at Walmart and vowed to boycott the store and to send the fired worker donations. An Altamont woman fired off a letter of indignation to C. Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart.

...

This groundswell of civic action was touched off by a Times Union story Thursday about Smith, 52, who liked his job gathering shopping carts from the vast parking lot of the Walmart Supercenter here, where customers often left trash and empty drink containers.

Smith picked up the garbage for more than two months until Nov. 6, when he was fired for redeeming $5.10 worth of empty cans and bottles he found discarded on two occasions.

He was called into the security office and interrogated by a manager and two security staff members.

"I didn't know you couldn't take empties left behind. They were garbage," Smith said. "I didn't even get a chance to explain myself. They told me to turn in my badge."

Surveillance cameras caught Smith redeeming the empty bottles and cans at the store, tantamount to theft of Walmart property, according to the manager.

Smith said he was never informed about that rule.

Smith was fired three hours after the normal end of his shift. He had agreed to work extra time that Friday when the store was short of employees.

The manager asked Smith to repay the $5.10, but he didn't have any cash on him. He took a one-hour bus ride from Albany and paid the money back to the manager on Sunday.

...

The manager, Heather, who would not give her last name, refused to speak to a Times Union reporter at the store Wednesday.

"We can't comment on human resource matters," said Aaron Mullins, a spokesman at Walmart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. He said Smith was fired after an internal investigation and human resource review, but declined to elaborate.

Smith was fired from his $9-an-hour job a few weeks before his 90-day probationary period was up, denying him a 10 percent employee discount and other benefits.

....

Smith had been homeless for four months before he sought help from the Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, which pays his rent in a Central Avenue rooming house. He worries about not being able to buy Christmas presents for his two teenage children.

Natalie McDuffie, of Troy, commiserated with Smith about his firing as she pushed shopping carts across the parking lot Wednesday.

"He was a good employee and did what he was supposed to do," she said.

....
Click to expand...

You can read the full story here.

This is a new low for Wal-Mart, and they were already scraping the bottom of the barrel. The man was just picking up cans from the Parking Lot, and being paid slave wages from his job at Wal-Mart, he redeemed them. They then fired him because they considered him redeeming the cans as "theft" because the trash belonged to Wal-Mart. However, just to rub salt into the wound, they made sure he worked an additional three hours on his final day because they were short staffed, and waited just long enough to fire him before he could receive any benefits from Wal-Mart.

Origamidragons · Nov 20, 2015

Re: Support pours in for fired E. Greenbush Walmart employee who redeemed $5.10 of ca

That's just ridiculous! Firing someone for picking up your trash?

AlamoCity · Nov 20, 2015

Re: Support pours in for fired E. Greenbush Walmart employee who redeemed $5.10 of ca

I'd be funny if customers also go to the Walmart, buy their usual things, rip open the packages in the parking lot, and then dump them in the customer service area. If they want them so bad, they can keep them. Might start to rethink after they get tons of "trash." And if they say it's "littering" and call the cops, say they can't have it both ways: it can't be "trash" and "Walmart property" at the same time.

General News Support pours in for fired E. Greenbush Walmart employee who redeemed $5.10 of cans

Aldrick
Full Member

Origamidragons
Regular Member

AlamoCity
Full Member

General News Support pours in for fired E. Greenbush Walmart employee who redeemed $5.10 of cans

Thread Tools

Aldrick Full Member

Origamidragons Regular Member

AlamoCity Full Member

Aldrick
Full Member

Origamidragons
Regular Member

AlamoCity
Full Member