Whole Foods Market Employee fired over $1.50

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: TitanDiddly

$8 worth of snacks ... for my lunch break.

Does not compute.

At Whole Foods it does.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Pciber

Originally posted by: salt9876
If you seen a customer take a bottle of water would u do something?

well... considering it was a grocery store, i would assume that the customer was buying it, and therefore do nothing. If s/he stuffed it in his jacket or such, it still isn't theft, maybe s/he just doesn't want to hold it. Not until s/he walks out the door is it theft.

Irugubakkt oisted by: Pathogen03
I work in loss prevention, customers I basically glance over and wave through due to me not being able to really prevent theft.. 😛

for employee's though, I must categorically go through every item, and verify. I even have to ask them to open backpacks or bags as they enter and leave the store, retail has NO tolerance for that sort of stuff.

I'm sorry, but you don't go through every bag and check every item on employees and not customers because you don't mind customers stealing things, you don't do it to customers because it would be an illegal search and an invasion to privacy. This should be the same case for employees, but somehow they either ignore the law or found a way around it. In fact, i'm willing to bet that if an employee refused to open their bag for you, there is nothing you could do about it.

I also happen to work at Circuit City. At my store, we aren't searched when we enter and exit. We don't have a designated loss prevention associate. We are all trained to watch out for customers opening items, putting them in their clothing or such. But we also can't do anything but politely offer them help finding something until they officially shoplift by leaving the store. Even then, we can't follow them, we just have to remember what they look like, take down their license #, and call the police. Every once in awhile we do find open packages with missing items, but we have only had to call the police twice in the year i've worked there.

Maybe your store just has theft issues, eh?

Oh, one thing that does kind of confuse me - circuit city's policy of giving minimum of $25 to an employee that actively catches a "theft" - opening an item, concealing it, etc - and then approaces the customer and offers to help them find items. Why does this confuse me? Most items stolen are small things - $15 headphones, cds, etc. While this policy does make for employees happy to help prevent theft, it also doesn't make sense to lose more money then you would if someone just flat-out stole it, from circuit city's perspective.

Doing that enforces a policy and prevents a reputation that Circuit City is easy to steal from and stops people from being emboldened to to steal more expensive things.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its better safe than sorry for the store. once they catch u its probably not the first time after all. toss a few good eggs out with the bad, its just how it works.

All they have to do is watch him more carefully for a few months and toss him out if does it again.

 

[TheShiz]

there is nothing you can do. they probably wanted to can you anyhow, or they would have made an exception.

 

[KrillBee]

I'm surprised this thread got so long!

well the answer was said awhile ago, you got fired because you did something against your contract.

whether you 'deserve' to have gotten fired, whether corporate policy 'should' be this way or not, now that is a much bigger question, which i dont think is worth our time trying to answer here (we wont come to any perfect answer)

Bottom line: they fired you, they had a legal right to do so, so you have to accept this and move on.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its better safe than sorry for the store. once they catch u its probably not the first time after all. toss a few good eggs out with the bad, its just how it works.

All they have to do is watch him more carefully for a few months and toss him out if does it again.

its not worth the trouble. not a high value employee. just get another.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: saahmed
You sound too smart to be working in a grocery store. Go find a better job. But, this termination may leave a bad stain on your record.

What record? Once he graduates he just has to list Whole Foods as an employer and that's it. Nobody ever calls to verify a job that people do while in school to help pay the bills. He seems smart enough to get a good job and hopefully wiser from this experience.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its better safe than sorry for the store. once they catch u its probably not the first time after all. toss a few good eggs out with the bad, its just how it works.

All they have to do is watch him more carefully for a few months and toss him out if does it again.

its not worth the trouble. not a high value employee. just get another.

That's arguable in an industry with lots of turnover when considering someone with 3 years of tenure with no other problems (if that is really true of course).

 

[ragazzo]

Okay, now I feel bad about drinking a bottle of juice w/o paying first at WFM. I did keep the bottle very visible and I did pay for it when I was done looking around. Oh well.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
Grazing is not a made up term.

The term grazing is in most union contracts. Never refered to as stealing but grazing.

Yes! It is selectivly enforced. Once you get into the work force you'll see worse. I'm sure.


...Galvanized

Yeah, made up BY THE UNIONS so that they can help to protect the thiefs. See, thievery is a dirty ugly word, "grazing" sounds like something a cow does. When you take something without paying for it you're STEALING. It doesn't matter if it's an employee or a customer. When I was in HS myself and several friends worked in supermarkets. One got canned for selling merchandise to a friend at a GREATLY reduced price. 8-pack of batteries for the walkman, 9 cents. 2 pounds of filet mignon for dinner, 11 cents. That went on a while and eventually they caught him at it. The police were called as well as the union to protect the employee. The union had a name for that too, it was called "sweetheart buying".

Grazing, sweetheart buying, pre-purchase consumption, non-ownership snacking, customer-friendly mischarging, whatever you want to call it, it's still STEALING. Nobody cares what the union calls it in their contracts. If merchandise disappears down an employees gullet it's the same as merchandise that disappears into a shoplifters pocket. In retail outlets like supermarkets and Targets/Wal-Mart employee theft is a MUCH bigger problem than shoplifting. The majority of the payroll is high school age kids, most are "ethically ambiguous" (another term a union would employ) and stealing is easy. Most part-timers are trained to do their job on day one and on day two their fellow employees teach them how to steal. Hell, my current job on DAY ONE I was taught how to cheat on my expense reports.

 

[Mrfrog840]

Originally posted by: Specop 007
With all due respect..

Its a grocery store. I mean.....dude....its a GROCERY STORE.......

QFT

 

[AtoZ]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
As per their policy, there were certainly justified.
I am surprised that they did though. There must be something else about your work history that you are not telling us.

exactly.

/thread

 

[diapickle]

You took something without paying for it, that's called theft in this country.
Learn the lesson and find another job, your life is not over.