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Walgreens Employee Fired For ‘Stealing’ Chips During Diabetic Attack

NFS4

NFS4

No Lifer
Now that's fucked up!

When Josefina Hernandez, a longtime Walgreens employee with diabetes, felt an attack of hypoglycemia coming on in September 2008, she grabbed a $1.39 bag of chips and ate them to boost her blood sugar, she said.

Hernandez said she paid for the chips as soon as she could leave her cashier's post at the South San Francisco drugstore. She said she tried to explain her actions to Walgreens, but the company fired her.

"They said they had a zero-tolerance policy," said David Offen-Brown, an attorney with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed a federal court suit Thursday accusing the Illinois retailer of discriminating against a disabled employee.

Hernandez had worked nearly 18 years for Walgreens with no disciplinary record, the EEOC said. She told the agency she usually carried some candy in her pocket in case her blood sugar dropped, but hadn't brought any along that day.

"I knew I needed to do something quickly, so I reached for a bag of chips and paid for them as soon as I could," she said in a statement released by the agency. "I am very upset to lose my job over this."

William Tamayo, the EEOC's regional attorney in San Francisco, said federal law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities such as diabetes.

"Accommodating disability does not have to be expensive, but it may require an employer to be flexible and open-minded," he said. "One wonders whether a long-term, experienced employee is worth less than a bag of chips to Walgreens."

The suit seeks back pay and other damages for Hernandez. Walgreens declined to comment.
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http://jezebel.com/5839148/walgreens-employee-fired-for-stealing-chips-during-diabetic-attack
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/09/BU3L1L21E2.DTL&tsp=1
 
she had to wait until she could leave her CASHIER'S post to pay for them? derp

well I guess she didn't have money with her lol
 
slayer202 said:
she had to wait until she could leave her CASHIER'S post to pay for them? derp

well I guess she didn't have money with her lol
Click to expand...

Maybe she had her purse in the locker room in the back of the store? I doubt she keeps her purse behind the counter.

That would make complete sense as to why she couldn't pay until she LEFT her post.
 
Zero tolerance generally means "zero common sense". I hope she sues and wins a bunch of money, that's just messed up.
 
The irony with it being Walgreens is really pathetic. If she paid for them, what is the deal? All the time you see people in the store open something while they are shopping and start eating...especially people with kids...then they pay for the item at checkout. I suppose zero tolerance means these people are shoplifters now. I suppose they rather the employee would have just died there on the spot.
 
I'm diabetic and have grabbed a can of juice or soda in a store if I felt my blood sugar going down, and no one has ever hassled me. Would Walgreens prefer I pass out and have an ambulance out front and paramedics running around their store? Doesn't seem like the kind of situation a pharmacy would want.
 
Wow - good luck with this one Walgreens. Since she paid for them I am thinking they will have to give her a fair bit of money because of this

Oh - anywone else just see a bad story about a company starting with a W and automatically think Walmart?
 
funny, that there was a thread about customers eating food in grocery stores then paying for it at the checkout with lots of responses of people doing it.

i fail to see how she stole them when paid for them.

management had an ax to grind it appears.
 
Our country is lawsuit happy, but I hope she takes Walgreens to the cleaners over this. Insulin shock isn't fatal (unless left untreated for days) but it sure as hell isn't a pleasant experience for a person to go through.
 
Yep, worked 18 years with no disciplinary record (in other words, she was on time and had no complaints against her), but eats (and then promptly pays!) for a bag of chips (more profit for WG anyway), and they fire her?

It was probably just one of the typical corporate sack of shit stuffed suit types that pulled this. If anything, instead of WG as a whole being sued, that guy should have a salted railroad spike shoved through the tip of his dick all the way up into his liver, and be dumped and left to bleed to death.
 
slayer202 said:
she had to wait until she could leave her CASHIER'S post to pay for them? derp

well I guess she didn't have money with her lol
Click to expand...

She may have just not wanted to ring herself up on the register. Looks kinda bad if you do that. Maybe she wanted to wait until another cashier was available to take her money so she wouldn't get fired for theft.

That didn't work out so well, but I could understand the mentality.
 
02ranger said:
She may have just not wanted to ring herself up on the register. Looks kinda bad if you do that. Maybe she wanted to wait until another cashier was available to take her money so she wouldn't get fired for theft.

That didn't work out so well, but I could understand the mentality.
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She was probably trying to follow the rules as closely as possible. I worked at Target back in '94, and remember that it wasn't allowed to ring yourself up (for probably obvious reasons).
 
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