On Nov. 6, Thomas Smith, a 52-year-old resident of Albany, NY, was fired from his job at Walmart in East Greenbush, NY. Smith made $9 an hour picking up trash from the parking lot and moving shopping carts. On the day he was fired, Smith redeemed $5.10 from a shopping cart he found near the store's recycling redemption center.
This story, which started as a local story in the Times Union, a popular newspaper in New York's capital region, has gained national attention, and many are outraged. Walmart has been under fire for their mistreatment of employees and low wages for many years, and Smith's experiences highlight the brutal and unjust conditions that Walmart employees must endure.
Smith's story has remained consistent regarding the incident on Nov. 6 since the story broke in mid-November. However, the head honchos at Walmart have changed their reasons for firing Smith twice since the story broke. When the story was first published in the Times Union, Aaron Mullins, a spokesperson for Walmart, said he could not discuss Smith's firing, as it was a personnel issue.
Yet when the story gained national attention after it was covered in the Washington Post, Mullins responded, stating that Smith was fired because he redeemed bottles that were returned to customer service by other Walmart customers. Essentially, Mullins argued that the $5.10 that Smith redeemed was "property" of Walmart, and in redeeming the cans, Smith stole from the company. Bear in mind the fact that Walmart is one of the largest employers in the United States, with $482.2 billion in net sales during the last fiscal year.
Just a few days after Mullins' response to the Washington Post, Michelle Malashock, who works for Walmart's communications department, admitted that Smith was fired because he didn't admit his previous criminal charges during the application process. Smith claims he told his interviewer that he had been convicted of robbery and that they performed a background check on him before he was hired.
While the inconsistencies at the executive level are a bad reflection on Walmart and a nightmare for public relations, the worst part of the Smith controversy is the lack of compassion that administrators at Walmart show for their employees. Thomas Smith was formerly homeless and does not own a car. He is clearly trying to turn his life around; he currently lives at the St. Charles Lwanga Center, a halfway house in Albany, which helped him to apply for the job at Walmart. Smith redeemed the cans not because he wanted to steal from the corporation that pays him minimal wages, but because he thought the cans were left as trash. He was unaware that he couldn't take empty bottles.
On top of all of that, what does $5 matter to a company that makes over $400 billion dollars in net sales every year? Is it really worth firing a man who may have needed the $ more than any Walmart executive ever could? It is shameful that those at the top of the corporations that employ so many in our country are not compassionate enough to consider the lives or the challenges that their employees might be facing.
