WALMART WORKER FIRED FOR HESITATING TO TURN OVER FOUND MONEY

A Wal-Mart maintenance worker in upstate New York found $350 in the store’s parking lot, waited about half an hour, then turned it over to his manager. Two days later, he was fired. “The only thing I did wrong was hesitate,” Michael Walsh, 45, said after he was canned. “I didn’t steal anything.” Walsh, an 18-year-veteran at his Wal-Mart job in Niskayuna, NY, found the cash in early November while fetching stray shopping carts in the store’s parking lot. The bills were in an unmarked envelope. Walsh finished his task, counted the bills and headed inside to turn it over. Inside, he found a woman yelling at a manager, freaking out that she lost her money and he got nervous. Walsh, who has anxiety issues, went back to work and gave the cash to his manager about half an hour later. Two days later, he was shown camera footage with a time stamp and then fired for “gross misconduct” for waiting to turn over the money. “I enjoyed my job, I was a good employee and always got to work on time,” Walsh told the paper. “I got treated like a common criminal. I was really looking forward to that lifetime discount card in two more years. They took that from me.”
* Yeah, but the prices are already pretty low, so there’s that.
* This is ridiculous. I think “gross misconduct” should at least include doing something gross.
* Maybe if he picked his nose while he took the money. That would be gross.
* He made several mistakes here but his main mistake was not offering the manager a cut.
* He got nervous all right – nervous that he wasn’t going to get away with it.
* If you think he had anxiety issues before, you should see him now.
* What did he think those security cameras were for? To help you find your car?
* PHONE TOPIC: Should the guy have been fired for hesitating?