Fired - extended version - part 1

Just after Trevor and I were married we moved back to Utah (we had been living in Philadelphia for 2 months) and in with my parents.

We were desperate to find jobs; I was hired at Ross Dress for Less as their Front End Supervisor…. a cashier.

If you shop at Ross (which I still do, no hard feelings) you may have noticed their “Loss Prevention” people. They look like security guards, although here is a secret from me to you; they can’t do anything. Basically they are glorified Walmart greeters.

They do have a few additional duties other than saying hello and goodbye to people. Every couple of hours they walk around the store looking for stashed merchandise, broken items, cut hard tags, etc.

One day one of the loss prevention guys, Brian, (actual name, there are no innocent people in this story to protect) found a container full of these chocolate covered candy sticks that had been torn open and some of them were missing.

Via

At Ross they have a bucket called MOS, I can’t for the life of me remember what that stands for but that is the bucket we put all the stuff that is damaged or when people returned things that is broken and couldn't be resold. Everything that is going to be thrown away we put in this bucket so the manager can make a note that the item was damaged and not stolen, then into the trash compactor it goes, no matter what condition it’s in.

So Brian put this container with these candies in the MOS bucket and ended his shift.

Later in the evening, I was still there. Scott was the Loss Prevention guy working that night, I like Scott, we are buddies. Things were slow so I was back behind the counter scanning in the returns while we chatted.

There were a few of the candies up on the return counter so I was looking at them. They had names like: chocolate kahlua, cinnamon schnapps, and mint julep.  

I said, “there is no way these have actual liquor in them.” 

I pulled the container out of the MOS bucket to double check the ingredients.

Nope, no actual liquor.

So I had to try them, at least one of every flavor.

Scott was standing there so I offered some to him; it was dinnertime after all.

The next day I was working as was Brian. The Manager on duty, Niki, came up and started to pull everything out of MOS to take back to the trash compactor. Brian saw the container of candy and said,

“Hey that had more candy in it when I found it.”

So I said, “Yeah, I tried them, they are actually really good!”

“Well if you had some that means Scott had some too.”

“Yeah, sure, we all had some.”

“That is against Scott’s job description.”

Now I don’t know if Brian had a personal vendetta against Scott, or if he was just extremely honest.

I see him start to bee-line it to the back room, where our store manager, Nancylynn was.

Oh seriously, I thought. So I head back there as well.

I walk into her office as he is standing over her shoulder and they have the surveillance tape up from the night before.

They hear me come in and quickly shut down the tape like I caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to.

“Oh” I say, “Are you guys talking about last night? I can just tell you what happened. I ate some of the damaged candy that was in the MOS bin that Brian found yesterday. I realize now that it was probably wrong of me to just go ahead and eat it but I justified it because it was going to be thrown away anyway. Can I buy it now?”

Nancylynn responds “No, you can’t buy it. It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s Scott.”

“Why? I was the one who had the idea and gave some to Scott, it’s not his fault or responsibility, it is mine. I can write up a statement if you want.”

“Well we will have to see, I need to decide if I am going to report this to corporate or not.”

“Uh……..ok.” 




**This whole situation happened about 2 1/2 years ago when I worked for Ross. Not my current predicament with being laid off while on maternity leave from xango.