A NY Walmart employee says he was sacked for collecting discarded cans in the parking lot.
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“Mr. Smith was terminated due to theft inside of the store and has signed a statement admitting to the crime”, a Walmart spokesman said. He had been caught on surveillance video trying to redeem the empty cans, and the manager told him that this was the equivalent of stealing Walmart property, though Smith said he didn’t know about that rule. [Image via K2 Images / Shutterstock.com]Thomas, whose job it was to retrieve and organize shopping carts, was apparently supposed to leave the empty bottles and cans for the next customer to deal with, as Walmart labeled the act of redeeming them as “gross misconduct” and immediately fired him. “I didn’t even get a chance to explain myself”. “They certainly didn’t indicate that both when I talked to them and our attorney talked to them”, Alice Green of the Center for Law and Justice said of that claim. Smith says he’s now a good man, so he paid back the $5.10, despite no longer having a source of income. Smith was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2002 for armed robbery of a bank.
He was later told by store officials that it was considered stealing and was sacked. He often agreed to work extra weekend shifts and extra hours beyond his 25-hour workweek when requested to do so by management. [Image via Shutterstock]Smith was homeless for a few time after his release, but with help from the Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, along with a $9 an hour job retrieving carts at Walmart, he was on his way to getting back on his feet.
“It raised issues of race and gender”, Green told the Times-Union. Walmart didn’t give him a copy and the company says it would go against their policy to share it with NewsChannel 13.
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Smith remained adamant in an interview with the Times Union on Friday that he never stole from Walmart. Smith was a few weeks short of the end of his 90-day probationary period, when he would be eligible for a 10 percent employee discount.
