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Ford has been rebuffed by a worker it fired after wrongly accusing him of stealing a cookie worth just $1.95.
Kurt Kromm, the veteran electrician in question, said the abrupt manner of his termination and subsequent lack of apology from the firm has made it impossible to return.
According to Kromm, who is diabetic, Ford simply assumed he would be returning after he was able to provide evidence that the did in fact pay for the cookie with a credit card.
Ford fires worker over cookie debacle
As first reported by journalist Phoebe Wall Howard in the Shifting Gears newsletter, the firing furore occurred at Ford’s Truck Plant in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the early hours of the morning on May 9, Kromm visited an Aramark self-checkout kiosk after his blood sugar dropped during an overnight shift, picking up two Grandma’s Chocolate Chip Cookies worth $1.95.
The 60-year-old electrician recalled that an initial debit card payment for the cookies failed, with the kiosk screen flashing red. After another attempt, no red flash came up on the screen, leading Kromm to assume it had gone through – though a typical green checkmark to confirm the purchase also did not come up.
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“I figured, well, it probably went through,” Kromm said, speaking to the New York Post. “And I might have went over to the other kiosk and paid. This was so inconsequential to me — $1.95. I figured I paid.”
A week later, he was accused of stealing the cookie by two supervisors. “The bargainer says, ‘This is bad,’” Kromm recounted. “I said, ‘For what?’ They said, ‘They want to terminate you for taking a cookie.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
After being shown surveillance footage, Kromm was terminated, and immediately removed from the premises. ““They just terminated me, walked me out of the building,” Kromm said. “I had to get the union steward to even go get my personal laptop because they wouldn’t let me go get anything — ‘you are terminated, get out.’”
Decision reversed, apology missing
Kromm subsequently obtained proof that he had been charged for the cookies, comparing the credit card statement to an image sent by a former colleague of the kiosk machine, showing the price of the item. He sent it to Ford labor execs and union officials.
Just over two weeks later, having also asked for notarized bank records, Ford informed Kromm he would be reinstated with around $33,000 worth of back pay.
But the electrician said he received no apology for being incorrectly fired, nor for how the process was hired.
“I emotionally couldn’t go back,” he explained. “I worked with 8,500 people. I didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody. I’d been there 11 years.”
“There was no apology,” Kromm added. “There was just, ‘Oh, you’re not coming back?’ No, I am not interested in coming back… I expected to work for Ford until I retired… I loved working for Ford. I never thought it would end this way. It was a home away from home. This was tremendously difficult for me, but I couldn’t go back. I just couldn’t do it.”
He expressed his disappointment in Ford and his union, United Auto Workers, as well criticizing Aramark for raising the theft allegation against him without first looking for the transcation.
“Most companies would just ask you to pay for the cookie,” the worker said. “I can’t come back to a company that just fired me like this and not give me any chance to show I paid.”
Ford refused to comment on the case, but said in a statement to The Post: “There are times when we look into things and realize it could have been handled differently. When that happens, we try to rectify it.”
