Labor & Employment partner, Paul F. Keneally, was recently interviewed by News10NBC about the firing of a manager of a local Big Lots who was trying to stop a shoplifter. Paul spoke with reporter Berkeley Brean for the story “News10NBC Investigates scourge of retail theft, and what’s being done about it.”
The manager describes how he saw the shoplifter take a swing at his assistant manager and he followed the man at a distance through the parking lot relaying his location to 911 in the hopes police could arrest him. However, two weeks later he was fired for not following company policies. Paul explained, “So they have a rule in place that the employees are not to do anything, and it’s unfortunate because it sounds like this person was trying to do the right thing.”
The story also shares that this is not the only instance where a retail store manager has been fired over how they handled a shoplifter, and it digs deeper into the troubling increase in shoplifting in New York State.
View the story on the News10NBC website here.