Earlier this year Kurt Kromm, an electrician who worked for Ford Motor Co. for 11 years at a plant in Kentucky (sometimes averaging 60 hours a week), was unceremoniously fired. The reason? Ford accused Kromm of stealing a chocolate chip cookie from the onsite marketplace. The cookie retailed for $1.95, Kromm’s salary was $200,000. The real culprit was the wonky self-checkout kiosk, as Kromm later proved when he provided Ford with a notarized bank statement showing the $1.95 payment had been debitted from his account. Adding further insult to injury, Kromm had made the purchase during an overnight shift when his blood sugar dropped, and he’s diabetic. Ford ended up cutting Kromm a check for $33,000 in back pay and offering him his job back. But Kromm was so disgusted with the whole affair, he declined to return, and went public with his story last month. The slim silver lining was that Ford promised the United Auto Workers union that moving forward they would suspend, not fire workers over cases of “suspicious payment kiosk activity.” Yeah, well, guess which big wheel company is a liar liar pants on fire? Ford did it again — at least four more times!
Nick Nabozny, who had nearly nine years’ experience at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant, was fired after he was accused of walking out with a bag of Doritos and a package of Ritz crackers with cheese that the company alleged he hadn’t paid for, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Nabozny, 38, insists he believed the self-checkout kiosk had processed his debit-card payment after it chimed and flashed on the screen.
At least three other Michigan Assembly workers who were fired over alleged snack thefts have been reinstated after investigations cleared them, according to the Free Press.
Nabozny said during a meeting with Ford management on April 27, he was shown surveillance footage from earlier that month that allegedly captured the incident at the self-checkout marketplace near the end of an overtime shift.
“I asked, ‘What did I steal?’” Nabozny told the newspaper.
A union bargaining representative said, “‘They have you on camera in the marketplace stealing food,’” he continued. “I said, ‘I never stole anything in my life. Why would I jeopardize my livelihood and my family’s livelihood to steal food when I’m making good money?’”
“It showed me talking to someone and then when I was done speaking, it shows me grabbing a Milky Way off the shelf, looking at the ingredients, and putting it back,” said Nabozny, who earned $40 an hour.
He’d been on track to earn over $125,000 for the year last year due to accrued overtime.
“I grabbed two different snacks, Doritos and Ritz Crackers with cheese. Then it shows me going to the kiosk and scanning those two items. It shows me pulling my debit card out of my pocket, tapping it and waiting for it to register,” he said.
Another employee, Brendan Fluker, told the Free Press that workers have long complained about the Aramark kiosks malfunctioning, citing transactions that failed to process, double charges, frozen screens and missing receipts.
The latest cases have prompted Ford and food-service giant Aramark to review the functionality of self-serve kiosks at Ford’s US-based plants after workers alleged payment glitches wrongly branded them as thieves and cost them their jobs.
Look, y’all know the seriousness with which I regard snacks, especially of the chip variety. But this is outrageous!! Where’s due process?! Where’s innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?? And why is Ford so revved up to keep firing dedicated employees over cases of petty theft? Even if these items had been stolen (which they weren’t), it’s not like Ford was losing 12 tons of precious candy bar in one fell swoop. Isn’t a Milky Way here and some Doritos there factored into the cost of doing business? And again, nothing was ever actually stolen! I work at a small firm, and they do this wild thing of regularly supplying complimentary snacks. Ford is a $57 billion company — let the workers have snacks! They want bread and roses and Ritz crackers with cheese! And for Pete’s sake, fix that lemon of a kiosk.